Man on the Inside

Amazon Edition

Copyright L. J. Zephyr 2023

ljzephyr.ju.mp

1

Brontë shines his torch through broken glass, and the light ripples out across an unfinished concrete room. There’s graffiti and dust that might be decades old, but no sign of anything new. No furniture, no papers, no burnt-out cigarettes or broken beer bottles. Nothing left behind.

“Are we sure this is the right address?” Brontë doesn’t want to question Nimm too much. He’s tired, and when he’s tired, everything hurts. Nimm is running her fingers over the twisted metal bars sticking out of the concrete wall. She looks down over the street below; it’s late night on a Thursday, and Brontë’s vision isn’t exactly great, but he can see the roughhousing outside the bars, groups of guys having slightly-too-loud conversations, a shady figure leaning up against a pole and smoking something. Most people he can see are minding their own business, but it’s inner-city Melbourne- they’re unlikely to find anyone willing to answer two cops’ questions about who they might’ve seen coming in and out of this building.

Nimm sighs. She looks over her shoulder at him. “Did you think he’d still be here, Neil?”

Brontë finds it a little odd when she refers to him by his first name, although she insists on always doing it. He doesn’t do it back, partially because you’re not supposed to, and partially because she doesn’t exactly look like a Susan. She’s never asked him not to call her by her surname. “Obviously not. I’m just- I know I shouldn’t have expected to find anything. I was just hoping we’d at least find a reason to be here.”

“We’re lucky we got any tip at all.” Nimm turns around, her gaze narrowing as she examines the room. It’s hardly a room, with half the wall fallen out, nothing but structure- it’s an open-air concrete floor with accent graffiti walls. It hardly seems like a space where anything they were looking for could take place. If they were looking for a drug dealer, this tip might make sense. But they’re not. “What else do we have on him?”

“You ever think about that for more than a moment?” Brontë asks, and Nimm looks at him sideways. She walks slowly away from the window, like she’s measuring her steps. “This guy. This is the Volkov that we get- the elusive shadow who has none of the hallmarks of the rest of the family? It’s not just the nature of his crimes, it’s the fact that he’s untraceable.”

“Are you saying he’s not a Volkov?” Nimm raises her brow at him, hand on her hip.

“I’m not saying that. It could be a name he’s picked up for the reputation, but I doubt it, considering that’s not the reputation he seems to want. I’m just saying he’s different from the rest of them.” Brontë heads back to the shoddy ladder, leading down to the car park, that backs out onto a side alley. This is certainly a secluded location. “I’m not claiming anything about him. I’m just expressing amazement.”

“Amazement?” Nimm’s voice is hard to read. She has this quality in her voice that Brontë attributes to smoking for years, although the height of her voice seems like she’s trying to hide it. She covers her face with her elbow, and coughs deep- she often tries to hide that, too. “Can you elaborate?”

“Don’t act like it’s weird to say that.” Brontë spins around, shining his flashlight over this empty space, like some evidence will randomly jump out at him. Like Artemy Volkov himself will just be hiding in some corner of this room, for him to finally find. “I don’t have to agree with him, or- or to think we’re wrong to be trying to catch him, to say it’s impressive, okay? Single-handedly running basically the whole counterfeiting business in the state, and being a shadow at the same time, means there’s some kind of genius back there. I bet they’re missing him up there in Sydney.”

“The cops, or the Volkovs?” Nimm asks, and Brontë laughs. “No, I see what you- hey.”

Brontë turns, and Nimm’s on her knees, triumphantly lifting something up from the dust. The back of it was a dark grey, and when it was face-down, it had blended almost perfectly into the concrete- but as she shines her torch on it, the light cuts through, and Brontë can see that there’s words on the other side. The other side is the first page of a passport.

“I told you he was here,” she says, offering the paper to him, before immediately going into a short coughing fit. Brontë gently takes it from her, watching her to make sure she’s okay before he moves his focus. She lifts up a hand to wave him away, and as she’s bringing herself back together, Brontë takes his own torch to examine the evidence.

Other than the fact that the paper is thin, and it’s not attached to the rest of the passport, Brontë wouldn’t have a single clue that this was fake- even less so as someone who was trained to notice the difference. The subtle inflections on the paper, the right overlays and watermarks in the hidden places one wouldn’t think to look, even the right font, the right spacing. Brontë bites the inside of his cheek.

“Well,” he says, crouching down to be on Nimm’s level, “case in point. You know how to counterfeit check, right?”

“Sorta,” Nimm says, and as she stands up, so does Brontë- although he’s still taller than her. “Can I see?”

Brontë hands her the paper back. “By every metric I know of, it looks perfect. I don’t even know how he would ever be caught, if we didn’t know about him already.”

Nimm smirks a little, her dark eyes shining. “Be careful with that kind of talk around the office. People might think you like him a little too much.”

“Like what? It’s not like it’s possible for me to work for him.”

Nimm shrugs. “I don’t think anyone will think that.” She takes a plastic bag out of her pocket, and slides the paper inside. “Maybe they’ll think you’re not serious about catching him, though.”

“Why would I not be serious about catching him?” Nimm gives him a side eye as he says this, but he waves his hands around, imagining the conversation. “I may not think it’ll ever happen, but I’d far rather be chasing him down than- than doing the kind of work I used to do out on patrol.”

Nimm brushes dirt off her knees, and he sees her pause, like she’s holding back another cough. “You hate patrol a lot, huh?”

“I didn’t think I talked about it that much.” Brontë’s still glancing around the floor with his torch, but Nimm appears to be making to leave, and it makes sense- what are they going to find that’s bigger than this? “It’s rough out there, you know? And not for us.”

Nimm tilts her head, but doesn’t immediately respond. So Brontë keeps talking. “I dunno. Sorry. With this investigation, it’s just- there’s more to it than there is to patrol, is all.”

He likes Nimm, because she doesn’t act like he broke a tonne of invisible rules when he suggests the world isn’t a perfectly ordered place with them on top. She smiles instead, shrugs a little. “Well, lucky for you, you’re not getting demoted back to patrol any time soon. We’ll find the guy whose fake identity this is, and see if he’s got any further leads. It’s just a question of how to approach him, really.”

“I guess we can answer that when we know who he is,” Brontë says, because he is the commanding officer on this task. He doesn’t argue with ideas he agrees with, though. “Is he a client, or was this the original that Volkov’s been copying off of? If it’s the latter, that at least explains in human terms how it’s so good.”

“It’s not the original.” Nimm’s tone doesn’t hide that she’s pointing out the obvious. “Or else how would it be thin, normal paper? The original would be cut from a passport, I would think.”

Brontë sighs. “You’re right. I just- still can’t wrap my mind around his talent, alright?”

“He left a huge piece of evidence behind. Whatever he was doing here- working, selling, networking, whatever- that’s a gigantic, rookie mistake.” Nimm begins to climb down the ladder, and Brontë overlooks the street below, imagining the meetings that might take place here. On sight, he’d imagine it to mostly be the kind of back-alley drug deals that would be commonplace in a suburb like this- but somewhere among that was Artemy Volkov. Some tall, blonde Russian, as Brontë imagines he probably is, who can seemingly create anything he desires with his bare hands. One rookie mistake hardly destroys that image.

“He can still do things nobody else can do.” Brontë follows her down the ladder. His feet hit cracked concrete on the ground, and he stares back up at this crumbling building. Artemy Volkov was here.

“Marry him, then, if you love him so much.”

Brontë scoffs. “Okay. Thanks for your input, Nimm.”

She looks over her shoulder at him with a barely-hidden smile. “Come on,” she says. “We’re going back to the station.”

“You know, you’re lucky you get put with me,” Brontë remarks as he steps into the driver’s seat. There’s a satisfying clunk of the door, and they’re sat in relative darkness now, so it’s oddly intimate when Brontë finishes, “…most officers wouldn’t put up with a subordinate making orders like that.”

“That’s because you’re not up your own ass enough to think I’m actually trying to usurp this secret power you think you have. Unlike most of you.”

“Most of us?” Brontë asks, as he pulls out into the street. It’s an unmarked car, and that makes Brontë a whole lot less self-conscious. Like nobody is going to treat him differently, or act afraid of him. “What, you mean men?”

Nimm pauses a second. “Cops,” she clarifies with a grin. “Although yeah, most men, I guess.”

“You say that like you’re not a cop.”

Nimm shrugs. “I like to think I haven’t absorbed the self-righteousness half the department has made their entire personality. And that you haven’t, either.”

“What’s protecting us specifically from that?” Brontë asks, and it’s primarily banter, but he is curious to see if Nimm is getting to an actual point.

“For you?” Nimm looks over at him, and Brontë makes eye contact for a moment- but the streetlights reflecting off of her glasses remind him to keep his eyes on the road. “I have no idea. Unless you are secretly working for, or in love with, Artemy Volkov...” she pauses, preempting that her words are to be broken by coughs again. It’s the perfect time for Brontë to shut it down.

“Oh, shut up.” Brontë’s grinning as he says it. He lets her recover before he continues. “For real. Do you think this piece of evidence will help us find him?”

“I can probably find the guy. I’ll run his face and name through some systems and ask some people. But if he’s a client of Artemy’s, he’s unlikely to give up information easily. That’s why I’m wondering something.”

Brontë looks over at her again- she’s staring out the passenger side window, absentminded. Her hand is raised to her face, her muscles tensed, as she tries to stop herself from coughing again. “What?”

“Would it be a horrible idea to, like- go undercover? Try and find Artemy as a client? Surely it must happen often, since he’s got so many, right?”

“People can smell the cop on you.” Brontë can’t explain the way it makes him nervous to consider the idea. Nimm is coughing as he’s talking, and it worries him a little, but he pushes the notion aside for now. “He’ll know.”

“I think they can smell that self-righteousness bullshit,” Nimm says when she’s recovered, waving her hands vaguely around. The silver rings on her fingers are not exactly uniform, but they glitter in the streetlights, punctuating her point with flashes of white light. “You could do it, I think.”

“Me? I look like a quintessential cop, for one, and for two, you’d be a way better choice. You- they won’t suspect a woman anywhere near as much, for one.”

Nimm makes a face. “Is that your only point?”

“No. I’m older than you.”

Nimm rolls her eyes, crossing her arms and looking away again. Brontë watches the red light reflected across her face turn green, and that’s when he remembers he should be looking at the road.

“I don’t think you’re that much older,” she says. “Besides, I genuinely do not think that there’s zero reason a man your age could want a fake ID. To be honest, I don’t think anyone would even ask why.”

“Really?” Brontë stares out at the street around him, wonders if any of the random citizens they’re passing would know where to find the man he’s looking for. “And if they do?”

“We’ll make up some story, don’t worry. I’m not saying go in without a plan. I’m just saying there’s no reason you couldn’t approach this guy and ask him about fake IDs without alarm bells going off.”

“Why are you not even considering doing it yourself? You’re probably a better actor than I am.”

“Because there’s a reason I work from home three days a week,” Nimm snaps, and that’s when Brontë realises he’s forgotten something important- a point punctuated by Nimm coughing again, a nasty growl in the depth of her throat behind that cough. She’s never told him what the problem is, never even really clarified that there is a problem- he just knows. He’s put pieces together, from the fact that she mostly works from home, sometimes for longer than usual. There’s her cough, the gravel in her voice. The amount of orange makeup she wears, that would hide any damage illness had done to her skin. The fact that he’s pretty convinced her hair is a wig. He doesn’t know she has cancer; she’s never claimed it to him. But he works on that assumption.

“Sorry,” Brontë mutters. “You’re right, you probably can’t. Is there anyone else we could possibly…?”

“Neil.” Brontë winces a little, still raw from the embarrassment of forgetting. “You can do it. If you don’t want to, that’s another thing. We don’t have to attempt it.”

Brontë bites his lip, gazes out at the street around him. Can he pretend? Can he act? Can he meet Artemy Volkov?

“I’d be willing to try it,” he says, rather than answering her question directly. “But I’ll need a lot of help. And maybe backup.”

Nimm’s body is still tense, holding those coughs back. “I’ve got the start of a plan forming,” she says, “don’t you worry about that.”

Brontë is worried, for multiple reasons. But he’ll at least hear out the plan before he dismisses it entirely.

He’s unsettled only a little bit by how much he’s hoping that Nimm’s plan will be good. That he’ll be able to follow it- that he, of all people, will be the one to first meet Artemy Volkov, and just maybe the one to put him in handcuffs.

Maybe.

2

Brontë hasn’t heard from Nimm yet, even though she’s working today. He’s only staring at his phone because he’s waiting, but it’s making him anxious to think about what she might text him. He forces himself to put it away. He’s off the clock today. He’s not supposed to be thinking about work.

He’s standing outside the car, arms crossed. Most parents don’t get out of their cars, and there’s a good reason for that- the summer sun beating down on them is only mitigated by trees here and there, and it’s something most of them do every day. Brontë only gets to do it once a week.

There’s always a sea of teenagers escaping out the school gates the moment class is over, and it seems ever stronger now that the first week of classes is done. There’s always a few, and then more, a burst where most students have just escaped and are packed too tightly to fit through the gate, before it eventually slows down again to just the slowpokes. Brontë’s not just nervous because of what he’s waiting on Nimm to send him.

But right at the start of that dam breaking, he hears a voice he recognises. “Dad!”

He has maybe half a second to turn and see Charlie running towards him, before she’s buried herself in his chest. He naturally forms his arms around her in a hug, but she quickly backs out of it. “Hi,” she says, and how she has so much energy at the end of a school day, he’ll never know. Fourteen year olds can be like that sometimes.

“Hey, Charlie,” he says, reaching out and tousling her hair a bit. She ducks down to avoid it, but can only get so far away. “How was your first week back?”

“Good.” Charlie takes earphones out of her ears as she speaks, tucking them up into her pocket. She’s still wearing the uniform pants- an interesting choice in this weather, but he can imagine her thought process- although he does notice she’s wearing the girl’s version of the uniform shirt. He knows better than to comment on it, though, even to compliment her- he doesn’t want to make her any more self-conscious than she certainly already is. “I’m in most of my classes with my friends. And I’m making some new ones in the classes I’m not.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Brontë says, leaning against the car. “Everyone’s been nice to you?”

Charlie has a four-colour pen in one hand that she’s seemingly pulled from her pocket, and she’s clicking all the colours down and back up rapidly as she talks. “Yeah. Of course. All my friends knew already, obviously. Some people got my name wrong, but Jenna was being really nice about correcting people for me. And Ricky said he’d hit anyone who bullied me with a textbook, but-” she points the pen at Brontë, like she can predict what he’s about to say, and she’s correct- “don’t worry, I told him not to do it. Also because nobody would be afraid of a year seven anyway.”

Brontë smiles sideways. “Where is he? You didn’t leave him to find his way back here all alone, did you?”

“I helped him Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so he knows. He found his way yesterday. This is the same place mum picks us up, except a bit down the road.”

Brontë cranes his neck, searching the bobbing sea of schoolchildren for his son. When he went to school, it felt a lot less chaotic than the crowd looks. It probably wasn’t. “Has he been doing okay, too?”

“Yeah, I think,” Charlie says, fiddling with her pen again. “He doesn’t really talk to me about it.”

“That's understandable." It's easiest to spot Ricky when you're looking for him beside his best friend. Ricky’s tiny, sandy-blonde, so white he burns after five minutes in the sun, and Jake is the visual opposite, tall and athletic with brown skin. That doesn’t stop them from frequently getting mixed up, considering that they’re essentially the same person.

Ricky says that Jake convinced his parents to change their choice of high school, just so that they went to school together. Brontë's met Jake's parents on a handful of occasions, and he can believe that- Jake's a good kid, but he's an only child, and his parents seem to have everything in their lives perfectly together, just for the purpose of making Jake happy. Brontë knows that's not the case, but it makes him look at his own life and wonder what exactly he did to get it not so perfect. It’s still good. But things didn’t turn out the way he was promised they would.

When he spots the pair, there’s a third boy with them, one Brontë’s never met. Ricky doesn’t run like Charlie does, but he hasn’t really been one for hugs since he was seven, anyway. Brontë’s not sure if it’s the gaze of other boys, watching your every move, ready to call you soft or girly or gay if you do something wrong- but he’s never seen Ricky affected by that. Charlie certainly wouldn’t be where she was right now if that had ever really affected her.

"Hi Dad," Ricky says, shifting the bag on his shoulders. Jake waves, and the new boy smiles politely when Brontë looks at him. "Can my friends come over for a bit?"

"Of course they can," Brontë says, "...as long as you introduce me."

“Oh. Yeah, this is Rohan.” Rohan nods a little, before staring at the ground. Brontë doesn’t think he’s that intimidating of a person, but he supposes academy training shows through sometimes. “We wanna show him how to play footy. You can play too if you want, it’ll make the teams even.”

“Maybe,” Brontë says, and he’s never really liked footy, but he can’t imagine a stupider thing stopping him, so he brushes it off. His son asked him to. “...if you’re not afraid I’ll leave you all in the dust. But also, did you even consider asking your sister?”

“She won’t want to,” Ricky says, turning to Charlie. “You don’t want to, right?”

“Yeah, no,” she mutters, “but thanks.”

Brontë sees it out of the corner of his eye. Just the tilt of Rohan’s head, the question forming behind his eyes that he knows is best asked of Ricky, in private, later. He appreciates the respect, but something about seeing the question need to be asked fills him with dread. And it’s not even for himself- it’s not even like Charlie will know, nor that she’ll care. It makes complete sense that he’d ask that question. But still.

He has no choice but to brush it off, especially as Charlie wasn’t even looking. “Alright. Well, if the three of you boys can squish in the back, we can be off.”

“You got a new car,” Jake comments, and Brontë grins at him. Brontë’s car is nice, it’s new, and it has a whole bunch of flashy tech that Brontë ignores most of the time.

“Yup,” he says as he starts it up. Charlie’s sat herself in shotgun and is immediately texting some group chat, and Ricky’s squished himself in between his friends in the back. “You’re a car fan, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s nice. I’m surprised you went for an EV, but still a good choice. Why’d you get rid of your old one, though?”

Brontë meets his gaze in the mirror. “It was time for an upgrade,” is the bullshit he feels he has to say, followed by the slightly sad truth, in a cheerful tone. “...and I didn’t need an SUV anymore. It’s a little lonely, riding around in such a big car all by myself.”

There’s a moment of silence. Charlie looks up from her phone at him for a moment. “Did you get rid of it ‘cause it reminded you of mum?”

Brontë doesn’t really know what the appropriate reaction to have is. He’s not even sure of his genuine reaction until the words are leaving his mouth. “No. We’ve been separated for a while, Charlotte, I’m used to it.”

Her full name tells her that Brontë wants her to take it seriously. “You got a new car when she got a new boyfriend,” she says bluntly anyway. “I dunno. Seemed related.”

Charlie is, unfortunately, ineloquent often. All three boys in the back seem aware of the discomfort of the moment. Brontë’s not feeling awkward because she’s called him out on the truth. He’s feeling awkward because he knows that’s not the case, but he doesn’t know what the truth is.

“I promise it’s coincidental,” he tells her instead. “A lot of things have happened in the past few months. Like my promotion, and moving house, so you guys don’t have to share that tiny room anymore when you’re with me. It felt like the right time to change a lot of things.”

“And finalising the divorce,” Charlie says. “And me.”

She doesn’t clarify what she means, but they all know. Your daughter only comes out as your daughter once. At least if you take it right, which Brontë is committed to doing.

“I’m not sure what your point is,” he says- he’s pretty sure he’s being accused of jealousy right now, and he’s… well, denying it makes it sound like it’s true. He genuinely doesn’t want Debbie back. Signing those divorce papers wasn’t nice, but it was right. “...but it hardly matters, does it? Life’s different than it was. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Charlie says, looking back down at her phone. The awkwardness has probably caught up to her. “I was just asking.”

Brontë considers for a moment the merits of telling her that that was, in fact, quite a rude thing to say, but he looks at the three boys in the back, thinks about how he has three days with his children and he doesn’t really want to start those days off by disciplining his daughter, and sighs. “When you’re forty-eight and divorced, maybe it’ll make sense. Your mother and I are good friends, but we divorced quite specifically because that’s all we are. Okay?”

Charlie shrugs. Her voice is soft when she says, “okay. I know.”

Brontë knows that’s teenager speak for realising you’ve done something wrong, so he moves on. Rohan specifically looks quite uncomfortable in the rear view mirror, so Brontë pulls the car out onto the road and hopes he hasn’t made the world’s worst impression. “How’s year seven treating you boys?”

“It’s good,” Ricky says absentmindedly. Of course he’s also looking at his phone.

“Different to primary school?” Brontë is trying anyway.

“Very different,” Ricky mutters. “But good.”

Silence. “Do they have sport clubs or something like that?”

“They have a soccer team,” Ricky says, and without looking up from his phone, he finally at least gives a more than one sentence answer. “We’ll probably join it, but we can’t until term two.”

“Oh, that’s good. I know how much you loved your old soccer team, it’ll be great for you to have another.” The air feels dry. Debbie says they’re the same with her, claims they’re worse. Brontë finds it pretty hard to believe.

“Mhmm,” Ricky says, before turning his phone to show Jake something they clearly both find funny. Brontë taps the wheel.

“Oh, Dad,” Charlie says, and she tries to tilt something towards him on her phone. “Do you want to do this?”

“What is it?” he asks. “I’ve got to keep my eyes on the road.”

“Escape room,” she says. “Apparently they’re fun. You like, solve puzzles and stuff, this one’s supposed to be super hard.”

“Oh.” Brontë feels that cold awkwardness warm up a bit. “That sounds like fun, we should-“

A phone call, automatically blaring through the bluetooth speakers in the car, interrupts him. He turns it down before even looking at the name. Susan Nimm.

“Who’s that?” Charlie asks without missing a beat. Ricky looks up, too, suddenly intrigued.

“That’s my work colleague,” Brontë says. After their earlier conversation, he feels it’s potentially necessary to crush any suggestion that this is his girlfriend or something. “I should probably take this. Sorry.”

He presses accept. “Hi, Nimm. I’m in the car with my kids at the moment, can it wait?”

She sounds distorted, like her reception is bad. “Sorry to call you on your day off. All I wanted to say is that I’ve got the guy. Found his place of work, where he’s working under that new name. I’ll send you the details and the plan, and you can do it Monday if it works for you.”

“Monday?” Brontë swallows thickly. He was firmly out of his work mindset, and he didn’t expect to be confronted with the imminent possibility of getting closer to Artemy Volkov. “Without you?”

“You’ll have to do it without me,” she says calmly. Brontë wonders for a moment what his kids, what Ricky’s friends, are thinking he’s talking about right now. It’s not that crazy. But it is a little bit crazy. “But if you have questions about the plan, you can just call me on Monday. I don’t care.”

“Alright.” Brontë hides any worry he has. “Send that over and I’ll take a look. Thanks.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Brontë hangs up, and immediately Jake bursts out with, “are you arresting some guy?”

“No.” Why does Jake look disappointed when Brontë says that? “I just have to talk to someone to find someone else, that’s all. It’s not terribly exciting.”

Somewhere, deep down in Brontë’s heart, it is. How do you explain that you want to meet a criminal? Because he’s a genius and he’s the only member of his family who isn’t known for violent crimes- because he’s using some one-of-a-kind mastermind intelligence for, allegedly, evil, but he’s not even really hurting anyone? That’s what turns it from fear, to excitement, in truth.

Artemy is a Volkov. The family is known for mass murder, drug trafficking, human trafficking, assault, intimidation, corruption, arson- but Artemy didn’t bring any of that to Melbourne. None of those crimes are organised here on the scale they are in Sydney by the rest of the family. It’s just fraud, counterfeiting- counterfeiting so perfect it might as well be originals.

Brontë just wants to know who he is, is all. He’ll arrest him, sure. He’s not against that.

But he’s not convinced he could ever trick such a man for long enough to catch him.

3

“I feel stupid,” Brontë admits into the phone, “and I still find it hard to believe he won’t clock me immediately.”

“He won’t.” Nimm isn’t helpful here. She sounds far more convinced of his success than she should be. “Look. Worst thing he can say is no. He’s got no way of proving you’re a cop.”

“I don’t think you’re looking at this realistically. I am going to try this, but you should expect failure.”

“I’m glad you have faith in my plans,” Nimm responds, deadpan. “Trust me. If we were trying to go the ooo, where can I purchase some molly, young man? route, of course it wouldn’t work. But this story is believable.”

Brontë is glad his superiors trust him to run the Volkov investigation however he wants, because he doesn’t want to explain that he’s following his subordinate’s stupid infiltration idea. “Thanks for your confidence in me, Nimm. I’m glad my appearance screams depressed and divorced to you.”

“Are you not divorced?”

“That’s not the point. I’m certainly not depressed.”

“We’re all a little depressed,” Nimm says with a laugh.

The building in front of Brontë has this heritage front that makes it look fancier than it probably is, but it’s still intimidatingly nice, if small. It’s one glass door in a brick wall, with a glass window beside, showing the one row of tables and the bar that Brontë will have to approach. Part of this little character he’s supposed to be playing is that he’s got money. Nimm was pretty convinced that if he seemed rich, stupid, and in need of Artemy’s services, that should be all that’s needed to get his name passed on.

“So are you ready?” Nimm asks when Brontë is silent.

“Sure.” Brontë will never be ready. “I guess I have to hang up, then, huh?”

“What are the most important things you’re going to do?”

Brontë closes his eyes and sighs. “You ought not to talk to me like this, you know.”

“Ooooh, you’re so bad at sounding like you’re actually mad at me.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “You’re going to…?”

“Be subtle, act dumb, don’t leave when he firsts says no.” Brontë rolls up his sleeves a little more. He’s wearing his nicest shirt, specifically unironed and slightly dishevelled, Converse instead of the ‘cop shoes’ they normally wear, the nicest watch he owns, and he didn’t shave this morning. Nimm was very specific about it, like she knew exactly the giveaways. He just hopes she’s right about it all.

“Because if you leave immediately, it’s clear you were fishing. Good. Go get ‘em.”

She hangs up before he has a chance, and that leaves him alone to face the bar.

It’s 7pm, but in the summer it’s not quite dark, so it still feels far too early to enter any bars at all. This place feels better described as a whiskey den; the lighting is low and flickering over several dark wood tables, and most of the bottles Brontë can see on the shelves behind the bar look like spirits. There’s no bouncer watching him come in, and seemingly very few patrons. A couple, a small group of friends, and nobody is sitting at the bar. There’s just one bartender, and he could match the evidence.

Brontë is conscious of even how he walks as he approaches the bar. He tries to amble, like he’s just stumbled across this place. He didn’t go to the effort of pre-drinking, but he tries to conjure the feeling of being maybe three drinks in already. What does that even feel like?

He finds himself looking up at the roof. Behind the flickering lights, he sees no cameras in the corners. Nobody should ever be able to prove he was here.

He sits at the bar and pulls a menu over. He glances over the words without really reading any of them, waiting to be interrupted.

“Hey there,” comes a low voice. Brontë doesn’t expect the bartender to lean as far across the bar as he does, but it gives Brontë a good look at his face. He’s got piercing kaleidoscope eyes, and he runs his hand through short, dark hair. Brontë’s eyes are caught on the knife tattooed between his collarbones, visible from the fact that his shirt is buttoned just one button lower than one would think. “Can I get you anything?”

Brontë resolves to stop looking at this man. He looks different than his picture- close enough that Brontë could believe they’re the same person, that they must be, or he wouldn’t have been sent here. He can’t quite remember the fake name, other than recalling his first name felt old-timey, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not meant to know it, after all. “You got… I dunno, what’s good, here?”

The man chuckles a little, and he puts his hand on Brontë’s wrist- which Brontë chalks up to being overly friendly. Brontë is now immediately sweating and worried he can’t hold this fake persona together. “Depends what you like,” he says lowly.

Brontë clutches at nothing. He tries to think of Nimm, of the plan. “I just want to feel something,” he says, and the words just tumble out of his mouth. He almost covers his mouth in shock, but he stops himself. He knew he couldn’t do this. He can’t just ask this guy where to get a fake ID. He can’t just do anything.

The bartender laughs again, smiling like Brontë said the funniest thing in the world. “Feel something with a high alcohol percentage, or you wanna kickstart some passion in your life?”

Brontë follows the curve of the man’s bicep up under his rolled-up sleeve. Just because he’s wondering what his tattoo is of, of course. “That.”

The bartender turns to a cabinet behind him and pulls out a black glass bottle, with some label Brontë doesn’t even attempt to read. He lets a glass be poured for him. “Start with a bit of this,” the man says, and as he hands it over, he lets his fingers linger for a second on Brontë’s. “…and maybe I’ll have something else for you to try soon.”

Simultaneous instincts are screaming at Brontë. He needs to shove this man away from him, he doesn’t want to, and also it’s probably all a front anyway, and Brontë needs to push through it to get what he needs. It’s not making it easy.

Brontë takes the glass, and stammers, “it’s just- the divorce.”

The bartender raises an eyebrow at him, and Brontë watches the slight sigh he tries to suppress. He knew it was all a front, it’s all a front for him too, but his stomach still sinks in disappointment- as much as he didn’t want this to happen in the first place. “Oh?”

Brontë focuses on Nimm’s words. Depressed and divorced. “Sorry. You don’t wanna hear my bullshit. If you can make me forget, that’ll be wonderful.”

“That’s why I ask,” the bartender says, “if it’s blackout drunk you want, or if it’s that you want to feel so good you don’t even know why you married the bitch in the first place.”

Brontë winces at that. He doesn’t hate Debbie, never could, never would, but he has to lean at least a little into what the bartender is trying to give him. At least, he should, if he wants to figure out how to weave this into a conversation naturally.

“I’d take either,” Brontë says, “or both.”

He takes a sip of the alcohol, and he’s about to be lucky he can relatively handle his liquor. The whiskey has that honeyed taste across his tongue, but the burn of alcohol stings, even stronger than Brontë might expect whiskey to be.

The bartender’s eyes wander for a moment. He looks over at the other patrons, and at the door, and then back to Brontë, who looks immediately back down at the bar. Like he’s frustrated. He’s prepared to start just being very annoying, but he doesn’t have to, because the bartender leans over again, once again touching Brontë’s wrist. Brontë stares at his hand. “Tell me about it.”

Brontë closes his eyes and tries not to lose this. He isn’t an actor. All of his acting comes from lying to his mother as a teenager- then, it was always more about spinning the truth into a web of lies. “It’s not the usual divorce problems,” Brontë admits. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“How so?” the bartender asks.

“I didn’t love her the way I should’ve,” he says, and his voice shakes to say it, because he’s talking about Debbie as much as he isn’t. “…it’s not like I want her back, you know? It’s how complicated this whole fucking mess got.”

He looks up, and the bartender is sure performing the act of listening. He’s got some vested interest in pretending he gives a shit and Brontë’s mind blocks him from thinking about it any further.

“I’m going to get kicked out of the country,” he finally spits out with a bitten lip, back to lying. “Lived here for thirty years, don’t even have an accent anymore, but it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m not a citizen, can’t get naturalised in time, and since I’m no longer married the permanent citizen visa’s fucking gone. I’ve got a criminal record, nothing fucking bad, but it means they’ll never… I won’t get to stay. I’ve got kids and she’s going to get to keep them just because I didn’t get on top of all this stupid legal bullshit before she went and decided to divorce me.”

Brontë’s not sure how believable it is. Most of the time, the only way to catch a lie is to see it change, or to watch it proven false with your own eyes, and even then sometimes it’s something you want to believe. You’re trained in the police force to believe everything is a lie, and maybe that’s why he stares at his hands, wondering why he can’t lie for the life of him.

But the bartender says, “damn, the system fucked you, huh?”

Brontë smiles sideways into a sip of whiskey that burns his tongue. “Who hasn’t it fucked?”

Should he be more direct? Look him in the eyes and ask if there’s anything that can be done to help him? Drop a hint that if he could somehow get fake citizenship papers everything would be fixed?

“Doesn’t fuck the people who made it,” the man says. “Wouldn’t work for them if it didn’t fuck us.”

Brontë has a feeling he’s supposed to go along with this, but this is the very problem he thought he’d encounter- the very thing Nimm kept saying would be fine if he just didn’t mention the police, or whatever. But he is curious. “…how’d it fuck you?”

The bartender seems surprised at the question. He leans on the edge of the bar, and Brontë sips the whiskey as he watches him. “…it’s built for people who start with something,” he says after a moment, and the words swim in Brontë’s ears as the whiskey swims across his tongue. He’s not that much of a lightweight that it’s affecting him properly yet- it’s the anxiety, the bouncing of his leg, the looking around to see if somehow, as if out of the woodwork, Artemy Volkov will appear. Fuck, what does he know- maybe this is Artemy and he’s being presumptuous. “Some of us start with nothing.”

Brontë doesn’t like thinking about the system, his part in it, because he was always taught that things are built relatively fairly, and that he got the place he is by his own merits. But it’s hard to hear everyone he used to take in to the station say different, and still be so certain. At least, it has been for the past few months.

“Yeah,” Brontë mutters. “I think I used to believe things were generally fair, but it turns out they were only generally fair for me.” Then he remembers he’s lying. “Until they suddenly weren’t, and I saw how hard it always was for everyone else.”

He could’ve started talking about his daughter, but that would be too real for this moment. “It’ll fuck us all over eventually,” the man says with a little smile. “Unless you’re rich as hell, I suppose.”

Is that a suggestion? If you have money, I have a solution? Brontë tries not to jump on it too obviously. “Doesn’t matter how much money you do have, sometimes. Maybe if I was a billionaire, I guess.”

The bartender shrugs. “Maybe.” He gestures at Brontë’s whiskey. “That‘ll at least help you forget, for a while.”

He’s moving away, and towards another patron who’s come up to the bar. Cutting off the conversation. Making Brontë wonder if he’s fucked it up completely, or if this was never an option in the first place. Of course it wasn’t going to work.

He stares into the whiskey that he’s now going to have to pay for, without it even having the decency to have helped him. He bites the inside of his lip and stares back at the door. He’s going to have to tell Nimm he failed. Will she blame him, really? She seemed to think it was easy.

At least Brontë didn’t get clocked as a cop. Probably. Meaning he can come back, he can try again. He’s already formulating how he’s going to convince Nimm to do it herself- or maybe they’ll just give up and come in with flashed badges and demands. It’d be easier.

He looks over at the bartender, who’s leaning over almost as close to this other patron. Brontë watches them, oblivious to what they’re saying, finding himself staring at this stranger for too long. He’s leaning almost as far over as the bartender is, and Brontë realises that words are being whispered directly into his ear.

The stranger makes eye contact with Brontë, and he blinks sharply a few times, standing up straight with an odd shrug of his shoulder. Without another word to the bartender, he comes and sits on the chair directly next to Brontë, far closer than he needs to be.

“Hey,” he says. “Let’s talk.”

4

There is a thought, somewhere, that is disbelief- that somehow, Brontë might have done it. He can’t fully process that thought- he’s just looking at the man in front of him.

He’s got a deep, husky type of voice, and Brontë watches the smile in the curve of his lip as he talks. It’s slight, but it’s there. He’s got a bit of dark blonde stubble, like he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and his blonde hair is just long enough that he’s pulled a section of it back, and the rest brushes against the nape of his neck, just over his eye in the front. His eyes are piercing, palest grey underneath  the blonde eyelashes, eyebrows- although the dark ring around the outside of his iris makes them stark.

“…hi.” Brontë finds himself slightly speechless, and it’s only partially because this is the second person tonight to be leaning far closer than he thought they’d be, so close he can smell this man’s cologne- elegant, expensive, dark. He’s wearing all black, too, his collared shirt buttoned up all the way under a suit jacket- the gaze, the clothes, the context, the possibility, are all intimidating. It’s only slightly mitigated by the fact that, even sitting down, Brontë can tell he’s quite a bit taller than the man in front of him. “Absolutely. Let’s talk.”

“Nice to meet you.” Brontë feels like he’s about to be shaken down, but if he is, that might be the best thing that’s happened to him in a while- for his career, that is. “Do you like the place?”

“Is it yours?” Brontë finds himself smiling into another sip of his drink.

He’s surprised when this new stranger blinks harshly again, shrugs one shoulder sharply, mutters fuck, in the same instant- but immediately he seems fine again, and doesn’t acknowledge it. “Good observation,” the stranger says. “Have we met before?”

Brontë squints his eyes like he’s thinking about it. Oddly enough, this man looks familiar, but Brontë’s pretty sure he looks familiar because he’s not very far off what Brontë’s been imagining him as. Brontë’s never met him in his life- although he’s been trying to.

“I don’t believe so,” Brontë says, and he finds himself subconsciously lowering his voice, trying to match the man in front of him. It never occurred to him what to introduce himself as, whether or not to lie- he doesn’t get the chance. “I’m Neil.”

He extends his hand, and it’s taken immediately and shaken. “You can call me Art.”

Brontë nods like he’s being polite, as every thought in his mind screams that it cannot have been this easy. If he can pull this off, he’ll be a legend at the office forever, and maybe his mother will talk for even a moment about his achievements at Christmas this year. But he didn’t think he’d meet him today.

He’s happy with this achievement as it is. Especially as any moment now Artemy Volkov is going to tell him to leave, because he knows he’s a cop. Brontë isn’t worried about the stabbing he’d get if this was any other Volkov, at least. And now he knows where to look for Artemy again.

He realises he forgot to let go of Artemy’s hand. Art? Technically, he doesn’t know this is Volkov. So Art it is. “It’s nice to meet you,” Brontë says. “You’ve got good whiskey here.”

He looks at Art’s hands; he’s got small, thin fingers, covered in dark rings, that drum against the bar in front of him. Brontë catches sight of the bartender watching them with detached interest, but he hardly cares about that right now.

“Is that why you came?” Art asks, an eyebrow raised. He looks expectant. Is Brontë meant to know who he is already?

Better to play stupid, he supposes. “Oh, you know, drowning my sorrows, et cetera.” Brontë looks at the last bits of whiskey to avoid looking Art in the eye. He’ll be able to read him, Brontë just fucking knows it- how has he not already? “I was complaining to your lovely bartender about it.”

“Tell me all about it.” Art’s voice can be intimidating, and it sounds more like an instruction than an invitation. “Do you want another while you do?”

“What?”

“Another whiskey.” Art leans his elbow on the bar, watching Brontë carefully. “Fuck. On me.”

The ejective was out of place in the rest of the sentence, coming with another heavy blink, and Brontë feels rude both asking and assuming. “You’re alright?”

Art sighs, probably because it is an annoying question. “Tourette’s. I’m fine.”

Brontë wonders, briefly, if there’s any way that Tourette’s could make it harder to be the master counterfeiter that Artemy Volkov is. He supposes it can’t have made a significant difference. “I can pay.”

Art shakes his head. “Money is no object to me.”

Their eyes lock for a moment, and Brontë searches Art’s, finding them locked down in steel. Brontë doesn’t shy away- he knocks on the door, as unlikely as he is to get an answer. “Who are you?”

Art leans back and looks at the bartender, making a movement with his hand that the bartender seems to understand. He turns back to Brontë. “Go on, then. Tell me your story.”

Brontë narrows his eyes at the dodged question. The bartender’s smile as he hands him another drink is far more polite, more distant. Like the moment Art’s stepped into this situation, he had to back away. Brontë’s not sure how to read that, exactly, although it makes him nervous.

So he repeats the same lie he told the bartender, careful in every twist and turn that it’s not only exactly the same, but exactly as originally intended. Art sits, mostly still, as he listens, spinning the rings on his finger.

“That’s quite a conundrum,” Art says, and Brontë is waiting for it. Waiting for Art to read him completely, to know he’s being lied to- to know he’s being tricked. “May I ask what crime you committed?”

Shit. Did they decide that ahead of time? Everything coming out of Art’s mouth, in that husky voice of his, makes Brontë’s heart race. “…nothing crazy,” Brontë admits, and he tries to still the anxious bounce of his leg. “DUI. Not even alcohol, my driving wasn’t even affected- just marijuana.”

Is that the cop word for it? Is that why Art is looking at him like that? “Interesting.”

Brontë doesn’t want to be interesting, he wants Art to believe him. “Really?”

Art shrugs. “I find it useful to ask these questions. There are right and wrong answers to the question of what crime you’ve committed.”

Brontë can never admit to anyone in the force that he agrees. A crime is a crime, people say often. If you think to bring up that selling a relatively harmless drug, that’s halfway legalised already, gets a worse sentence than a man beating his wife within an inch of her life, cops will shrug. They’ll say that a crime is a crime. They’ll tell you it depends on the situation, that it’s complicated.

Brontë’s sat with that discomfort his entire career, because it is complicated, it does depend, but it never seemed to depend on anything that Brontë thought mattered. Some people got off shoplifting with a warning, and some went to jail. Those who wore expensive clothes and spoke perfect English never went to jail.

“I’ve never hurt anyone.” It feels oddly tight in his chest, to say those words. Because the implication wouldn’t be acceptable, if it was understood by anyone other than Art. “And I wouldn’t.”

Art tics again, and Brontë takes a long sip of the whiskey- he’s starting to feel it, now, the dizziness in his mind; he’s worried he won’t be able to lie very well. If Art could call him out now, send him home, maybe he could think about this tomorrow morning, find a way back. Send Nimm in. Something.

“I never assumed you would,” Art says. “How long do you have?”

“How long?” Brontë glances at the whiskey that’s already halfway gone. “Oh- before they kick me out of the country? A few months.”

“Hmm.” Art’s watching him intently, so intently that Brontë’s sure he’s been seen through. It’s a word choice, it’s something he’s wearing, it’s his haircut or the way he holds himself, something he can’t change. Artemy Volkov is a master of perfect detail and wouldn’t miss a cop in front of him. Because this must be Artemy, mustn’t it? He has no hint of an accent, but then again, why would he? Unless somehow someone with a very similar name just happens to stumble across Brontë’s path…? “I can help you.”

Brontë looks over the rim of his glass with disbelief. Which is good, because that’s the character he’s meant to be playing. But it’s also just him. “Really?”

Art is closer than he must’ve meant to be- but his hand rests lightly on Brontë’s where it sits on the bar, and maybe it wasn’t unintentional. Brontë stares at Art’s hand, biting back intense, unidentifiable emotion, as Art says, “I can, and I will. If you’ll do something for me in return. Fuck.”

He tics, Brontë shivers, and still their hands are connected, and Brontë has to wonder what is going through his mind. Is this just how he’s friendly, how he makes a connection? You should never assume someone is thinking what you are, and Brontë finds himself often wondering if he’s really seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. He saw it in the bartender, too, but sometimes people are just friendly, and men these days certainly feel like they can be friendlier to other men than they used to.

“…what’s something?” Brontë asks with a familiar caution.

Art tilts his head, and he looks Brontë up and down one more time, and Brontë’s not sure what he’s more worried about Art noticing. Are you a cop? would be a less embarrassing question than aw, did you think I was flirting with you?

“It depends on a lot of things,” Art says after a moment.

Brontë often acts without thinking, and this moment is conducive to that. The whiskey is conducive to that. The fact that at least if Art asks the second question, he’s less likely to ask the first, is unfortunately conducive to the bad decisions that Brontë is making. But he declines to think about it too much, and turns his hand slightly- so that Art’s hand begins to fall into his.

“Like what?” he asks, and he sees Art’s eyebrow raise. Brontë’s so painfully aware of their hands, now, and he supposes that maybe he did that because it’s keeping Art focused on the wrong thing. He’s not quite drunk enough to not be thinking about it at all.

“It depends on what you can give me,” Art says finally, and he leans even closer. Brontë sips the whiskey, lets his mouth burn, because his skin is burning, and his brain is worse, and doing that at least occupies his attention and stops him from having to decide what else to do. “I don’t work for free, and I don’t work for money.”

Brontë frowns, because that’s a simple sort of confusion, one he can address. “Huh?”

“I have exactly as much money as I need.” Art seems to find nowhere more interesting to look than in Brontë’s eyes, and it’s unnerving. He’ll see the lies squirming around in Brontë’s mind, and beneath that, he’ll see everything that Brontë can’t quite make out in the mirror. “But I’ll find a way for you to help me. I’ll do you a favour, and you can do me one.”

Brontë didn’t quite expect this, and so he searches, somewhere in a forgotten thought, for how to best respond. “How can you help me?”

It’s at least what he’s meant to say, and Brontë wonders if he fucked up when Art leans back and immediately stands, leaving Brontë’s hand cold. “Follow me.”

Art doesn’t leave room for questions, and Brontë hasn’t left room to back away now. He downs the rest of his drink- fuck it, it’s free, and maybe the slight unbalance in his step is why Art did that, but whatever. It’s too late now.

Brontë follows because Art’s never been connected with any kind of violence before, but his heart is still in his throat. What if the fact that he’s a cop means Art will feel fine hurting, or even killing, him? Will he have time to beg for his life, to say he’s a father and he can’t go? It never happens like that, except the times it does. Maybe he’s the exception. Maybe he was wrong.

He follows anyway, and Art leads him towards a back door under a flickering light. The other patrons of the bar don’t seem to acknowledge him, or even notice- will they be able to identify him if he goes missing? Nimm would know he’s gone, but she’d have no more clue what Artemy looks like any more than she currently does. Artemy would pack up his operation here and disappear, and Nimm would only ever know that she’d somehow pinned down where the man was when it was too late, and he was gone, Brontë with him.

There’s a thin set of stairs, dust in concrete corners, and Brontë lets his nerves get the better of him as he watches Art calmly stroll upstairs. “Where are we going?”

Art turns, that little bit of hair in front of his eye making it hard to see his little smile as threatening in any way. “To have a private conversation.”

Brontë closes his eyes and listens to the husky depths of that voice, in a tone he wants to trust. Would the man Brontë claimed to be really have anything to lose?

He steels himself, ready to fight if he must, and climbs each concrete stair with gritted teeth.

Artemy unlocks a door at the top, and opens it for Brontë to go inside first. Brontë doesn’t like that, but he doesn’t see a way out, and so he steps into the dark room, seeing tiles beneath his feet, and immediately turns around, unwilling to leave Art out of his sight for even a moment.

Art seems- seems, because Brontë doubts he truly is- oblivious to Brontë’s worry, as he switches on some lights and closes the door behind them. Brontë doesn’t see him lock it.

The room is an apartment- an open-plan studio, probably about the size of the very bar they were just in, probably sitting directly above it. The kitchen is small, barely any counter space, but it’s new and polished pretty clean, aside from a slow cooker with something bubbling away inside, and a few cluttered kitchen utensils that likely have no cupboard space here. There’s a tiny dining table with only two chairs shoved against the wall, a couch in front of a rather large TV, and a huge king bed taking up most of the space across one wall. There’s a lot of storage shelves filled with clothes, books, various other things, some of them visible and others inside those collapsible cloth drawers. The only other thing is a desk, a shelf attached above it, and all over that desk is paperwork, pens and scissors and glue and tape, bits of plastic and cardboard and everything else in labelled boxes. A normal 2D printer and a small 3D printer as well. A clunky laptop sitting on top of the printer, left open on a Word document that looks like official paperwork.

Brontë stares at that setup for just a moment too long, but he’s taken aback by the rest of the room, too- the fact that it looks homely, and it’s this small, and he can see that the bed’s not quite made and the laundry basket is overflowing and Artemy Volkov is a real human person who hasn’t quite caught up on his laundry.

“Do you want another drink?” Art asks, heading over to the fridge- and he opens it up to containers of leftovers, takeout, vegetables, mostly-finished milk, among them a bottle of white wine that he takes out and gestures towards Brontë. “Or have you had enough?”

“Good question,” Brontë mutters, and Art smirks a little at that.

“Fuck.” He tics and closes the fridge door, still holding the bottle of wine. “Take a seat on the couch and we’ll talk business.”

5

It cannot be this easy.

Brontë doesn’t want it to be this easy. This is meant to be Artemy Volkov. Brontë’s not disappointed that he’s just a normal guy, but he will be disappointed if this is the end of it all. If Nimm’s little plan was just that perfect that it solved the years-long search in less than a week. She’ll certainly be excited, and Brontë imagines for a moment the look on her face when he tells her about this on Thursday. He supposes he could call her about it, but he kind of wants to see her face. He imagines the smugness, and to be honest, he’d let her have this one. She’d deserve it.

Still, he’s sitting in this situation, and the smile he’s imagining on her face isn’t all that different than the smile Art is giving him now- although his is slightly more polite, less smug, although just as knowing. He doesn’t seem to know the one thing Brontë’s praying he doesn’t.

“What kind of business?” Brontë asks, and he keeps an eye on Art as two glasses of wine are poured- just in case. His suspicion feels like it’s written on his face, and it feels shameful when Art hands him one and he doesn’t sip until Art does. Just in case it can’t be that easy.

“As I said, I can help you,” is what Art says, as Brontë sits himself on the couch. The alcohol is starting to blur things, and he looks at the white-gold depths of his glass and wonders if he’s going to be able to handle himself. Because it cannot be this easy. “It’s going to take some time, but I can give you what you need to stay here.”

Brontë doesn’t know this is Artemy Volkov, even though he does know exactly that. The thing is, it’s not a problem. He can arrest him on suspicion of being the man he’s looking for. He can arrest him without proving he’s a cop, without ever telling him he was. He can arrest him without any proof of his crimes, as long as he doesn’t charge him without that proof. The toughest barrier is physical- he’d have to hold Art here and call for backup, for someone with actual handcuffs and an actual police car, but he’s sure he could do it. This might be Art’s house, or at least where he’s staying for now, but Art is almost a foot shorter than him, and seemingly unsuspecting. Brontë could do it.

“How so?” Brontë asks. He’s not sure why he isn’t doing it. Instead of reading Art his rights, he’s swirling around this wine, looking at Art with subtle desperation. Maybe he’s just in character, and waiting on his answer.

Art maintains eye contact as he takes a long sip of his own wine. “I can get you the documents you need, that’s all.”

Artemy Volkov, the master forger Brontë is looking for- why is he doing nothing? Why is he sitting and staring instead of leaping forward and making an arrest?

“And you want a favour?” he finds himself asking. He’s sure there’s a reason, somewhere underneath the heavy thoughts that press everything down, why he isn’t doing it. He always has a reason. He just doesn’t always know what it is. “What kind of favour?”

Art watches him carefully, and Brontë downs the rest of his drink, because fuck it. “That depends on what you can do for me. Human relationships are built on helping each other out, aren’t they? I’ve made so, so many friends this way, and I’d love to add you to the list.”

There. Brontë raises his hand, stops himself, because he was about to point at Art, like, right there- because right there was the reason he didn’t arrest him yet. “Actual friends, or they work for you?”

Art narrows his eyes a little. He walks slowly, hands behind his back, like he’s thinking. “We work for one another, I’d say. I help people, they help me, I help them help one another. I don’t see what’s confusing about this.”

Of course Art has people working for him, or something along those lines. People who would defend Art, if Brontë tried to take action- directly or not. People who might want revenge if Art was taken from them. “What does that mean, exactly, though?”

Art sighs. “I’m not being euphemistic. The bartender downstairs?” he asks, and Brontë nods his recognition. “He came to me with a particular request. He needed a huge range of documents as soon as possible and could not provide anything one would need to make that happen- not even photos. I did it, I’m doing it now- but in return, I told him I needed someone to work here. Luckily, he needed a job, and I don’t exactly pay my employees badly. A win-win for everyone. That is what I look for wherever possible.”

Is that an admission of his crimes? Brontë isn’t sure. He places his empty wine glass on the table in front of him. “How could I possibly help you?” he finds himself asking, like this offer is real. He supposes he’s committed to pretending it is.

“That depends on your skills.” Art’s looking Brontë up and down, like he’s appraising a piece of art, and Brontë suddenly realises how naked he feels- just from that look alone. He’s sitting on the couch, Art standing just across from him, and Brontë has nothing on hand except his phone. When he’s out on patrol, they have guns, but would they really help? Brontë hasn’t pulled his in years. It was drilled into them in the academy that they were in danger at all times, but Brontë’s never had to act as if that were true. Nimm’s never even taken her gun out of the holster.

“What if I have no skills?” Brontë says, and it feels oddly real, falling out of his mouth like an actual fear of his. When he thinks about it, though, what could someone like Art possibly want from someone like him- the person he’s pretending to be, or his real self? Neither feels like someone worth anything, at least not to Art.

“Everyone has something. It’s always a mistake, to think you’ve got nothing.” Art picks up the bottle of wine again- refilling Brontë’s glass, without asking. Brontë supposes he doesn’t have to drink it, but he picks it up anyway. “I hear that a lot. From teenagers, homeless people, drug addicts, depressed people, saying they have nothing to give. But I’m not trying to take.”

“Then what?”

Art makes a clicking noise, with a shrug of his shoulder that tells Brontë it’s a tic. “Can you not imagine the inherent benefits brought by simply putting effort into working together?”

“I’m asking concretely what you want me to do,” Brontë says over a sip of wine, “because this is a nice thought, but I need to know how it looks in the real world.”

Art sighs. “You know, I give most people this option, and they take it immediately, with pleasant surprise when the requests I come to them with later are reasonable. What are you afraid of, Neil? Let me assuage your fears.”

Brontë bites his lip. “I don’t know. I just- I’ve been burned trusting the wrong people, that’s all.” His tongue tastes bitter. “I don’t wanna wake up with one kidney, you know?”

“Who do you think I am?” Art asks, and Brontë probably should think better than to say it, but somehow, he can’t convince himself in time that it’s a bad idea.

“Well, you’re- you’re offering to forge these documents, aren’t you?”

Silence. Art’s expression is entirely unreadable. Brontë closes his eyes and knows he can’t say nothing now, that it’s too late to back out. “I’ve heard stories. People freak out about it on the news a lot. That there’s this crime family that’s mainly in Sydney, but one of them is here, and he does mainly forgery, and- well, your name could be his.”

Art tilts his head slightly. “You’re talking around your fears.”

“I’m not,” Brontë argues, throwing back the rest of the wine. “I’m afraid you’re Artemy Volkov and that the favour could be killing someone.”

“Is this the kind of reputation you’ve heard?” Art’s eyes seem darker, the gathering clouds threatening rain.

“I mean, no. I don’t see people saying that you’ve actually committed any violent crimes or whatever, I just- favours and connections sounds crime-family-like. I dunno.”

Nailed it, Brontë thinks to himself with a bitter sarcastic bite. He looks down, head in hands, wondering if this is how he fucks it completely up. By just getting drunk. Fucks’ sake.

There’s that clicking tic again. “It sounds like you’ve heard a lot of unsubstantiated rumours,” Art says with a disappointed glare. He doesn’t confirm or deny, Brontë notices. “I think it’s best if you put those worries aside. I won’t ask you for anything that involves hurting someone, or anything with a real risk of arrest.”

That is more specific than nothing illegal. Brontë was hoping, somewhat foolishly he supposes, that it would be nothing illegal.

Not like the police are ever really held to the law themselves, though. You’ll notice that, if you listen closely to the chatter around the station, the law isn’t talked about like it’s intrinsic rules, but rather, a tool. We’ll use the laws against them, never we do it because it’s the law. They’re supposed to protect people, to serve people, and the law is how they do it. Supposedly.

It just means that it doesn’t have to be the tool he uses. He wouldn’t really be here in the first place if it was.

Brontë sighs slowly. “I don’t like that you can’t tell me what you want me to do, but I suppose if it isn’t hurting anyone…”

He looks up, surprised to see Art moving, surprised when Art settles on the couch beside him. He’s leaning back, lounging, but his leg is up against Brontë’s, and Brontë looks at that leg for too long. Art is wearing slim fit black jeans that are tight around the muscles of his thigh and Brontë hates that he notices such a thing.

Art extends a hand towards him. “We have a deal, then?”

Brontë looks at his hand, and in the silence, he wonders just how badly this could possibly go- but he’s too drunk to say no, even if he wanted to.

He shakes the hand that’s offered to him, because he wants to. Even if it’s a deal with the devil. The devil is who he was searching for, anyway.

6

Brontë had asked Nimm if she wanted to discuss what happened in person, and she said it couldn’t be that interesting if Brontë could wait until Thursday. He waited anyway, though, just as he waited patiently for Art to get back to him.

It’s soured somewhat by the fact that Brontë is not ready, nor in a good mood, at the time that Nimm arrives into work. She’s got two coffees, and she’s holding out the tray with a little grin, waiting for him to get off the phone.

“Look, it can’t be that hard,” Brontë is starting to say, and he’s honestly annoyed at himself for getting annoyed, but it shouldn’t have come this far. “I’m not asking for you to change her legal name in the system without the documentation. We’re getting the documentation. But I know for a fact you have some kind of field for preferred name, okay? If my son’s mail can come in for Ricky, and not Patrick, I don’t see-“

He’s cut off by the voice on the other end of the line, and yes, he has sympathy for how tired she sounds, but she isn’t fucking listening, and she doesn’t seem to grasp the importance of the situation. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to bring in the proof of name change before we can change any child’s documents. We can make an appointment for you to do so, if you’d like.”

Brontë grits his teeth and closes his eyes. “I have to go. I’ll have to come in tomorrow to discuss this in person.” He holds back the threats and complaints he wants to make. That last sentence still sounds a little bit like a threat. He explicitly doesn’t thank her when he hangs up, nor wait for her response.

“School being shitheads about Charlie?” Nimm asks, sliding Brontë’s coffee over the table to him. She knows his usual order by now, even though she’s only been here a few months. There’s only so many times you ask a question and get the same answer before you remember double shot long black.

Brontë chews on the inside of his mouth, trying to radiate the anger anywhere that is outside of his ribs, except at Nimm. “Yup. I was trying to email them, to get them to stop addressing her with the wrong name in official documents, but I kept getting autoresponses. So I called, and got basically the same shit. I didn’t think it would be this god damn hard. Getting them to call Ricky, Ricky, should have been exactly the same.”

Nimm smiles softly, taking a sip of her own coffee. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the cup, and her gaze is unreadable- Brontë hopes it’s not judgement, somehow. “Do you think the people you’re speaking to are just being difficult on purpose?”

“They must be.” Brontë sets his jaw. “Which they shouldn’t get away with. There are rules about these things.”

Nimm turns her head sideways. “And yet, if you have authority, you can dodge the rules when you feel like it.”

Brontë would think she was making some veiled insult towards cops, if she wasn’t one. In fairness, he doesn’t feel the need to defend the department as a whole- he’s sometimes disgusted by the rules-dodging he sees around him every day. Sometimes the rules are stupid, is the problem. He used to let people off more than he probably should’ve, so it’s not like he’s immune. It’s not like it’s ever really about the rules.

The frustration isn’t the rules-dodging; it’s the opposite. It’s that they’re using the rules as a shield, to avoid doing something that he knows for a fact is easy, and good. It eats at him, a little bit, this anger that he can’t direct anywhere meaningful.

“I told Greggs,” he says offhandedly, “and he told me it shouldn’t be a big deal. I don’t think that’s helped my mood.”

“Mistake number one is speaking to Greggs. Like I’ve been saying. Most cops are so far up their own ass they don’t know the rest of the world outside it.” Nimm’s watching him carefully as he sips his coffee. “Do you need some time, or do you wanna talk about Monday?”

“Monday. Fuck.” Brontë rests his head in his hands for a moment, as Nimm coughs quite suddenly, a deep hacking that Brontë finds concerning- but knows better than to ask about, by now. She shivers a bit, and Brontë’s suddenly paying a tonne of attention to his coffee. “Yeah. No, you won’t believe it.”

“I’m assuming it at least sort of worked?” Nimm asks as she recovers herself, and Brontë looks up at the roof- how much should he really say? He supposes it was Nimm’s idea. It’s just potentially suspicious, to have not arrested him. He has his excuses, but they don’t feel like enough.

“It worked,” Brontë says, cautious, feeling around in the darkness for her reaction. She’s leaning so far forward it’s a genuine risk she’s going to fall towards him. “I obviously didn’t arrest him, though.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Nimm says, and for some reason that’s surprising to Brontë, but he breathes a sigh of relief regardless. “Because… even if you’d somehow found him, you’d have to make sure it was a clean arrest, right? Make sure there wasn’t anything you’d missed.”

It’s only then that Brontë realises just how far he got. “…I’m pretty sure I did meet him.”

“You- ah. You did?”

He searches her eyes for what she’s really thinking, but she’s almost impossible to read. Her dark eyes are blank walls, always, and he’s lucky she’s pretty forthright most of the time. She’s not quite forthright enough to let him know how she feels about all of this before he spills it all, his guts on the table. “Um, I think so. A guy who called himself Art, and he said he could help me.”

He recites the story to Nimm, with progressively less caution as he goes. She takes the chair across from him and sits backwards on it as she listens. This is technically Brontë’s office, but she’s in here all the time, and so the sight of her leaning on her arm and softly smiling as he tells a story is familiar. She also always makes sure the door is closed, which he’s silently grateful for right now.

He’s careful to leave value judgements out as much as possible, sticking to exact facts: that Art appeared after talking to the bartender, that he said he owned the place, that he took him upstairs, offered him help in exchange for a vague favour. That he said he’d get back to him, took his number.

“This is good,” is just about the only thing Nimm says about it. Brontë sips his coffee and breaks eye contact- she’s just a little too intense, sometimes, but not in a way he distinctly minds. “What are you thinking, boss?”

Whenever she says that, it always sounds so sarcastic, but he knows she means it earnestly here. Because it is his decision what to do next, and he tries to hold onto the confidence of that.

“I deliberately didn’t arrest him that day because…” Brontë tries to remember the legitimate reason. “I feel like more information- what this network of his can do, how concerned we should be about it, how he connects to the rest of the Volkovs, all of this- it would be useful to know it.”

He watches her gaze for judgement, but he reads none. She nods along to encourage him. “We have enough proof that we could probably catch him, but the underlying network is still there, and as far as I understand it, they all owe him a favour. Which isn’t good for us, especially if he gets it out to them who I am- and he’s a genius, so he could, and personal revenge can be taken. We’d want to make certain it was safe. That’s why I want to wait, to try and stay undercover for now- to see if I can infiltrate, I suppose, and learn what we need to before we make our move.”

She raises an eyebrow, like she knows he isn’t finished, and he sighs. “However, as stated, he’s a genius, and quite likely he’s vetting me before he contacts me. And when he finds out I’m a cop, he cuts ties and disappears again without a trace. It’s quite possible that by waiting as long as I have already, he’s already gone. I don’t know for sure.”

Nimm traces a circle on the back of the chair, and he sees her tense up again, knows the coughing fit is coming. Brontë downs the rest of his coffee while he waits for her to recover, suddenly deciding the window is more interesting when he hears the racking of her chest.

He wonders, silently, why she doesn’t talk about it. Maybe it’s just because he’s never really asked. Asking if she was okay the first few times got him told she was fine in a slightly annoyed tone of voice, so he just never brought it up again.

When she collects herself, she says, “…if you’ve waited this long, that means you’ve already decided what to do.”

Brontë felt like that was the case, somewhere deep down. The excuses he was giving weren’t things that had occurred to him until after he already knew what he wanted to do. He repeats them anyway. “I feel like it’s safer to wait until we know we can get a clean break. That’s all.”

“I mean, it’s understandable.” Nimm’s voice is strangely light, playful, almost. Her fingers draw lines on the back of the chair that Brontë follows with his eyes; the shapes mean nothing, not really, but he watches regardless. “You know he doesn’t do violence, but he is a Volkov. Maybe they’ll retaliate. I mean-“ she blinks like a new thought’s occurred to her- “it’s kind of my fault you’re in this situation, right? I can’t ask you to arrest him when you’re putting yourself at risk.”

Brontë doesn’t feel at risk, but the more he says he is- and the more she believes it when he says he is- the more plausible it feels. “I didn’t have to do it. And it’s not my biggest concern, certainly not now. I feel like if he senses danger, he’s more likely to run than retaliate.”

“No, I mean- we know this about him, right? But if he’s really got this network who owe him…”

“Yeah.” Brontë coughs himself. There’s an uneasy sick feeling in his chest. “They might follow a looser code.”

“So what are you going to do?” Nimm asks. Her big brown eyes are boring into him, and for a moment, he can’t look away- can’t drag himself from the depths of her gaze. It’s like she knows him perfectly; like she knows why he really did what he did, and she’s not judging him for it.

He wishes he saw it as clearly as she did.

“I don’t know,” Brontë answers after a moment. “I guess that I’ve waited long enough that waiting is all I have left to do.”

7

He receives a text from an unknown number that very night, and he stares at it with uncomprehending confusion.

Can you meet me tonight?

He knows who it is, exactly and specifically, without question. There are multiple reasons that he responds anyway with, sorry, who is this?

One reason is that he’s slightly worried about the cases in which he’s wrong about Artemy Volkov. There are worlds in which he’s perfectly fine with killing people, or otherwise silencing Brontë before he can do anything. Another reason is that Brontë’s answer to the question is a resounding no.

He’s sitting in the car, looking at the house he used to live in. It was Debbie’s house, and it always felt like it. Her parents bought it for her- that was just the kind of family she grew up in, the kind who could throw money away like that- and he was never going to try and take it from her just because he legally could. He had no desire to be needlessly cruel. He felt like he’d already treated her like that, for reasons he could never pin down. Maybe he just felt guilty that he couldn’t give her what he’d promised.

He looks at the wine he bought. He knows she only drinks white, but he knows nothing about Steven, so he’s just got something he knows Debbie likes. Which is stupid, because now he’s sitting here wondering if that’s somehow inappropriate.

So he texts Nimm. I got the wine I know she likes but now I feel like it’s too much.

She texts back almost instantly. Are you still freaking out about this?

It was on her advice that he did this. I just want to make a good impression.

I think if you don’t yell at her boyfriend for no reason, or do something equally stupid, you’ll be fine.

He sighs and stares at the bottle. He doesn’t exactly have any second opinions he can get. He’s got the guys at the precinct, who like to pat him on the back and ask how he’s doing and invite him out for drinks, but he can’t talk to them. At least he can talk to Nimm, even if she gives him pointless and unhelpful advice.

His phone dings again. Seriously, I don’t think it actually matters. Nobody is thinking about it as hard as you are.

Slightly helpful advice. Just as he’s opening the door, his phone dings again.

…from the unknown number. You know who it is.

Does it have to be tonight? Brontë texts back, his heart in his throat. He saves the number as Art, and the response isn’t immediate, so he turns his phone to silent.

It’s weird, to see that contact in his phone. He closes it out like that magically makes it no longer real.

Stepping up to the door as a guest is still disconcerting. He lived in this house for about fifteen years- he put this screen door up himself. He used to tell people to mind the step up constantly; he remembers where that dint in the doorframe came from, when they were moving Ricky’s new bed inside and it tipped sideways out of their hands. He never got around to fixing it, and he supposes Debbie didn’t in the several months since he left. Why would she? That dint will probably be there forever, that single thin cut in the white-painted wood.

Debbie answers the door. She smiles, and Brontë wonders, as he often does, if he’s doing divorce the way he’s meant to; are they supposed to hate each other? What does it mean if he missed her, but isn’t aching for her every moment? “Hey, Neil. You’re a little early.”

“Am I too early?”

“Not at all,” she says, swinging the door open for him. It hasn’t been that long since he’s seen her, but every time he does, something is a little different- such that when he compares the woman in front of him to the woman he divorced last year, they have very little in common. She’s lost a fair amount of weight, she’s dressing nicer, there’s blonde highlights in her hair, and now it’s shorter, around her shoulders. “Come on in. Is that…?”

He hands it to her with a little smile. “I didn’t know what Steven liked, but I figured at least you’d be pretty pleased, right?”

She laughs. “Oh, Steve doesn’t even drink, but I’ll put this away, don’t worry.”

Brontë examines every word of that sentence, and his own, and wonders if he’s fucked everything up hugely. Thankfully, he doesn’t have time to contemplate it for too long. He can see the kitchen lights on, hear the sizzling of something cooking, and he can hear Ricky’s voice, getting louder in that way most twelve year old voices do when their favourite topics come up.

Debbie follows him down the hallway. Their two children are sitting at the breakfast bar; Charlie’s got her feet up on the stool, slowly spinning herself back and forth as she listens with detached interest to whatever her brother is talking about. Ricky is leaning so far off the chair he’s barely even sitting on it.

“But you have to think about the fact that they’re completely different people,” comes a different voice. For some reason, Brontë’s most shocked to hear an American accent. He’d been imagining Steve as blokey. He’d also been imagining him as blonde and young and conventionally attractive, which he now knows makes no sense, as the actual man comes into view. “It’s not his MJ, she’s basically a complete stranger!”

“No, she’s not!” Ricky is saying, and Brontë can guess that this conversation is about Spider-Man and not much else. “It’s not the same as twins or whatever, she knows a version of him, it’s not weird at all.”

Steve is turning a pair of tongs through a salad as he listens, and Brontë tries to tie everything he’s heard so far to the man he’s looking at. Steve wears his age well, and he has a face that reads initially as just kind. He’s not particularly shockingly handsome or in shape, but he has a nice smile that Brontë takes just a slight pause at- especially as that smile turns to him.

Steve raises a finger, pointing it at Ricky. “We’ll finish this conversation later,” he says, even in a feigned threat only sounding kind. His eyes are blue and sparkling with humour and Brontë is far more concerned with how he’s meant to be feeling, rather than how he does feel. “Hey, Neil! It’s so lovely to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Brontë has to assume that’s a good thing, or else he wouldn’t be saying it. He can’t imagine what Steve’s heard, exactly. “Likewise,” he says, as he takes the hand Steve’s offering him. It’s nothing like the handshake Art gave him- that was slow, and warm not just in emotion, but in what it held underneath it. This is stronger than he was expecting, and Brontë feels like Steve’s holding his hand for just a moment too long- but he’s not sure what exactly is making him nervous right now. “All good things, of course.”

Both of the kids are watching them, and Brontë lets go of this too-long handshake with only a little sweat on his hands. “I would hope so,” Steve says with a laugh, in that slightly loud American way. “The kids are too nice to say anything else. They’ve been keeping to themselves how annoying I am, haven’t you guys?”

Brontë’s heard far more from Debbie than the kids, but he turns to them now, just to see how they react. Charlie has a faint smile, and Ricky slams his hands on the table. “You’re just wrong about Spider-Man,” he says with a grin, and that makes Steve laugh, too.

Brontë moves past him into the kitchen, taking stock of what needs doing and jumping into helping. He starts moving dishes into the sink; the oven is on, and he can see it only has a few minutes left. “Of course there’s no greater crime than that,” Brontë says with a sideways smile, which is immediately wiped off of his face when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket.

“Oh, of course,” Steve says. Brontë feels his phone buzz again, and he can’t explain, nor ignore, the anxiety rising because of it. “Which is why I’m trying to correct Ricky’s misguided view of the multiverse.”

Brontë slips his phone out of his pocket, using the fact that Steve’s back is turned to him as cover, just to check- and the texts are from Nimm. He breathes a sigh of relief. You got this, says the first, followed by, I believe in you.

It’s almost worse for his anxiety that Art hasn’t responded, but he quickly puts his phone away. “I think both sides have a point,” Charlie says quietly, almost like she’s afraid to talk about it. “I mean, we can’t really know without a real world example to look at, right?”

“Do you think we live in a real multiverse?” Steve asks, as if genuinely considering.

“No,” Charlie says simply. “Just the one universe. But it’s infinite, so what’s the difference?”

Brontë’s phone buzzes again. He refuses to look at it, even as his fingers are itching to grab it.

“You say that with such certainty,” Brontë says, coming around to stand beside Steve at the breakfast bar. “Do you have some magical powers you haven’t been sharing with us?”

“I’d tell you if I had magic powers,” Charlie says, and Brontë’s looking behind her, at where Debbie’s setting the wine on the table, arranging plates. Five is an odd number. He supposes it’s good, that he hasn’t found anyone- his kids don’t need a second new pseudo-stepparent so quickly. “Probably.”

“I’d hope you would,” Brontë says, and he’s listening to his daughter, because of course he is, but he’s trying to be helpful, and that’s why he goes to Debbie.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks her, and the phone in his pocket won’t stop buzzing. Like it’s ringing. He grips the back of the chair to keep himself steady.

Debbie pushes her glasses up her face, thinking for a moment. “No,” she says. “We should be all good. Is that your phone?”

Brontë thought the point of putting a phone on silent was that it was silent, but whatever. “I think so. I’d usually be at work right now, and I think my boss has forgotten that I’ve got PTO today.”

It’s a lie, but it’s in the spirit of the truth, because it’s either Nimm or it’s Art, both people he’d like to answer any time other than right now. Both of them are technically work.

“Where do you work?” Steve asks, and for some reason Brontë doesn’t expect that question. He feels like being a cop is one of the first things people say about him. It’s the way his mother introduces him to her friends.

“I’m- I’m a police officer. A detective, technically, but I work in the criminal proceeds squad, so- not exactly the type of image detective brings up.”

“Oh.” It’s hard to read into Steve’s reaction to that. He gets a lot of reactions- from cool!, to weird over-the-top thanking for his service, to looks that might be disgust. He doesn’t know what category Steve belongs in. “Criminal proceeds?”

“Investigating where people get money they shouldn’t be getting. Me and my partner have basically been put in charge of tracking down one really skilled counterfeiter at the moment. So there’s no chance it’s actually important or time-sensitive that I answer this.”

“What if they found him?” Ricky asks.

“Maybe this person turned themselves in,” Charlie adds, resting her chin on her knees.

“Yeah, what if they turned themselves in? Answer it,” Ricky  says.

Brontë looks at Debbie, who shrugs, and then back to his kids. “Alright, just in case it’s interesting. But I doubt it is.”

When he finally looks at the screen, it’s a missed call. From Art.

There’s also a text from Nimm that he manages to read as he’s opening up his notifications, to hover anxiously over the call back button for a moment. Not that this is hard or you need my support.

He presses call back, and the phone is picked up almost immediately.

“Neil Brontë?” Art’s low voice sounds slow and calm, and Brontë hopes this is good news- that Art is calm, and not about to threaten him in his charming voice.

“Now is not a great time.” Brontë tries to speak like he might to his boss. “I’m with my family at the moment. Is it urgent?”

“Oh. Hmm. I guess it isn’t,” Art says slowly, “I’m just… not a person who’s good at patience.”

Is that a threat? Brontë takes a few steps back, turning so his family can’t see his face. He lets the silence sit for a moment, as he runs through all the possibilities of how he could answer- what could possibly save him.

Art sighs into that silence. “By which, I mean, I wanted to have this conversation sooner, rather than later. I called simply to see if we could have this conversation now. I’ll wait if I must.”

“I don’t mind whether we have this conversation in person or over the phone,” Brontë says, “...I just don’t have a lot of time, right now.”

“Then call me when you do,” Art says, and each word is low, and deliberate, and it is damn near impossible to tell what he means by any of it.

“Hold on,” Brontë says, and his heart leaps into his throat. “...what exactly is this conversation about?”

“It’s about how you can help me,” Art deadpans, “...as I would have thought was obvious. But don’t worry- I didn’t realise you were busy. Family is important, isn’t it? Fuck.”

The tic doesn’t undermine the fear those words make Brontë feel. “Yeah. Um, I’ll call you back later, then.”

“I’ll be up all night,” Art says quietly. Lowly, again, in a way Brontë wants to read as threatening. There’s little else it could be, and it’s the only way to explain how Brontë’s heart is trying to break his ribs. “Goodbye, then.”

The phone hangs up before Brontë can press the button himself- or even say goodbye. He stares at the screen for a moment, blank and lost and wondering just how much Art knows.

“See? Nothing important,” he says, turning back to his family. Ricky especially looks oddly disappointed. “He just wanted an update. I will excuse myself for a moment, though.”

He heads off down the hallway to the bathroom, mainly so he can sit for a moment on the edge of the bath, head in his hands. He stares at the tiles he used to see underneath his feet every day.

Does Art know? Was that all meant to be a threat? What the fuck does family is important mean if not, remember my family? Remember the people who’ve killed dozens up in the Sydney drug trade? They’re important to me, and they’ll do anything for me, if I know what you are, what you’re doing. And I do.

He texts Nimm. Thanks for the support, I appreciate it. However, I just got a phone call from Art that may or may not have been threatening? I don’t know?

She texts back instantly, too. I think you would’ve known if he threatened you. Did he mention that you’re a cop?

No, but he made vague statements about ‘family is important’ and his voice sounded threatening.

My guess is you’re reading too much into it, Nimm is saying, and Brontë finds that hard to visualise- if only because any other cop would be telling him he needs to be careful and watch his back, to always assume the worst. I don’t see a reason to worry yet. I didn’t realise you were already there- don’t worry about work now! Go spend time with your family, yeah?

He sees a text from Art, too, and tries to overcome the intensity of terror that strikes him at Art’s name popping up- fortunately for him, curiosity is at work, too.

Take your time to get back to me. I have a plan as it stands, I’d just like your help enacting it, and it can wait if it must. Have a nice night. <3

Now what the absolute living fuck is Brontë meant to make of that?

8

Brontë is sitting in his car, parked in his driveway. Dinner was nice, Steve was nice, everyone was getting along, and he doesn’t know what he’s feeling in this moment.

He stares at his phone, as bright as the sun, and he’s blinded a little by the text messages. He sent Nimm a screenshot of Art’s message, asking what the fuck she thought that meant, and she hasn’t responded, even hours later. She either responds immediately or a day later, no in between, so he’s not concerned. It’s just not helpful.

He presses the call button.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Brontë feels like he might throw up.

Ring. Ring. Click. “Oh, hello. Can- can I help you?”

Art’s voice is as low and gravelly as it was before. “I’m sorry, you told me to call you earlier?”

“Oh, shit. Fuck. Neil.” Brontë bites his lip, unable to read what he’s hearing in Art’s voice. There’s some kind of background noise- some music- that puts Brontë in mind of the bar. “Yes. Um- is now a bad time?”

“I called you,” Brontë says, “...so, no.”

“Right. Well. Give me one moment,” Art says, and Brontë hears background chatter disappearing, the sounds of doors opening; the image he builds in his mind is of Art climbing his stairs, getting himself into his apartment- where they’re alone. “Okay. Neil. Give me a second to… fuck.”

“Are you okay?” Brontë asks cautiously, because it seems like a question he shouldn’t be asking of Artemy Volkov, of all people.

“Perfect.” Art laughs a little. “I’ll be perfectly honest, my mind- isn’t functioning properly, at the moment. But I feel- optimistic, I’d say.”

Brontë reads through the lines. “I can call you back tomorrow.”

“Ah, but we’re here now. I lied, this plan is somewhat time sensitive.” Art groans a little into the phone. “I forget things too easily, sometimes. Like that I needed to speak with you tonight.”

Brontë focuses on the few things he’s saying that have the possibility to tear him apart. “It’s a time sensitive plan?”

“Yes. It is. But, uh…” Art trails off for a moment. “Oh, dear. I had an important thing I had to say, didn’t I? I apologise, Neil, I do. Ah! My questions.”

Brontë can hear the slight slur in his voice, the way it waivers. He wonders if this is his chance to get a little more of an honest read on Art than Art had bargained for.

“Oh yeah?” Brontë asks, as he leaves his car and heads towards his door. “What are your questions?”

“Your- your employment.” Brontë’s blood freezes in his body. “I- I couldn’t find details of your employment anywhere. You’ve got hardly any social media.”

He says each word slowly, and is it insane for Brontë to hear those words as rehearsed? Is this bait? It must be bait, and Art’s too tipsy to cover it properly.

Or maybe Nimm was right all along. Brontë goes with the lie he vaguely remembers her telling him to go with. “Um, I’m a freelancer. IT.”

He grimaces at how obvious of a lie it is, but Art powers through, unnoticing. Thankfully. “So- so if I asked for three days of your time, you could give them?”

Brontë feels the anxiety prickling the base of his neck. It’s not a fear of violence, not really- the thought pops up here and there, but he can ignore it. The fear that he can’t ignore is the creeping feeling that Art is far too smart to really believe all of this. Either he’s intensely lucky that he’s having this conversation now, when the subtleties of his lies are less likely to be caught, or he’s being set up.

“...which three days?” Brontë asks, as he reaches into his pocket and finds his keys. He looks around at the dark street, like Art’s out there somewhere.

“Mmm. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I’ll pick you up Monday morning, and drop you back off Wednesday evening.”

He says it with such confidence that Brontë almost accepts it without question. He steps into his dark hallway and stares at the nothingness until it clicks. “Pick me up to go where?”

“Canberra. I need- I need someone of your talents, I guess you could say.” Brontë hears the laugh in Art’s voice. “I just need you. To be there, I mean. I need your time and a bit of acting. I’ve got the costs covered. Just a few days to, uh, get those plane tickets.”

Brontë wonders if he should hear that as forge, but it’s not the most pressing question. “Acting?”

Brontë can almost hear the eye roll. “It’ll be easy. And if anyone- fuck- if anyone gives you any trouble, I can and will get you out of it.”

He sounds determined. Brontë closes his eyes and backs against the door, listens to it click shut behind him. “You seem confident that I can do… whatever this is.”

“Because you can. Can you lie? Then you can do it.”

“Are you at least going to tell me what I’m doing?”

As they talk, Brontë walks through the house, turning on enough lights that he can see where he’s going. It’s damn near spotless, because every time after he cleans up when the kids leave, he’s the only one in the house. All he does is eat and sleep and maybe spend an hour or two trying to catch up on television. This house reminds him that he’s boring. There’s a tension in that boredom, sometimes.

“Lying,” Art says, still giggling a little bit. Brontë’s heart softens a little, because he doesn’t think that giggle can be anything other than a genuine giddiness at the prospect of what he’s proposing. “For fun and for profit.”

Brontë can’t exactly sit here and tell Art that he doesn’t want to commit any crimes on this mission. It’s just that he’ll have to justify doing so when he inevitably gets caught by the police. Because he will, and then he’ll lose all credit with Art that he’s surprisingly, mystically, managed to gain. It’ll all be for nought. “I want to do you this favour,” Brontë says slowly, “I really do. I’m just not convinced I’m the best person for this job.”

“Oh, Neil, come on.” Something thuds in the background- like Art’s just hit the floor. “Let’s see. Hmm. You’re- you’re the only person I know who can pass as the kind of person I need. I’ll tell you exactly what to do. I’ll take you to the nice hotel. It’ll be fun. Fuck.”

Brontë’s just a little bit slow to respond, trying to think of what the fuck Art means underneath all that- but before he can say anything, there’s a big sigh, and then Art keeps talking. “Look, Neil. I’m not- I won’t tell you that this is the only thing you can do. You can say no. If you really, really want to.”

Brontë knows, in this moment, that he’s as safe as he’s ever going to be. Because he can read the truth seeping through Art’s words. At least, he hopes he can.

Besides, he imagines going and telling Nimm that he was given this choice, and he said no. Imagine Ricky’s reaction if he ever tells him he chose not to go undercover to catch a master criminal.

“I’ll do it,” Brontë says without further thought. “As long as you can promise it’s safe.”

“Of course it’s safe. Of course, of course it’s safe.” There’s an unexpected warmth in Art’s voice. “I’ll make sure it’s safe. Fuck.”

Brontë bites his lip. “This Monday?”

“This Monday. If you give me your address, I can come get you. Or- or else I’ll meet you at the airport.”

Brontë looks out the window at the darkness. He imagines Art, laying on his floor, staring up at his roof. Is he really this genuine? Or is this an even bigger play than Brontë could’ve ever imagined? “…I’ll text you.”

“Great.” Art pauses a moment, and in the silence, Brontë hears that he means it. “I’ll see you then. Uh- enjoy your weekend.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Right. But we’ll speak on Monday.” Art keeps pausing, like he has something to say, or maybe he expects Brontë to- but all he says is, “goodbye, Neil.”

Brontë looks at the stars outside his window. There’s dark grey clouds threatening to cover them, so much closer than the stars could ever be, and there’s that weight in his chest again. “Bye, Art.”

He sits alone in his empty house, now, committing to spending days with a known criminal- and a Volkov- in another city, alone.

What is wrong with him?

9

Nimm did the paperwork for him, mainly because she couldn’t contain her excitement about the idea. “Keep me updated,” she told him. “If you text me the moment you sense things have gone wrong, he can’t possibly hurt you. Isn’t he half your size, anyway?”

Brontë feels like perhaps she was minimising it, but he wouldn’t have packed the suitcase that’s now sitting in the back of his car if he felt he was truly in danger. Still, he has no choice but to wonder if he’ll ever see his children again. You learn to consider every possibility, but seemingly, that only extends to what could go wrong. He’s felt every fear he could possibly feel about this, and the hopes of what could go right are vague.

“Thanks, Dad,” Charlie says as she steps out of the car. She always thanks him for driving them to school, as if he’d do anything else. “I’ll see you on Friday.”

Brontë sure hopes she will, but he smiles to cover up that thought. “Enjoy your week. Ricky, you too.”

“Hmm?” Ricky looks up from his phone. “Bye, Dad.”

Brontë doesn’t take it personally. Even though he has no clue if he’s about to be brutally murdered and Nimm is going to have to show up at Debbie’s door to tell everyone that Brontë didn’t make it.

“I love you both!” Brontë calls out, as if he’s just forgotten to say it, as Charlie closes the door. He hears both of them respond through the glass, Ricky as he’s half-running away, Charlie as she’s putting her headphones on.

He thinks about it the whole drive to the airport. He told Art he was going to make his own way there, because he had to drop his kids off at school, and that wasn’t a lie at all. It was a helpful side-effect that, as far as he knows, Art doesn’t know where he lives. If he did, he might find a way to track that to Brontë’s job, and then Brontë’s worst fears might be a little bit more real.

Debbie calls him a few minutes out from the airport, and he puts her through to the car’s bluetooth. “Charlie just texted to say she left her laptop at your place,” she says the moment he picks up. They’ve never bothered with the hey, how are you nonsense. “When do you get back from work? I’ll come pick it up.”

“Oh, fuck. I’m- I’m going on a work trip, I can’t. I’ve hid a key in the garden, though, the kids can tell you where it is.”

“Oh, great. I’ll do that, then. Work trip?”

“Canberra.” Brontë bites his lip and hopes he won’t need to elaborate. “I’ll be back Wednesday. Pretty city, horribly expensive, but it’s work’s expense, not mine.”

“Wish I got work trips,” Debbie says with a laugh. “The most scenic view I get is the shabby garden in palliative, next to all the patients who are meant to be appreciating it in their last moments.”

There’s a pause, and Brontë’s about to crack some joke, but Debbie makes it serious before he can. “I’m glad you and Steve got along.”

“Yeah.” Brontë’s mind doesn’t let him think, and it surprises him by what it lets him say. “He seems good for you. Like- he puts effort in, you know? You deserve that.”

“Oh, Neil-“ Debbie begins, and Brontë winces audibly.

“I don’t mean it like that.” Because he didn’t. The sad sympathy in her voice isn’t what he wanted. “I genuinely think that, Debbie, I’m just saying- as a friend, I think he’s good for you.”

He can almost hear her thinking, trying to determine if he’s lying to her. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a liar. His lies are lies of omission. “Well, thanks. I think so too.”

“He kinda pulls off the hot nerd thing,” Brontë says, realising only as it’s left his mouth how it sounds. “I mean-“

Debbie laughs, and at least she can tell that he’s not saying that as any kind of stupid platitude. “Glad you agree on that, too.”

Brontë’s face feels hot. “I’m almost at the airport. I’ve gotta go. Uh, the kids should know my address, but text me if they don’t, um- bye.”

He hangs up before he can embarrass himself any more. It is true that he just took the turnoff to the airport, and it’s a great excuse to get left alone with his thoughts again and to try and ignore everything he’s thinking.

At least all that’s a distraction from the much bigger anxiety looming ahead of him.

Flight leaves at 10:15 from Terminal 4, Art had texted him. Be here before 9:30. Please.

It’s just after 9 as Brontë’s getting through the doors, and he’s caught enough flights to know exactly where he’s going, no fucking around. There’s still security, and he texts Art that that’s what he’s doing, that he’s not far away, and Art responds almost immediately, see you soon.

He crosses the maze of duty-free stores and 24/7 fast food, dodges tourists and locals, until he’s found the signs leading to the right terminal- and he’s almost there when he feels a touch on his arm.

“You walk so fast,” Art’s low voice says, and it comes with a wide grin. Brontë feels a swoop in his stomach and calls it surprise.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he says quietly, and Art smiles like that’s an achievement. “Well- hi.”

Brontë tells himself that the potential danger he’s willingly putting himself in is why he’s nervous right now. “Good morning,” Art says, and he’s got a mischievous smile. It’s the same kind of smile Nimm has when she’s about to tell him something she’s done that she wants him to be impressed by. “I’m glad you came on time.”

“I figured you wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the flight.”

“That, and I wanted to give us time for breakfast.”

Brontë stares for a moment. “You- breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Art is looking at him expectantly, rocking back and forth on his heels. His face tics. “I have this uncanny ability to guess what kind of coffee people drink.”

“Did you make sure I was early just so we could get breakfast?”

“I did.” Art speaks so casually that it’s easy for Brontë to forget who he is. Brontë tries to read under his smile, under the inquisitive gaze in his eyes, but he can’t look deep enough to be sure of what he sees. “Is that okay with you?”

Brontë was staring, and forgot what they were talking about for a moment. “I mean- yeah, I suppose.”

“Great.” Art gestures for Brontë to follow, and he leads him down the airport hallway. Art moves quick. Brontë’s suitcase clacks behind him over the tiles, and he notices that Art’s only carrying a duffle bag. He’s got a silk shirt buttoned up higher than Brontë might expect, and he’s pushed sunglasses up on his head like they’re going to the Gold Coast or something; Brontë’s not good at brands, but he doesn’t think those are cheap.

“Most cafes here are shit,” Art says over his shoulder as he  storms ahead, “or at least, not good. This one’s the best one.”

He veers sharply into one shop in particular. As Brontë finally catches up, Art turns with a conspiratorial look, and suddenly Brontë finds them face-to-face, not having sufficient warning to have slowed. He’s able to make out every shade of grey in Art’s eyes, even the flashes of light blue he’d never seen before, the dark grey freckles in his left eye, as Art’s grinning up at him, saying, “...don’t tell them, but it’s still not that good.”

Art’s eye tics, and Brontë takes it as a sign that he’s too close, backing up. “Okay,” he says, willing to play along for now, “if you know it so well- and if you think you can guess what I like- then you order for me.”

“Go sit down.”

Art sees Brontë going for his wallet, and puts a hand on Brontë’s arm to stop him. It feels like he doesn’t need to wrap his fingers around Brontë’s wrist that way- certainly not so completely or so softly. “What did I keep telling you the other day?”

Brontë’s intimidated enough to let it slide. As he goes to the window, he sees Art in line, pulling a bunch of fifties out of his pocket- as if he just got them from an ATM, as if he was rich and just had those kind of numbers in his bank account. He separates one, and from here- from anywhere- it’s impossible to tell that it isn’t real.

How much curiosity could Brontë afford? He pulls his phone out, in the time he has, and texts Nimm. I’m about to get on the plane. Do you think I could ask him how he makes his money so realistic? Do you think that’s too obvious?

Nimm doesn’t respond, so Brontë looks at the tarmac instead. The seats he’s chosen give a great view of the plane they’re about to board, and sure, this’ll be the world’s shortest flight, but Brontë still imagines every way he could be about to be fooled in this single hour.

Starting with the large coffee that Art puts in front of him as he takes the seat across. “Here’s my guess,” Art says confidently. “You let me choose without a fight, so you like all types of coffee at least somewhat. Therefore, you probably like the taste, and it’s not just for the caffeine. People who like the taste prefer it without milk. In fact, it’s more likely than not that you don’t drink a lot of milk, since- sorry if this is weird to say- you’ve got nice skin, and dairy gives a lot of people acne. The question then is only how much caffeine you’d like, and based on your age, the fact that you’re a dad, and the fact that you like coffee, I’d guess a lot.”

Art makes finger guns as Brontë takes a sip. “Double shot long black. Am I right?”

It is pretty good coffee. And Brontë wishes he wasn’t as impressed as he is. “You can’t have just got that right randomly, right? Surely you cheated somehow.”

“So I am right.” Art’s grinning wider than he should be. “Fuck. I mean, it’s partially a guess, but people are the way they are for a reason. If you see them for how they are, you can extrapolate a lot. You might’ve just not been picky, or had great skin despite all the milk you drank, and my guess would’ve been off, you know?”

Brontë self-consciously feels his face, even though he was being complimented. “Still, your attention to detail is commendable.”

“I firmly believe anyone can do it.” Art leans back in his chair, and maybe it’s just the slight little curve of his smile that makes Brontë want to humour him. “We just get distracted by the big picture.”

“Okay, well, one of our points is about to be proven.” Brontë leans forward, and bites his lip; the intense eye contact he was keeping is broken only by Art’s eye tic, and even then Art doesn’t let his gaze go. “I have no metric for how nice someone’s skin is, but I’d just say yours looks normal. And I guess most people take milk in their coffee, so it’s more likely that you do.”

Art continues to stare at him, and his eyes are so distracting. What is Brontë supposed to base this on? Assumptions. “What other assumptions can I make?” he wonders aloud. “Right. You wear nice clothes, but not stuff that’s popular despite actually being bad- you’re not just showing off that you’re rich, it’s just actually well made. So, in theory, you’re not into what’s most popular or fancy just because it’s either of those things- but what the hell does that mean about the coffee you’d order?”

Art shrugs, and that mischievous smile hasn’t left his face. “Guess.”

Brontë stares at the table. “So you probably didn’t get any of those fancy dessert coffee things where they put caramel or vanilla in it. But that’s just my opinion, isn’t it?”

“There’s always a chance you’re wrong. But go on.”

Brontë tries to follow it through. “My first thought would be a latte, but that’s just a little bit too boring for you. So. Cappuccino, final answer.”

Art smiles widely now. “I mean, I will say. Those assumptions are, by and large, correct. I think my point is still proven.”

“But I got it wrong.” Brontë doesn’t know why that feels bad; his real point was right, after all, that it really isn’t some simple thing to deduce all that about someone. Art’s just a genius.

“You did, but only because every assumption you made is reasonable. You didn’t leap to any wild conclusions, like connecting the fact that I’m mildly afraid of heights.”

Brontë stares at him, thinking he misheard. “What?”

It is true that they’re sitting by the window, a few floors up, and Art is leaning away- when he says it, it makes sense. “I’m not too afraid of heights to refuse to sit here, but I’m clearly a little uncomfortable by the window, right? I’m not looking that way.”

“What does this have to do with your coffee order?”

“Caffeine makes a lot of people a little anxious. You correctly didn’t see me as a super anxious person, but it does affect me that way sometimes, so if I’m already mildly anxious- such as knowing I’m about to get on a flight- I won’t drink it and make it worse. If I did want caffeine, a cappuccino is what I’d get.” Art holds up his drink. “Hot chocolate.”

Brontë’s surprised he got that close, at least. “How was I meant to guess that?”

“It was possible. The information was there. You just didn’t take a leap it would’ve been unreasonable to take.” Art shrugs. “You should try being a little more unreasonable.”

Brontë half-scoffs, half-laughs. “That’s the first and last time anyone will ever say that.”

“I don’t think so at all. You saw everything you needed to see, but you just came to the wrong conclusion because you’re too reasonable. Get more unhinged. Life is more fun that way.”

10

Every decision Brontë makes on the plane feels dangerous. If Art can read him that thoroughly, how can he not know he’s a cop? Brontë’s afraid to question it too much, as if just the thought that the base of the tower is crumbling will bring it all crashing down.

Maybe Brontë just doesn’t seem like a cop. Maybe what Nimm said about his head remaining distinctly out of his ass somehow protects him from being identified. He has no clue what exactly it is. What about him is so different from those around him?

He tries to focus on a puzzle book instead of just obviously panicking. He asks Art’s help on a few crossword questions, to try and present as if he isn’t terrified of being noticed. Art’s reading, and it seems he’s not even paying the slightest attention to Brontë, bad or good. Especially when Brontë looks over to read a single line of the book, and comes away pretty certain it’s a romance novel.

“Few more observations for you,” Art says as the plane’s coming down again. “May or may not be accurate. Between you and your children, you’ve got someone who’s really into movies, someone who’s into sport, and someone who’s into history, but none of you know geography. And you’re kind of a prude.”

Brontë gets whiplash. “What?”

“Based on which crossword questions you asked me. Parents usually know a lot about their kid’s interests, so I’m not assuming you like all those things yourself.”

Brontë sighs lowly. “Close. My ex-wife was a movie buff, so that’s where that knowledge comes from. Why’d you call me a prude, exactly?”

“Oh, you just seemed overly uncomfortable at what I was reading. I’d certainly hope it’s not homophobia.”

Brontë blinks rapidly, and Art holds up the cover of the book- which does show two men. “I didn’t even notice it was gay,” Brontë says, probably too quickly, “I’m not- my daughter identifies as queer, you can trust that I’m okay with that. I just- read a sentence I didn’t expect and read no further. I’m not- judging you, or anything.”

“Oh, prude is very subjective. A more objective way of saying what I mean is just that you’re not comfortable talking about those kinds of things.” Art’s casually packing the book back in his bag as he talks. “For example, you won’t bring up what you’ve just deduced about me.”

Brontë swallows. “Which is?”

“Correct, although it didn’t have to be. You don’t need to be attracted to men to read about romances between them, but it’s true that I am.”

Brontë can’t look straight at him. “So you’re… gay, or bisexual. I didn’t actually think about it.”

“Bisexual, for what it’s worth. You spoke like the thought had crossed your mind. Maybe I read you wrong, or maybe you just know some things before you know that you know them.”

Brontë doesn’t know what to say to that at all. He’d excuse himself if they weren’t required to stay buckled into their seats right now, and so he sits in the awkward silence and bears it.

Art doesn’t try to make any more observations as they go, but he does talk casually, asking Brontë questions about his life in general, that Brontë ends up answering more truthfully than falsely. It’s calm, and it’s enough that Brontë forgets his worries as they’re getting into a taxi, letting himself be taken wherever he’s going. He’s already crossed two state lines, that far away from the closest source of help who’s actually aware of what he’s doing.

He finds some comfort in the fact that they haven’t met up with anyone. He’s not suddenly surrounded by the Volkov clan, or some strangers who may or may not be goons. It’s just him and Art, and for better or for worse, Brontë is trusting that he’ll at least survive this trip. For now.

Nimm still hasn’t texted back, which is mildly worrisome. Just landed, he writes to her in the taxi. Oddly feel quite safe. Still have no idea what we’re doing but I’m not asking until we’re alone.

“Fuck,” Art mutters, and not in the way he usually says it as a tic. Brontë looks over and he’s staring at his too-bright phone; he does the same thing as Nimm where he turns the brightness all the way up and presumably fries his eyes. “We have a secondary mission while we’re here.”

“I still don’t know the first,” Brontë says, looking at the taxi driver out of the corner of his eye, “…but what’s the second?”

“Right. I’ll explain the first at the hotel. But the second,” Art says with a bitten lip, “…is to avoid my mother at all costs.”

“Why, what’s wrong with your-“ Brontë suddenly remembers who Art is. “…mother.”

“I can elaborate later- fuck.” That one is violent enough that he almost drops his phone. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The taxi driver makes eye contact in the rearview mirror, but says nothing. Even if it was a normal expression of anger, or fear, that might well be justified in this instance.

“What’s her name?” Brontë asks quietly, as Art closes his eyes and leans back against the seat. “…I’m going to look her up.”

Art winces. “As long as you know that I want as little to do with her as possible.”

Brontë expects him to follow up by saying it, but instead, he’s typing, and Brontë gets a text that reads simply, Anastasia Volkov.

Is the Volkov name known so well that Art is afraid of speaking it out loud?

Should it matter at all that Brontë now knows for certain that this is, in fact, Artemy Volkov? That it’s Artemy Volkov he’s been sitting next to, drinking coffee with, laughing with, for hours? Should Brontë be afraid that he’s walking at Artemy Volkov’s side into a city that Anastasia Volkov is also present in?

Why does Brontë feel less fear than he has up until this point?

It’s certainly not because he heard it’s Anastasia.

I vaguely recognise the name, is what he responds to Art, and then he looks it up. And comes up with no search results at all to back up his claim. There are mentions of the Volkov family as a whole, but only as thanks for generous donations, and in one article a vague mention of accusations against the family. So it’s clearly not insane that someone outside of the criminal proceeds squad knows their name- however unlikely it might be. No mention of an Anastasia.

He’s pretty sure that she’s the matriarch. That one of her sons is the one who’s been arrested multiple times under suspicion of high-profile murders and somehow seems to escape every time. One is the business tycoon whose rivals always seem to have unlucky fires occurring in the middle of the night right where it hurts them the most. One who the police suspect runs most of the heroin trade in Sydney, although it simply can’t be proven. Nobody’s sure how many kids she actually has- Brontë is aware of at least one more, a daughter who went missing several years back- but they’re known because they make their own names. It’s not surprising that Art did exactly the same. It’s just surprising that he seemingly did so with as little connection to her as possible. Save for his name.

“In case you can’t tell,” Art says with a bitten lip, “she and I don’t get along very well.”

“I had no idea.” Brontë hopes the sarcasm is obvious enough. “I’m assuming you didn’t expect her to be here?”

“I specifically chose now on the belief that she was coming down on the weekend. Fuck.” Art follows up that with several clicks of his tongue. “We have the rest of today to ourselves, at least. Plan starts tomorrow.”

“And you will explain this plan to me today?” Brontë asks, and there’s that click-and-heavy-blink again, a sure sign that Art is annoyed.

“Obviously,” he mutters.

Maybe this is why Brontë feels safe: because in this moment, this far into this trip, Brontë feels assured that he isn’t being double-crossed, he isn’t being tricked. Art isn’t holding a knife behind his back, ready to sink it into Brontë’s stomach. He’s looking out of the window and watching the traffic go past with genuine annoyance. Like he isn’t worrying about Brontë, present or future.

Brontë does what Art tells him to do. He looks at what he already knows, the assumptions he can pull from what he sees- making the leaps that make sense, and also making those that don’t. Being a little unreasonable, just to let himself believe what he already thinks is true.

He’s calm because he can be pretty certain that he and Art are on the same team.

The taxi driver looks at them weirdly as they leave, but that’s hardly Brontë’s biggest problem. Brontë’s biggest problem has just shifted from Artemy Volkov to his mother.

Canberra is a city of politicians, and you can tell that that’s who they’re marketing towards. The hotel is fresh and clean and modern, both as they pull themselves up to the front door and in the lobby. Everything’s in sleek black and white, greys and modular furniture, and Brontë’s unnerved by how wide the smiles of the staff are. They’re similar to Steve’s, probably wider than their real smiles, but at least Steve had something genuine in his at all; the clean-cut lady at the desk smiles with calculated precision that threatens to cut him in half.

Art, somehow, seems comfortable in every room, even though he doesn’t fit with the vibe at all. He walks relaxed and calm as the lady guides them with a formal demeanour and click-clacking heels to their room.

Looking at him, Brontë gets a weird moment of deja-vu, as he follows Art’s retreating back. Art looks over his shoulder, brushing his blonde hair casually back behind it, and Brontë suddenly realised who he looks like. And he feels his heart beating a little bit faster.

He hasn’t thought about David in years. He hasn’t spoken to him since high school, and he has no intention of changing that. They’re different people, completely, even though they weren’t always. It makes him smile to think of how much his mother hated David, sometimes. But David’s got nothing left to offer Brontë today. Brontë looked him up a while ago and found out that he was happily married, and he’d moved to Spain to be with his partner, and that was that. Brontë was glad he was happy.

He never had a moment like this with David, though, so maybe the familiar feeling isn’t that. Maybe he just had a dream like this, once.

“Thank you,” Art’s saying, and maybe he’s handing her money or maybe Brontë’s head is suddenly swimming. Probably both. He drops his suitcase next to the bed and stares at the sheets. They’re white and boring but starkly clean, like every business trip Brontë’s ever been on. He tries to remind himself that that’s why he’s here, and it grounds him a little.

The room isn’t all that big, but it has its own couch, there’s a kitchenette with a fridge and a stove, and a little balcony even though they’re only on the second floor. There’s a desk that looks highly polished and unused, looking out at Lake Burley Griffin. Brontë looks back at the bed, the singular bed, and suddenly struggles to comprehend the present again for a moment.

He walks over to Art as the lady leaves. “One bed?”

Brontë waits for Art to tell him that that unreasonable leap he’s making was wrong this time, and Art looks up with a mischievous smile instead. His face is nothing like David’s, really- in honesty, it’s nothing but being kinda short and kinda blonde that ties them together. Why did Brontë even make that connection?

Suddenly, Brontë is thrown off balance, physically and emotionally, as his back hits the bed; and then, just as soon as the bed catches him, his emotions are caught as Art’s walking away. Not away, really, but around the bed, to the other side. Brontë feels like he’s still hanging over the edge of a building, and Art is clutching him by the shirt- he could let him fall. Part of Brontë wants to fall. Why did Art do that?

“I’ll sleep on the couch if it bothers you,” Art says, and the click of his tongue warns Brontë that he’s not in the mood to explain himself. “Or I’ll get another room. Let’s talk about the plan, shall we?”

“Uh-” Brontë sits up, his heart aflutter in his chest. “Um, yeah. Probably.”

“Primary objective is not to get caught by my mother,” Art mutters as he sits on the other side of the bed and takes off his shoes. “Secondary objective is to break into Parliament House.”

He speaks as though he’s explaining the rules of a board game, rather than suggesting the most insane plan Brontë has ever heard in his life. “Excuse me?”

“We’re breaking into Parliament House.” Art repeats it as if the only problem was that it was a little hard to hear. “Not tonight, don’t worry. Tomorrow. I’ve got a foolproof plan. All you have to do is be yourself and say what I tell you to say with confidence.”

“Are you-“ Brontë looks out the window, at the lake, and across from it he can see the flag of Parliament. He should’ve known it was going to be this insane of a plan; what the fuck else is there in Canberra that Art might’ve wanted? “-are you at least going to give me details?”

“Of course. I’ve got to tell you how to act, obviously, and I see no reason not to explain what we’re doing. We’ll go get you an appropriate suit today, but tonight, I just want you to chill. I need you to trust me that I’ve pulled off greater stunts than tomorrow’s. I do it on the regular. I’ve got this.”

Brontë simply finds that impossible to believe. “You’ve never been caught? Ever?”

Art shrugs. “The trick isn’t to avoid being caught. That’s step one, but it’s not where it all ends. The trick is to learn how to get out of trouble. They can catch you as many times as they want, as long as you’re slippery enough that they can’t keep a hold on you.”

For a second, Brontë wonders if that’s a hint, that Art is making sure he knows he can’t be caught. It’s not true, though, is it? If Brontë called the right people, he’d have enough evidence by now to get Art arrested in a matter of minutes. He could threaten Art with his mother somehow, and that would probably be enough to keep him compliant, to make sure nobody was sent after him. Probably.

Brontë’s just not confident enough that it would be safe. That’s what he tells himself.

Well, he supposes he can safely admit he’s just a bit curious as to where this is going. He recoils slightly as the thought crosses his mind, but he knows it was always there. He wouldn’t be in this room if that thought had never been there.

He’s just usually better at controlling his thoughts than that. He is, in fact, a complete master of controlling what he thinks about. You don’t get to master that skill without knowing, completely, that you’re doing it; somehow, though, the thoughts you’re suppressing still surprise you when they come to the surface.

“I’m not slippery,” is what he says after a moment, as he thinks over Art’s words in the way he would hear them if he wasn’t secretly a cop. “If I get caught, I’ve got nothing.”

“You’ve got me.” Art says it softer than Brontë believes he means to, and it’s immediately followed by a tic, like he’s aware it was too soft and needs to hide it. “Fuck. Don’t worry about yourself. I’ve got a plan for that, too. Multiple plans, if they all go down the drain.”

Brontë closes his eyes. “Alright. I’ll trust you.”

He’s not sure if he should. But he’s here, isn’t he? What else is there to do in this moment?

11

It takes Nimm a surprising amount of time to get back to him, but when Brontë checks his phone as he and Art are arriving back at the hotel from shopping, he’s at least got some kind of answer from her.

Sorry for being so late to respond. I’m glad you’re okay.

General rule: if your question is genuine curiosity, say it. If your question is aimed around trying to figure out how to arrest him: don’t. Let that info come up organically, probably. Or else he might realise.

Did he tell you what the plan is yet?

Promise I wasn’t ignoring you.

The fact that she doesn’t tell him why she didn’t get back to him makes Brontë a different kind of worried. They were just out so Art could buy him a suit that he was very specific about, and he had explained, rather casually, that it wasn’t a gift or anything else, but a disguise. “You can keep it after, though,” Art had said, as he’d been fixing the front of the suit jacket and straightening up the tie. “I’m not a huge fan of suits, but it does look good on you.”

Brontë decides against the brief flash of thought he gets to ask Nimm if statements like that mean anything. Instead, while Art is in the bathroom and Brontë is taking this quick moment to catch up with Nimm, he texts, are you alright yourself? I’ll explain the plan later, no time.

She texts back instantly. I’d tell you if anything was really wrong, don’t worry.

He knows for a fact she wouldn’t. In fact, she tells him barely anything. He knows she’s an artist, but she’s never showed him any of her work. She’s mentioned a couple of exes, here and there, talked vaguely about not being close with her family; she said she’s never been married, never had kids, her serious relationships never worked out. She likes reality shows, he’s pretty sure.

All surface-level stuff or extremely vague. The kind of thing you can say to the types of cops she doesn’t like. For all her saying he’s different, she doesn’t trust him with too much. Certainly not the things that he knows, the deductions he’d made without her saying a word.

Like that she might well be dying.

“What’s wrong?” Art asks, and Brontë isn’t sure for exactly how long he was staring out the window, or how long Art has been watching him stare.

“Oh, nothing.” Brontë turns around, and Art’s expectant gaze is too much to hold for too long. “I’m worried about a friend of mine, but it’s nothing.”

“How so?” he asks, as he moves around the bed to open his duffle bag. Brontë gets the feeling that, despite how casual he’s trying to come off, Art is paying close attention to each of his words. Like he’s looking for a lie.

So Brontë tells the truth. “She just took a while to get back to me, and that’s fine- it happens- but she just sounded off. I’m pretty convinced she’s not well and she’s just refusing to tell me.”

Art pauses for a moment as he rifles through the bag. “Why wouldn’t she tell you? If- if you’re friends, right?”

Brontë turns back to the window. “I don’t know. It’s not a situation you can help with, it’s fine.”

“Fuck.” There’s a moment of silence. “I guess not, but I know people. People don’t hide things for no reason. She’ll probably tell you when you need to know, if anything really is happening.”

“I know something is happening. I’d have to ignore far too much to deny it, right? And I don’t want her to tell me when I need to know. I want her to tell me because we’re friends.”

“Then ask,” Art says sharply, and Brontë realises that his own voice was raising a little, genuine frustration leaking through his words. Art wasn’t trying to be rude- he just needed him to quiet down a little. “If you think she’s not telling you something, just ask.”

“I don’t want to,” Brontë admits. “Because I think she has cancer.”

“You think- fuck- you think she has cancer? And she hasn’t told you?”

“I get the feeling she doesn’t expect to be around for that much longer. She’s got a very good wig, but I can tell it is a wig, and that her eyebrows are largely painted on, right? She wears so much makeup that even the sickest person would look bright. She’s got this horrible cough that only seems to get worse all the time, and you can tell from her voice that whatever it is, it’s damaged her throat. I don’t know why she’s bothering to keep it from me. I’m not as good as you are at just guessing things about people, obviously I’m not, but you don’t need to be a genius to figure it out. She doesn’t act sad about it, or anything, and I guess I just think that she doesn’t want to tell me because she’s got almost nobody else in her life and she doesn’t want me to mope about the fact that she’s dying. That’s my only theory. I’m just upset that she doesn’t seem to trust me with the truth.”

Brontë suddenly snaps to the present. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump that on you.”

Art laughs lowly. “It’s okay, dude, it’s clearly bothering you.” He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “I can’t say I have any advice, though. Uh.”

Brontë hates what he’s made this into. “No, you’ve given me advice. To just ask about it. And I might. Sorry again.”

Silence. Brontë rests his head in his hands. Why does he feel like he’s blown this, somehow?

“Is this friend,” Art asks after a second, “...like, a friend, or…?”

“What?” Brontë turns, and Art’s sitting on the bed now, facing him. “Are you asking if we’re together?”

“Sort of,” Art says, in a suspiciously neutral way. “It sounds like you care a lot about her, that’s all. Could you handle losing her?”

“We’re not together.” Brontë bites back the idea. It had never even occurred to him to look at Nimm that way; the whole marriage thing was done, and when left alone to his own devices afterwards Brontë didn’t feel like a girlfriend was something he wanted. “I’d say she might be my only friend, though. Unless you count my ex-wife.”

“The ex-wife that’s the reason you’re being kicked out of the country,” Art says, as if reminding him. “...but you didn’t answer the important question.”

“Which is?”

“If you can handle losing her.”

Brontë sits down on the bed beside him. “I’d survive it,” he mutters, “because it’s just another thing I’ve lost or ruined in my life. I’ve got reasons to live.”

He looks down at Art’s hand as it gently comes over his, wraps his fingers around the back of his hand- just comforting. He’s just being comforting. “That doesn’t sound like you’d handle it well.”

“Who would handle it well?” Brontë asks, staring at their now held hands without doing a thing to change it. “I don’t know. I wish she’d tell me about it so I at least knew what I was dealing with. How long she had left, you know?”

“Yeah.” Art mutters, with his voice far away from the moment. “I guess all you can do is ask, huh? Who knows. Maybe she’s fine and it’s all a misunderstanding.”

Brontë hangs his head again. “You probably didn’t want this discussion right now, did you?”

“Hey.” Art’s grip on his hand suddenly tightens, forcing Brontë’s gaze up to his. “What makes you think I’m not willing to listen to you?”

Brontë can see that Art’s fighting his own battles, though. His eyes are stormy, and while they search Brontë’s, they’re fighting to hold down a tumultuous sea that he’s trying to swim through on his own. Brontë’s problems will remain the same for at least some time, now; Nimm certainly has enough time left for Brontë to figure this out. How much time does Art have to figure these things out himself?

“Why is avoiding your mother higher on the list of priorities than breaking into Parliament without getting caught?”

Art is visibly thrown off balance. “Uh,” he mutters, although the shock doesn’t cause his hand to leave Brontë’s. Brontë just continues ignoring it, like that’ll make the thoughts about it go away. “Because that’s something I can’t get out of so easily.”

“You don’t have to get personal if you don’t want to.” Brontë feels like the walls are closing in, and he hopes they do. He hopes they cradle the two of them gently and block out the entire outside world, so that none of these strings matter. He wants there to just be two human beings, here, with no society or family or memory to pull them away from each other. And his heart is sinking to think that that’s what he wants. “...I’m just asking.”

“She’s a maniac,” Art admits, swallowing thickly; a shiver passes through him and Brontë doesn’t think it’s Tourette’s. “And she has more power than anyone who could catch us might.”

“Does she not want us to be here, somehow?”

“No, it’s not that.” Art is now refusing to look at Brontë, and their hands pull apart. It must have been mutual, but Brontë didn’t want to let go. “I’m lying to her about a lot of things. That’s all.”

Brontë thinks he knows most of the answer, at least the important part: the Volkovs are horrible people. Art is a criminal, he lies and he cheats and he gets ahead by deception, but he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Brontë can sympathise with liars, unfortunately. Especially since he’s starting to think Art is lying in self-defence.

“How might we run into her?”

Art clicks with a tilt of his head, and Brontë suspects his tics do correlate with his emotions, at least somewhat- because every time he’s done that, it’s been in anger. “We shouldn’t. She’s looking for me, but I don’t exactly intend on letting her know where I am. And if she does find me, I don’t intend on letting her recognise me.”

Brontë raises an eyebrow at that, but lets it go for now. “Does she know you’re avoiding her?”

“Absolutely not,” Art says gravely. “You’ll have to trust me that if she does find out, the consequences will almost certainly be severe.”

Brontë, unfortunately, believes him entirely.

12

The upside of this trip is the same as most business trips, for a completely different reason: the money is infinite. Which is how Brontë’s sitting here back in the hotel room, belly full of far-too-expensive but quite delicious Chinese food, and three drinks he wouldn’t have gotten away with on an actual work trip. Unlike actual work trips, the person paying for it seemed to encourage him more than stop him, watching him with that intense grey gaze from over the top of his own drink, something fruity and pink and admittedly delicious from the sip Art insisted on giving him. He hadn’t been drunk enough to think about that intense gaze at that point.

“Fuck.” Brontë groans, not sure why he decided that sitting on the floor was a good idea. “I’m getting old.”

“Fuck. You’re not old.” Art’s opening the hotel minifridge as he talks. “Ooo, they’ve got cider. Good. Fuckin’ hate beer. They’ve got that too, I guess. Do you want it?”

“I am old. I’m forty-eight,” Brontë announces, like it’s going to change something. He is old. Too old to change his life. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“I would’ve guessed forty,” Art says, “not that it makes a difference. I’m thirty-six.”

Why would that matter to Brontë right now? He narrows his eyes as Art holds the bottle of beer towards him, shaking it around in an insistence that his question be answered.

Brontë looks up at the ceiling. “Are we- are we gonna be hungover tomorrow? Is that gonna- I’m going to be hungover tomorrow. Probably. Cause I’m old. Is that going to fuck things up?”

He looks over at Art, eyes lidded. He feels warm and for a moment, it is as simple as the two of them, shielded from the rest of the world by these four walls. Art walks over and sits across from him, holding that beer out towards him. He’s got a hidden smile that Brontë can only see because he’s letting himself be unreasonable for the moment, letting himself consider that maybe Art does enjoy his company, just a little bit.

“We’re sneaking in at 4pm,” Art says, breaking the illusion, “so it shouldn’t.”

Art’s run over the plan already, and Brontë isn’t confident in it, but he’s also not exactly in a position to question Art, ever, let alone while he’s already kind of drunk. His face feels hot; so does his entire body. If he lets himself be unreasonable, he thinks Art didn’t just let him get drunk tonight- it’s what he wanted.

“How does this help you?” Brontë asks before he can think.

Art leans back against the bed. He’s not very tall- several inches shorter than the average man- but he seems to take up the whole room with his presence, especially this close to Brontë. Even though he’s an arm’s reach away. He’s too close and too far.

“How does what help me?” Art asks.

“This.” Brontë doesn’t know how to clarify. Doesn’t really want to. Art will understand. Or he won’t. Brontë doesn’t understand. His mouth feels dry.

“I’m making sure a garbage law doesn’t go through.” Art crosses his legs, and Brontë should be listening to what he’s saying. It’s probably serious. Is Brontë a bad person for this? For what? “They’ve slipped a lot of bad shit into one bill. You know they’re calling it the Freedom of Choice Act? When all it does is restrict rights and harm people?”

“What?” Brontë was barely following that.

“It probably won’t completely pass, but parts of it might. It’s supposed to give companies freedom to go against environmental protections, and freedom to discriminate against any customers they feel like for any reason. It’s supposed to give parents the freedom to medically neglect their kids and the freedom to abuse them if they’re queer. I’m not even kidding. So I want to destroy the bill itself before it gets to anyone who can pass it.”

Art’s description was broken by an annoyed click or two here and there, and Brontë was struggling to follow anyway. “You’re going to- to delete a law before they can pass it?”

Art looks at him for a moment, and then slowly takes the beer back before Brontë can open it. “Yes, honey, that’s close enough.”

Brontë looks at the retreating beer and sighs. “I don’t know how law works. Sorry.”

“They didn’t teach you that in… in school?” Art asks, and Brontë feels the heat of the room closing in on him. He wonders if it’d be strange to unbutton his shirt, to let some of the heat out. He just rolls up his sleeves, for now.

“No?” Brontë bites his lip. “What school did you go to where they did teach you law? Or did it change after I left?”

Brontë isn’t even thinking about his police training, which is good, because Art can’t know about that. They didn’t teach him the law there, either. Apparently nobody thought their citizens needed to know the how the law worked. Not even the people enforcing it.

“I was homeschooled,” Art answers with a little shrug. Brontë tries to tell where he’s looking- what part of Brontë’s body? “So I don’t know. That’s not- do you understand what I’m saying? About why we’re breaking in?”

“I think so.” Brontë did understand it, in part. “I don’t know how- how it works. How you’ll stop them. And I don’t know- I don’t know the bill you’re talking about. But is it weird? To trust you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I trust that if you’re against it,” Brontë says slowly, “it’s a bad law. I mean, if you want to help the environment, and minorities, especially, you know-“ does he know? Art said queer. The word sounds, in Brontë’s mind, like it comes from the mouth of a high school bully, sneering it at the kid who’s a little different. So does gay. So does homosexual and faggot and sissy and fairy and so many other words, such that Brontë doesn’t have a word that’s even close to what he means that doesn’t feel free of venom. “I mean, it sounds like your heart’s in the right place.”

“You shouldn’t just believe me.”

“Why not?”

Art sits up straighter, leaning closer a little bit. “Because you shouldn’t just believe anyone.”

Brontë laughs a little at that. Why is it funny? “You can’t live your life like that.”

“Why not?” Art throws his hands up, and there’s still a good-natured affect behind his words, but the challenge is real. “Fuck. Do you believe things without question, Neil?”

“You have to, sometimes.” Brontë sits up straighter, too. “Like- like that what’s good is good and what’s bad is bad.”

“That is the worst thing to believe without question.” Art clicks with a tilt of his head and suddenly Brontë feels like he might’ve messed something up- not in the mission, not in Art finding out that he’s a cop, but Art finding out something else about him. Something that threatens not Brontë’s mission, but his relationship with Art.

“How?” Brontë asks, quiet. He doesn’t like discussions like this. There’s always a horrible feeling that rises, that twists in his stomach. He just has to keep it low enough that it doesn’t threaten to come bubbling out of his throat like vomit.

“Tell me,” Art says after a second. “You said your daughter is queer, right?”

“…why?”

“Because you’re forty-eight. The eighties weren’t exactly nice to queer people, and the nineties weren’t much better. Did you accept what you were told in your teenage years? If you did, do you still accept it now?”

“I don’t like thinking about this,” Brontë admits openly now. He’s drawing circles on the wood floor beneath his fingers.

“Why?”

“It reminds me of when I heard those things.” He swallows back something poisonous. Not venomous; it’s not Art those words would hurt. “My best friend, David, he got those words a lot. So did I, but I- I wasn’t- I wasn’t targeted the same. People nowadays are proud to call themselves the kinds of things he had spray-painted on his locker right before his head was bashed into it. The kids in my day, they were disgusting about it, like all it was was- some deviant sexual behaviour that was grosser than all the things that actually hurt people. Not to mention they were wrong.”

“Wrong about him?”

Brontë bites his lip. “I mean, I don’t know. The hatred and the actual identity were treated like the same thing. They said that to be gay is to like men and it’s bad. He did- he does- like men. But it’s not bad. I didn’t think it then, either.”

“What were they wrong about, then?” Art has opened his cider, but he hasn’t touched it. It swirls around in his hand as he watches Brontë with that same look that he was giving him in the bar; and Brontë meets his gaze, now. They say alcohol lets you do what you really want to do, that it takes away your barriers. Brontë is fully aware that that’s what it does to him, it’s just that his barriers keep him safe.

“If they knew what it was like, what he was like, they wouldn’t- they wouldn’t be convinced it was bad. I don’t know where society decided that it cared so much about innocent things, but- but it does. And it scares me.”

“So you didn’t believe what those kids told you,” Art says slowly. “You knew it was wrong.”

“I can feel what’s wrong, a lot of the time,” Brontë admits. “Something in my chest twists and I know it’s not how it’s meant to be. But here’s the problem, Art,” he says, and he gets onto his knees, leaning forward, because his body is reaching for Art’s and he can’t stop it, like gravity pulling him forward. “I can’t separate it from fear.”

Art’s expression shifts subtly, as he goes from looking down with lidded eyes to meet Brontë’s gaze, to looking up at him, and his eyes look like full moons, silver even with the yellowing lamplight. “Are you afraid right now?”

“When Charlie told me she was a girl, I felt- I felt this feeling,” and Brontë clutches his chest, “and I worried, at first, that it was bad. That something inside me was as rotten as those boys were to David and that I didn’t love her the same. But I did. I knew I did and I knew what I was feeling because I thought about all the ways I wanted to protect her from the world, including if I had to protect her from me, and I realised that nothing I was afraid of was me. I was afraid of what the world had put inside of me, this little voice that tells me what’s good and bad when I don’t know why. You’re fucking right, Art, that you can’t just believe what the world tells you, and I know that, but- but-“

He goes silent, and Art is eerily still. “What?”

“I feel that feeling a lot,” Brontë mutters, “knowing that something is wrong. Knowing that what the world told me isn’t right. But it’s too late to change the fact that this is the world I live in. I didn’t realise what that feeling meant, until Charlie made me realise, and now I’m sitting in the silence, knowing that the whole world is wrong and I alone am the only right thing in it.”

“Are you really alone?” Art asks, and the thing is, the whole reason Brontë’s here falls under that, too. He wouldn’t have come if Art was like the rest of the Volkovs. If Art was someone Brontë didn’t think was good. If Art was someone Brontë didn’t like.

“I might be,” Brontë admits, and his hands are shaking, but he knows. He knows something that he refuses to know. “Unless…”

He does something he won’t think about.

It happens slow enough that it can be stopped, but not slow enough that Brontë has to consider it. He has stopped considering for the night. His hand shakes as it raises to cup Art’s cheek, and Art leans into it easily, the softness on his face impossible to miss, like he needs Brontë to know that he isn’t going to stop this.

Time stops when they kiss.

For a moment, this building has collapsed and every meaning attached to this kiss outside of this room has disappeared. Past and future crumble, nobody else exists, it means nothing and everything because they are the only two people in the world and this lightning that connects them has shocked Brontë back to life.

All of a sudden, he is a human being, whose wants and needs are fully known, at least in this moment. He kisses harder and faster than he means to, because Art didn’t stop him. Art didn’t remind him of the real world they’ll have to return to after this.

Brontë will regret this, he will, as he has always regretted everything that has ever brought him joy. It’s not an emotion the world allows him to feel in great quantities, and never for longer than a few brief moments between duties. Art kissed him back and that’s the greatest joy he’s felt in some time.

Brontë is moving now by a force that feels at once completely outside of him, and the only thing he’s ever been. He grabs Art’s waist, pulls him closer, and Art’s hand naturally finds Brontë’s belt. Suggesting. As if Brontë has the time for suggestion when this fragile, rare moment could slip away at any time.

Art gently pushes him back, after long enough that Brontë isn’t worried, and he shuffles up, back, onto the bed- tugging at Brontë’s shirt, encouraging him to follow. Brontë bites his lip as he leans over the man in front of him, looks him over; he cannot think about the things that lead him here, he couldn’t tell you what they were, but he can surrender himself to them. He can surrender himself completely, look Art up and down, take in his flushed cheeks and the mess of his blonde hair now. He’s still trying to hide a smile. Like he’s trying not to gloat.

“You were trying to get me drunk,” Brontë mutters with a grin, and as he moves his hand over Art’s ribs, his waist, and Art arches up into the touch. “You knew, somehow, you fucker.”

He says it with a teasing grin, leaning down to kiss Art again as he does. “Fuck,” Art echoes, and he lets Brontë kiss him for just one second before he tilts his head away, although he’s still holding Brontë close, and his hand splays over his chest, a second away from unbuttoning Brontë’s shirt. From making this real. “I didn’t know. I hoped.”

Brontë laughs lowly, and Art shivers at the sound. “Why?”

“What made me think it was possible, or what made me hope?” Art bites his lip. “The second part’s fuckin’ easy. I thought you were hot the second I laid eyes on you and it wasn’t hard to figure out you were a good person under that. What’s not to like?”

Brontë laughs a little more genuinely at those words, because it’s funny that Art could say that and expect Brontë to take him serious. “I’m- I’m fucking forty-eight,” he repeats, as if Art didn’t hear him earlier. “I’ve got grey hairs and back problems and I’m not exactly in perfect shape.”

Art groans, and Brontë can barely tell he’s even moving before his back is on the bed, and Art is straddling him- and that isn’t helping Brontë keep what little cool he has right now. He grips Art’s waist, and Art gives him just a tiny bit of friction, but he’s focused now on what he’s saying. “Shut the fuck up,” Art says first and foremost. “A man like you is exactly my fucking type. A few grey hairs is a plus. Look at your chest. Look at your fucking hands. Those can do things to me. And for me. Fuck.”

As he’s talking, he’s touching the parts he’s talking about- running his hands through Brontë’s hair, daring to undo the first two buttons of his shirt, tangling his fingers in Brontë’s. Pinning his hands to the bed, leaning over him.

“You’re lucky,” Brontë mutters, as he tries to shift and finds Art is doing his best to hold him down, “that apparently my type is tiny blondes who are literally fucking insane.”

“Hey!” Art tilts his head with feigned offence. “I’m not that tiny.”

He laughs, and he lets Brontë’s hands up when he pushes against him. When Brontë takes Art’s head in his hands and drags Art down to kiss him, he lets him. But as he reaches for Art’s shirt again, tries to pull it up, Art suddenly straightens, sitting up as if shocked.

“What’s wrong?” Brontë immediately asks, and Art hides his mouth with his hand for a moment, quickly puts it down.

“Sorry,” Art mutters. “We shouldn’t do this while you’re drunk like this. I’m sorry.”

Brontë groans a little in the back of his throat. “I’m not that drunk.” He tries shifting his hips slightly, but Art holds his stomach down, doesn’t let him. Brontë could live with that, too, but he knows he won’t be able to pull himself back here easily. This paradise is a hard place to reach.

“That’s not the only reason.” Art bites his lip. “I feel like the other two reasons are probably more important. At least, one of them is.”

“Tell me,” Brontë begs, breathless, “and I’ll tell you why they don’t matter.”

“Tomorrow,” Art says with an air of finality. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. When you’re sober.”

13

It is tomorrow and Brontë wishes it wasn’t.

He fell asleep quickly, awkwardly, and slept fitfully. It was clear Art just wouldn’t be able to fall asleep next to him- even though he’d clearly set up the room so that they’d share a bed. He’d plied Brontë with alcohol until he had loosened up and let forth inner desires he had hid and ignored and repressed, Art had made him bare his soul- and then he’d walked away. Something had changed, somewhere, somehow. Brontë couldn’t figure out what he did wrong.

When he awakes, Art isn’t beside him, but it’s also late morning and the sunlight piercing his eyelids is the only thing forcing them open. When, through a horrid headache, he does get his eyes open, he sees the other side of the bed; and it’s made, perfectly, down to the pillow being fluffed as if nobody had slept on it.

The reasonable assumption is that Art didn’t sleep there, but even if Brontë didn’t have this vague feeling in the back of his mind that he recalls a weight beside him, he can smell the subtle bergamot of Art’s cologne. He closes his eyes, unable to really appreciate it for the headache.

He feels like shit on all levels. Dying right now would be easier than dealing with the mess he knows for a fact he made. And he made a mess of the mess, too. He didn’t just try to sleep with Artemy fucking Volkov, he was rejected by him, and he’s not- if you asked him, Brontë would tell you he was straight. It’s not like he even learned anything from that whole thing. Not about Art, anyway.

He hears the door handle jiggling, and sits up straighter. His heart skips a beat until he confirms that it’s Art coming in. His skipped beat remains held, paused in his throat, as Art ambles in, sunglasses casually on his head and walking about as if nothing happened, as if the world hasn’t shifted. Brontë’s insides feel like mush and so does his brain.

Art’s carrying a bag of groceries. “Hangover?” he says like Brontë’s supposed to be normal about this.

He pretends to be normal about it. “Uh. Yeah?”

“I dunno what generally works for you, but I got everything I could think of. Panadol, you’ve already got water there, I’ll make some food in a minute that’ll hopefully fix things slightly.”

He throws the Panadol as he says it, and points to the bedside table, where Brontë hadn’t even looked. His phone is there, next to a huge glass of water.

“Wait.” Brontë can’t quite clarify what isn’t right in his head immediately, and Art waits patiently for the long second it takes him to figure it out. “Why are you- doing so much? It’s okay. Sit down.”

“I experience excruciating boredom very easily,” Art says as he’s taking groceries over to the kitchenette, “and I would rather die than relax most of the time.”

Brontë wonders if that boredom hit Art before the two of them got anywhere. If he just wasn’t interesting enough. But he doesn’t ask that. He doesn’t want to bring it up.

Instead, once Art’s back is turned, Brontë looks at his phone, and he’s glad he made it so that notifications don’t automatically show, because he has seven texts from Nimm. Last night, she’d sent:

Hey. Tell me the plan when you’ve got time.

How’s it going? Are you alive?

And in the morning:

I’m certainly going to hope you’re alive. Let me know by tonight if you’re not.

I hope something very interesting is happening and that’s why you haven’t got back to me yet…!

Just because I need to know you’re alive.

And also because I want to know what’s happening.

And also because other reasons.

The first thing Brontë responds with is. I’m alive.

Followed by, I’m hungover, actually. But nothing dangerous is happening. I don’t think. We might want to talk about it in person when I get back.

She doesn’t respond immediately, and so Brontë has to put his phone down. It feels like his worry about her is years old, when it wasn’t even twelve hours ago. He just doesn’t know what to say, on any level; do you actually have cancer or did I assume wrongly? I kissed Artemy Volkov and we almost had sex, but he stopped me. I told him so much about my life that I didn’t expect to say. I feel empty now.

“I don’t want this to be weird,” Art says after a moment of silence, making it weirder, “so let’s talk about things.”

Brontë’s mind is blank, so he says, “what is there to say?”

“Well, I’m going to apologise properly, for one. I got you drunk to get what I wanted out of you, thinking it would be fine, but it felt wrong in the moment. Like I was taking advantage of you.”

Brontë has no clue if he’d feel this shit, had they actually gone on to have sex. He’s still got to work through what it means about him that he’s upset it didn’t happen. That he feels lead on.

“What I’m saying is, don’t think I stopped because of you,” Art says, looking at the counter instead of Brontë. Brontë watches his back; his hair is all the same length, like it was never cut professionally, like he just shaved it all off one day and hasn’t touched it since. “It was mainly that I thought you deserved more agency in the situation.”

Brontë didn’t want more agency in the situation. He gulps down water so he doesn’t have to speak, or maybe to fix his dry throat, that emotions keep clogging up anyway.

“Can you just do me a favour and respond?” Art says, and it’s not quite a snap- there’s a pleading tone in there somewhere- but Brontë straightens, that sadness piercing him like an arrow.

“I don’t know what to say,” Brontë begins, but he wants to say something. He wants Art to know what he needs to tell him, whatever that actually is. “Give me a moment to think.”

“Okay.” Art shudders a sigh, and Brontë mentally turns around to address his thoughts head on.

He is sad. And disappointed. Sure, he thought they were going to have sex, and maybe he’s just sad they didn’t? Which is its own can of worms, but Brontë isn’t convinced it’s all about that. If Art had just said, I do like you, but I’m not in the mood right now, would Brontë have been so hurt?

That’s not what Art said. Art said there were multiple reasons why not, on top of Brontë’s intoxication.

“What were the other reasons?” he asks, and Art turns around to look at him then. His eyes are guarded, and that’s exactly what Brontë doesn’t need.

“The other reasons?”

“You said there were multiple reasons we had to stop. You said there were two reasons more important than me being drunk. And you said you’d tell me today.”

Art sighs. “I know. I regret saying it the way I did.”

“How so?”

“One shouldn’t be a barrier. If it is, that says more about you than me. And the other, I-“ Art looks up at the ceiling, and despite the fact that Brontë can hear something sizzling in the frying pan, Art goes to take a step towards Brontë. His voice cracks a little as he says, “-I need to think carefully about how I say it.”

He quickly turns around again, and Brontë wonders if what he hears in his voice- the tears coming through- are actually there. “Well?”

“I’ll tell you the one that I hope means nothing to you. The second, I’ll have to think about.” Art clicks a tic again, and Brontë reads it as annoyance, not at Brontë, but at himself. “I’ve got a weird question for you.”

“Yeah?” Brontë’s downing more Panadol than he should as Art talks.

“How would you describe your sexuality?”

Brontë blinks in surprise. “Um. I mean. I wouldn’t…” he leans back and looks at the ceiling himself. It’s certainly a ceiling. “I’ve only ever dated women. I haven’t… hold on.”

He mentally turns around again, examines his inside thoughts. They’re heavy and oppressive, staring back at him from the fog, but in this moment, he needs to stop ignoring them. Stop letting himself carry their weight without expressing what they’re telling him. He reaches out for it, and he feels his throat closing over- but the words come out anyway, before he can think them.

“Being straight has always been my only option,” is what he says. Because it’s true. “I was told it was a choice to be gay, and not one I would ever want to make.”

He doesn’t have the strength to finish that sentence. But Art gets the point, surely.

“Just to be clear, though,” Art says after a moment, “you kissed me yesterday exclusively because you wanted to?”

“Why else would I have done it?”

Art shakes his head. “Yeah. Sorry, no. I just- honestly? It’s the same thing you’re dealing with, but different. Kids these days don’t fear telling their partners the kind of thing I’m terrified to tell you, you know?”

Their partners. Brontë knows he said that in a specific context that wasn’t meant to imply they’re together, but it does. It sounded like it for half a moment. “Are you just trying to ask if I’m- like, if you were an exception, or a fluke, or…”

“Or if you normally like men. Because I’m just irrationally worried you don’t like me as a man, or that you’ll like me less when you find out I’m trans?”

“Wait.” Brontë raises his hands to his forehead and rubs his eyes. “You’re a trans woman?”

“Other way.” Art turns, looking for Brontë’s response. “I’m a trans man. Like-“

“No, sorry, yes, I know. FtM,” Brontë says to clarify his understanding. “Fuck. I didn’t have a clue, to be honest, but I guess that explains why you’re so short.”

Art laughs at that. “I like how that’s your first concern.”

“Just saying.” On top of everything else he’s considering, he’s not sure how this could possibly make a difference. “To be honest, it’s probably a good thing you told me that after I kissed you. Otherwise I’d be sitting here asking myself if I’m really just some weird straight guy who only cares about genitals or whatever.”

“Some people are,” Art sighs, “especially at our age, right?”

“But that’s stupid,” Brontë mutters. “You don’t look, or sound, or feel like a woman. Women are pretty and they’re soft, they’re nice like paintings, but men just- I don’t know if it’s the voice, or the- the muscles, I mean, women have muscles but it’s not the same. Maybe it’s body shape or the way they smell or just even stuff like the way their skin is different, men just have this je ne sais quoi, okay? That you have.” Brontë leans back and looks at the roof. “Fuck, do you have it.”

“Fuck.” Art laughs a little. “I’m not going to tell you what your sexuality is, but just so you know? It’s not a choice, it’s how you feel about different people on the inside, and that whole thing sounded very specifically gay.”

Brontë hates how he winces at being called that. He has some work to do in unpicking the pieces of the world lodged in his brain; he already knew that. As he unpicked them for his daughter, he started to see how they were locking him in place, too, but it was too much to bear. Until he had someone else other than himself to do it for.

“You know what’s dumb?” he mutters, and he wants to stop himself, but he knows if he does he’ll never experience the thought he’s trying to express right now. “Years ago I’d be getting through sex with my wife and I’d tell myself that because I liked the physical feeling of a vagina I couldn’t be gay. I mean, I liked it with a man, too, just about the same physically, but if I was gay, surely I couldn’t be enjoying sex with a woman even slightly.”

“You’ve had sex with a man before?”

Brontë feels embarrassed to admit it, somehow, but as he’s listening to Art casually cracking eggs on the stove, the sounds of a chopping board, things feel more okay than they have in a long time. “Yeah. I guess. I told myself it wasn’t sex, because that needed a vagina, right? But that was what I was doing. And I guess it’s also true to say I probably loved him. And now he’s married to a man and has his whole life figured out and I’m- I haven’t got shit figured out.”

“It sounds like you’re in the middle of figuring things out,” Art says, and that hits Brontë harder than it should. “I went through all this a few years ago. I know you’re older than I was, but you’re never too old, I promise.”

Something suddenly clicks in Brontë’s head. “Oh my god. You’re the missing Volkov daughter, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“It’s a known thing. Anastasia Volkov had one single daughter, and she went missing from Sydney years ago. Not long before you showed up in Melbourne. You don’t have a sister, do you?”

“Oh. That’s- more than I thought would be public knowledge.” Brontë’s heart sinks for a moment, drops into the earth in fact, but Art moves on like he didn’t quite notice how out of left field Brontë just was. “But yeah. Basically. That’s a huge part of why we’re avoiding her, actually, because she doesn’t-“ Art laughs suddenly- “she doesn’t actually know.”

“She doesn’t know- she doesn’t know you’re trans?”

“No. She thinks ‘Artemy’ is a lie I’m putting on to obscure my identity. She has no clue I’ve been transitioning for four years, and I’ve known I’m trans for- ten, fifteen years, maybe? I haven’t seen her in person for four years, I’ve just called and made excuses here and there, seen my brothers who are covering for me. I can still sound like almost my old voice if I need to. It’s one of many things about me she would never accept, so I just won’t tell her.”

Brontë is suddenly filled with gratitude that he’s not the kind of parent Anastasia Volkov is, that he was the first person his daughter could tell. “What else aren’t you telling her?”

“Nothing specific. More general. I don’t know.” Art shrugs a little. “Kinda like how when your parents want you to be a doctor, you might lie and say that’s what you’re studying. Except instead of being a doctor it’s leading a criminal empire.”

“The very common expectation. My mum’s the same, except it’s literally about being a doctor.” Brontë considers Art’s words for a moment. “I was under the impression that you did have some kind of, um. Criminal empire.”

“I mean, people owe me favours, yes, and I do do crime.” If Brontë was wearing a wire, his job would be literally done right now. Although Art would’ve noticed within half a second. “But it’s not about control or money. I’ve hacked money and I don’t give half a shit about control. I’ve been burned enough by others’ control of me that all I want to do is help.”

Brontë had had his eyes closed, listening to Art’s voice, such that he didn’t notice he was finished cooking until he hears Art coming closer. He opens his eyes to see Art holding out a plate, with eggs and toast and several different kinds of fruit on it, as he sits on the edge of the bed.

“I do a lot of lying,” Art says, “but ultimately, with and through all the lies, I just want to help everyone who doesn’t want to hurt me. It’s that simple.”

It’s not that simple, because Brontë’s entire job here is to hurt Art, sooner or later. He doesn’t want to confess to that, not the least because he doesn’t want it to be true.

14

Brontë’s heart is racing, and that’s probably mainly because they’re standing outside of Parliament House, and only a tiny bit to do with Art.

Art walks with purpose, and Brontë tries to copy him, but also do it differently, because he’s meant to work for some vague faceless Senator, and Art is playing a completely different role. Art’s wearing a dark grey jumpsuit with some cleaning company’s logo on the breast, and he’s hiding behind a dark grey cap with the same logo. He went into the bathroom before they left and came back out with cheeks twice as gaunt, eyebrows thicker, bags under his eyes, which seemed to have changed shape, alongside with at least ten year’s worth of age being added to every part of his face. “It’s just attention to detail,” he’d said when Brontë had asked how the fuck he’d done it. “And years of practice with makeup. It’s as much an art as anything else.”

Still, Brontë’s unsettled looking at his face, and so he’s glad to be following him. Art didn’t attempt to change the way Brontë’s face looks. “You look perfect,” he’d said as they were leaving. “And also, you look exactly like you need to for this.”

Art seemed to get some enjoyment from Brontë’s reaction to that.

Brontë’s now looking up at Parliament House, an image he’s seen a million times, but not a building that ever felt like a real place someone could be, and trying not to let the weight of this break him.

“You’ve done this before?” Brontë asks again, because it’s hard to just believe it. They left before their conversation this morning felt completely over; there was still Art’s second thing, the one he said he needed time to talk about, and Brontë felt like he had more to say, although he couldn’t conjure it all into words. It hit him only as they were leaving that he was meant to arrest Art at some point, making whatever Art was hiding from him less serious than what Brontë was keeping from Art.

“It was a lot harder to do without prior knowledge,” Art explains, “but I’ve got the prior knowledge now. What’s your line?”

Brontë is simultaneously offended that Art feels the need to ask again, while knowing that he’s probably going to fuck the whole business up anyway. “If anyone asks, just say the Senator left his keys behind. And then turn my back on them unless they offer to help.”

“Like you would if it was real.” Art nods. He tics again, always the left shoulder. “That’s all lying really is. People get tripped up because they lose sight of how they’d act if the lie was real.”

Brontë has been lying most of his life, and that’s something he only began the process of accepting when Art essentially forced him to say it out loud. “Doesn’t that make you lose sight of the truth?”

“Hmm.” Art mutters. “Maybe that is what makes it so easy for me. I can see the truth and the lie at exactly the same time and I don’t lose sight of either. I didn’t realise other people did.”

“Maybe you’re just a genius,” Brontë offers, and Art scoffs at that.

“Nah. Things that are easy for others are hard for me.” He puts his hands in his pockets as if he’s just casually strolling. “Like figuring out when to let a lie go. Take out your phone and pretend to call someone.”

“What?” Brontë wonders if the sudden pivot was on purpose. “Why?”

“Because that’s what you’d probably be doing if the lie was true. The Senator, whoever it is, probably is anxiously waiting for his keys, and thinks his time is best spent talking to his right-hand man that’s getting them back for him. Plus, we’re less likely to be bothered.”

Brontë follows the instruction as it’s given to him. He sees a pair of women leaving the building, and behind them a man in a checkered shirt power-walking with a laptop in one hand. They look like they belong.

“Shouldn’t I know which senator I work for?” Brontë asks. “Does it have to be a man?”

“No, you shouldn’t know. If anyone asks which senator you work for, you’ve already fucked up on blending in. Naming names lets your claim be falsified. It’s a man because there are more of them and people notice them less. The senator must be boring and faceless.”

“And what do I do if someone does ask me who I work for?”

“Your phone is suddenly ringing and it’s the Senator. Or you’re in a rush and you don’t have time to chat. It’s a reasonable question but you’re too busy to answer it. Zero fear. Zero concern. It’s that easy.”

That doesn’t sound easy at all. But they’re rounding the building, and they’re close enough that Brontë can start to see through the windows, see people moving around in there. All suits, all with an air of importance; some with urgency, others seemingly without it at all. One woman is looking directly out the window, and she makes eye contact with Brontë for a moment. She doesn’t seem to take notice of him.

When Brontë was on patrol, as much as he hated it, he did learn a few things that they were supposed to read as suspicious. Most of them tied back to not fitting in. People who looked uncomfortable, nervous, like they didn’t like the idea of police presence, were supposed to be suspicious.

It’s been an uncomfortable thought, ever since he told his children about this. Charlie had asked so casually, completely as a passing thought, “what if they just have anxiety?”, and Ricky had immediately piped up, “yeah, or if they’re just not from here?”, and Brontë had to watch his colleagues never take those kinds of things into account. When he was there, he could pull his colleagues back when someone was clearly just high or neurodivergent, but he had to ask himself if he’d ever gotten it wrong. Most people they searched had nothing.

Still, it helps him in this moment, because he knows what not to do. He’s got his phone to his ear, now, and he relaxes all the muscles in his body. He follows Art like he’s just being lead by a stranger, puts some distance between them, but not too much. “We’re almost there,” he says, and Art looks behind him before he realises what he’s doing. “Shouldn’t be too long. No, yeah, I have no idea who’s around right now, so- yeah. Just in case.”

He speaks to Art without speaking to him. He’s trying to walk the line, seeing the truth with one eye and the lie with the other, but the line is thin and he teeters.

Art doesn’t speak, but he does tic again, a shoulder shrug that would be obviously odd to anyone looking. The thing that would draw attention to him is the only thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the crimes he’s trying to commit. He’d be suspicious on a cop’s radar for his condition, and not for the fact that he’s committing burglary, among other things, in broad daylight.

“Right-o. Here we are.”

As soon as Brontë hears the little accent Art’s put on, a rough-edged broadness, suddenly all the tension is gone, because Art sounds so silly. Brontë lets himself laugh a little harder than he otherwise would, and says, “good one, Senator,” looking away to prevent himself from losing his mind when Art makes eye contact.

They’ve approached a gate set around the side, and Brontë can see there’s some door behind it. Art pulls something out of his pocket, and at first Brontë thinks he’s just magically managed to get keys, until he sees that it’s a lockpicking kit.

There’s no way Art is going to get away with this. Brontë turns around, intuitively taking up watch, but as he’s pretending to be on the phone, he’s trying to think of how he’s going to get out of this. Join in on the arrest, turn his back on Art? Will Nimm be able to help him? This was her idea, and he trusted it, and it’s worked, but if he’s caught busting into fucking Parliament, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to argue that it was necessary. It felt like it. He told himself it was. There wasn’t a clear point to turn back.

“Oh, don’t you worry, I’m on it,” he says as if someone is speaking to him. He doesn’t even know what this fake Senator is saying; Brontë’s just saying whatever the fuck. “Nah. I don’t think anyone’s going to be around. I’m not entirely convinced we’re going to be able to get- no, yeah, fair point. I guess we’ll wait and see, huh?”

“This’ll only take a second,” Art says, and that voice makes Brontë fucking laugh again. And he freezes for a split second, as he sees two people coming down the path, and if they look, if they notice-

“Ha! You’re absolutely right.” There’s this thing men like the man he’s pretending to be often do, and that is to act like nobody could ever notice them, like there is nothing to be seen. Because to be seen, for them, is not dangerous. It isn’t a bad thing to be noticed. So they’re as loud as they want to be. “You know, I don’t think anyone gives you enough credit, Senator. Despite everything, you’re still god damn funny.”

He talks louder, not like he needs to be heard, but like he doesn’t need to be silent. And the people walking past cast glances his way, and immediately look away. He sees them only out of the corner of his eye, because he’s not looking at them, because he doesn’t care. The man he’s pretending to be doesn’t give a shit about those people. He has a purpose, and he’s meant to be here, and the man opening this lock for him is completely legitimate.

“Got it.” Art doesn’t drop the voice. “Bugger.”

“Oh, good. One moment, Senator.” He turns, lowering the phone from his ear as if he’s actually being listened to. “We’re in?”

Art hangs the now-open lock on the gate itself. “Yup. Come on in.”

Brontë can’t help himself but to hurry just a little. At least it looks like hustling he’s meant to be doing. “That fucking voice,” he hisses under his breath. “Stop making me laugh.”

Art grins sideways as he also lowers his volume. “I’m in character. Glad you found yours, too. You’re the reason nobody thinks I’m being shifty right now, so thank you.”

Brontë does suppose that he took the attention off of the lockpicking. “Just tell me what else you need.”

“Don’t look up at any cameras. We’re unlikely to show up on any and I’ll keep us away from them, plus I’ll make sure they’re erased, but we don’t want to draw any security guards’ attention. Otherwise, just follow me. Wait outside in the hallway and keep that phone call up. It’s obnoxious and it’s perfect.”

Brontë’s heart is beating fast, but Art’s quick touch on his arm is all he needs to stay focused. “Got it.”

This door is unlocked, and suddenly Brontë is standing in a back hallway of Parliament fucking House, as if it’s a place he’s been every day for months; in fact, he must pretend this it is. The floors are polished tile that Art walks over with exactly the comfortable gait of someone who cleans these floors for a living. Brontë follows with his beating heart in his throat and he’s smiling despite it.

“Yup. Oh, don’t you worry about that.” How many phrases do overconfident white men always say? Brontë pictures Greggs, at the fucking water cooler, talking some shit about his wife too loud. “Oh, wouldn’t you believe it. Did I tell you about that?”

Pause for response. A woman in a pantsuit passes them without even looking twice. Art takes a sudden turn off the hallway and Brontë pivots, has to pretend he just wasn’t paying attention to where they were going. Shrugs it off.

“It’s unbelievable. Frankly unbelievable.” He wonders if he’s being too loud. Art peers in through a door’s window and passes by it. “I tell ya, it’s pretty simple, nowhere near as complicated as people these days wanna make things. Remember when things were simple?”

He’s basically just pretending to be Greggs, now, biting back annoyance at his own words. Life has never been simple for anyone but those who got everything handed to them. Most of the world never got that. Brontë got a lot of things handed to him, that’s a realisation he’s had in recent years- and a realisation in recent days is just what got taken from him.

“Nah, I wouldn’t worry about it.” More phrases that are empty when said to no one. Art looks through another window in a door, stops, and pulls out the lockpicks again. So Brontë turns around, leaning against the wall with a leg up against it. “Yeah, no. Mhmm. Yeah.”

Nobody’s passing down the hallway. “It’s going better than I initially thought, but then again, the initial projections were always good.”

The door clicks open, far faster than it has any right to. Brontë suppresses his shock and does as he’s been told: stands in the hallway, pretends to be on call with the Senator, and it’s this easy. He sees people walk past the adjoining hallway, and none look at him for more than a second. A polite smile, a wave even. As long as he keeps talking with confidence, he belongs here.

It hits him with easy grace. All you have to do is know what lie to tell, and you’ll get away with it.

It’s not like this demystifies what Art does- his uncanny ability to know exactly what needs to be said still marks intelligence unparalleled, some kind of magic in Brontë’s mind- but the fact that it’s not more complicated than this still shocks him. All Art needed from him was someone who could wear a suit and look professional because that’s all that was needed to break into Parliament fucking House.

Art comes out of the room and locks it behind him. “Alright,” he says quietly, “now to get out.”

“Have we got it?” Brontë asks, still in his politician’s assistant voice. “Oh, wonderful. Too easy, huh?”

Art smirks a little, and it’s hard to tell if he’s just laughing at Brontë or not. Brontë’s heart is still racing, especially as Art mutters, “I’m leaving out the way we came, but you need to leave out the front door.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say, Senator?”

“It’s weirder if you leave out a back door. Just stroll out the front and I’ll meet you under the flags. Fuck.”

Brontë swallows his racing heart. He doesn’t have time to argue, and if anything, the fact that they’ve gotten this far instils a trust in him that Art has a plan, that he did this plan for a reason.

He just kind of wishes he was given more warning. Perhaps a chance to explain that he isn’t even entirely sure where the front door is.

“Oh, of course. I’ll just have to see if I can find that for you.” He puts the glare he wants to give Art into his words. “Let me see, um…”

Art walks slowly into the adjoining hall, in a way Brontë reads as a suggestion that he’s to follow- and Art stops, rubs at an invisible dirt spot on an emergency exit map. Brontë pauses, wonders what the hell that was about, tries to see what he rubbed off- and when he turns back around, Art is gone. Even knowing his disguise, Brontë almost passes over the grey silhouette at the end of the hallway.

“Oh, of course, of course.” Brontë mutters to the invisible Senator. Then it clicks why Art drew his attention to a fucking map, with a helpful little you are here sign and paths drawn to exits. “Oh, no, I see. Thank you, Senator.”

He’s not confident without Art. He has to hold onto the fact that Art believes this should be easy enough to do on his own. He has to meet Art out there. And he can’t get caught.

He forgets, for a second, that there’s another way out, should he need it. But blowing his cover this late is the nuclear option, and even if it wasn’t, he doesn’t want to fail. Is it weird to be so fixated on not failing Art?

He follows the path he silently memorised. Third left, right, go straight. Cross the big hall and there’s the light. He can see that there’s almost no security at the moment, just one guy, standing near the doors, not even looking at him.

“Of course, Senator,” Brontë says with all the confidence in his entire soul, “it’ll just be one moment, if you don’t-“

“Excuse me, sir.”

Brontë’s heart stops. He hates that his first instinct is to hesitate, to try to act like he didn’t hear. He lowers the phone from his ear. “Sorry?”

“Sorry, sir. I’ve got just one question for you.”

15

Brontë goes through the five stages of grief before the guard even finishes his sentence.

Brontë sizes the man up; he certainly looks like a security guard, in the same way Brontë looks like a politician’s assistant, although he doubts this man is twice undercover like Brontë is in this moment. Everything Art told him to say has disappeared from his mind, but even if it hadn’t, it was irrelevant- it was about breaking in. Not breaking out.

“One moment.” Brontë holds his breath, remembers Art’s words. What would he do if the lie was real? “I’ll call you back in a minute, Senator. I’m nearly out, as it is. Bye.”

He pretends to press a button on his locked phone screen, held where the guard can’t see it.

“Yes, how can I help you?” Brontë asks. The voice of a politician makes him sound more impatient.

“Won’t be a moment,” the guard says. He stands casually, arms crossed; he’s actually wearing sunglasses, too. “I was just wondering if perhaps you’d seen anyone around who looks like they don’t quite belong here?”

Brontë’s entire body is hit with a shock like ice, and he hopes, against all hope, that the look on his face is innocent confusion. Because he is confused. Not innocently, but he is confused.

Is this a threat?

“I wouldn’t say so,” he remarks, and adrenaline is the only thing that keeps his voice even. “Why?”

“We’ve received reports that there’s potentially a trespasser on the premises. Nothing to worry about,” the guard adds hastily, and Brontë stares at him, takes in the sick joke that the powers that be must be playing on him. “I was just looking to substantiate these reports at all.”

What would he do if the lie was real? Well, he’d be indulging the part of him that’s curious. And not the part that wants to run immediately. “A trespasser? Shouldn’t we be far more concerned?”

The guard only seems slightly surprised at that. “No, no. The report comes from a mother who claims to have lost her daughter in here, that’s all. She didn’t say her age, but it sounded like we’re looking for a teenage girl. You didn’t see anyone like that?”

Something still feels off, but Brontë no longer thinks it’s the security guard. “No,” he says, “I certainly have not. I’ll let you know if I see her.”

The guard nods. “Thanks. Carry on, then.”

And Brontë is home free.

He wishes it was complete elation. He wishes he could run, unbounded, towards the flags, yelling that they did it. He wishes he could even say those words when he finds Art. They certainly did it. At least, Brontë assumes they have. But he has to walk very, very casually, slowly, pretending to be on the phone again, down the walk, past dozens of people who will never have a clue that whatever just happened, he had a huge part to play in it.

He almost forgets, again, that he’s undercover. He’ll have to reckon with his part in this eventually. But not today.

Not as he sees Art standing under one of the flags. Art catches his eye from quite a while away, and begins to walk away- and Brontë knows he’s being lead. He follows Art down a whole side street from some distance, anticipatory. His heart is in his throat again and it’s good, it’s so good, that Brontë wants to scream.

The moment they’re out of sight of Parliament House, Art turns around, crosses the last bit of distance between them at a run, and throws his arms around Brontë. There isn’t even a second of hesitation before he’s kissing him and suddenly Brontë’s heart is exploding and they got away with it. They got away with it.

Even if they didn’t get away from everyone.

“Was that it?” Brontë finds himself asking in incredulity, taking Art’s face in his hands. He might look weird, different, not quite Art, but his kiss can’t fool Brontë. “Did you do it? How?”

“Fried the servers. Fuck. And the security cameras, too. I’ve got a friend who works in IT and she made sure that the right stuff was backed up and oopsies, this shit wasn’t. And it was so easy. We’ll make it so hard to pass the bill- they’ve have to write it all again, and when they do we can fuck it up again, and get it seen as cursed, and it just won’t get passed. We did it, Neil, fuck.”

He shivers, and his voice is rising in excitement, and Brontë can see in the depths of his eyes something that makes him kiss Art again. And again. It’s some emotion, rising in his throat, and he hasn’t felt this in- has he ever? Not like this.

Not like this.

“Did you get held up?” Art asks, and it’s an unfortunate reminder that it isn’t all that simple. Brontë knows the shape of the answer before the pieces actually come together.

“Not because we got caught,” Brontë says, “at least, I don’t think. He asked me if I’d seen a teenage girl, because apparently-“ Brontë looks behind him, just in case anyone is there- “a mother called saying her daughter was in there.”

“Fuck.” That’s not a tic. Art says that one as a long groan, leaning his head against Brontë’s chest- and Brontë’s heart is fluttering again, suddenly every thought levelled to the ground. He runs his fingers through Art’s hair, and it feels like something he’s been wanting to do for decades. “How did she know we were there? If people are ratting, I’ll- I’ll…”

His breath catches, and he grabs a fistful of Brontë’s jacket, clutching onto him for dear life. He clicks. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

His voice sounds defeated. Before he moves, he reaches up, undoing Brontë’s tie, and Brontë watches his face, trying to find out what’s shifted beneath it. “What will you do?” he asks, nervous. It didn’t sound like he cut off something horrible for Brontë’s benefit. Brontë hopes not.

Art’s brow furrows, and he takes a moment to respond. “We’ve talked a bit about my mother. I don’t want to be morbid, but it’s safe to say that my instinct, sometimes, is what she taught me. I never follow it, but I get angry, you know? I’ve always hated that I have the capacity to be her.”

“Have you ever? Been her?”

“Not really. I take pride in her disappointment, sometimes.” Art’s undoing the top of his own jumpsuit, tying it around his waist, letting the white shirt underneath change the outfit completely. “But it’s not like her half of my genes disappeared. I can feel her ghost a lot of the time. I think of how I’d feel if I found out someone ratted and I feel so much anger that I know I could ruin their life, and yet, I…”

Brontë takes Art’s hand, as casually and simply as if they do this all the time. “For one, you fight that,” Brontë says, “and two, the worst you jump to, that you’re so ashamed about, is ruining their life? That’s something any teenager can threaten. You could easily be a serial killer with the power you have, and yet, it didn’t even cross your mind.”

He’s no longer afraid that Art is hiding some worse behaviour from him. It doesn’t even cross his mind not to defend him. He knows why, because he’s holding his hand, because he doesn’t even have to be drunk to kiss him anymore. Because Art is the first person for whom he’s had feelings he could chase, in any real way- and it’s weighing heavily on him that he can’t chase them until the ends of the earth.

Art winces. “Please don’t remind me.”

“Of what?” Brontë’s voice trembles, just that little bit, because what else could Art say other than something horrible?

“I don’t want you to have this- this squeaky clean image of me.” Art says it with such a grave seriousness that Brontë will never believe, in any world, that this is a play, a lie. Because Art won’t stop ticcing- always his left eye, his left arm, as he holds onto Brontë with his right, and that right hand is shaking ever so slightly. “I know I can be her, because I have been. When she asked me to be, when I was young. Fuck. I haven’t properly held a gun in my actual hands since I was nineteen because it reminds me I have perfect aim.”

There’s a gravity in his words, like they carry something he won’t name. Brontë gently pushes him to say it, because he doesn’t want to believe it, won’t, until he hears those words. “When’s the last time you shot one?”

“Fuck. I was fourteen. Fuck. The first time, I was eight, and her arms were around me, but I didn’t need her to point the gun for me. I just knew what to do. Fuck. I remember- I’m sorry.” He stops entirely, a shuddering breath escaping his lips, and Brontë squeezes his hand. “I make sure I don’t forget their names.”

“Their n-“ Brontë stops. What else does perfect aim mean, if not that Art had always shot exactly where his mother wanted him to? “Fucking hell, your- your mother should rot in hell. Or prison. She made you do that at eight?”

“All of us had to- someone, before we were twelve. It was her way of making sure we were never innocent, we could never claim to be victims, and that we were strong enough to live the life she wanted. Fuck.” Art’s grip on Brontë’s hand tightens. “Don’t think I always did it shaking and crying, Neil, because I didn’t. I wanted to impress her. By the time I was a teenager, I recognised how bad it was, I lied my way into stopping, but- but there’s a part of me that held a gun straight and took someone’s life just because I was asked to.”

“I would never fucking- listen to me.” Brontë stops in his tracks, and he grabs Art’s shoulders, forces him to look him in the eyes. “My daughter is fourteen now. My son is twelve. They’re smart and they’re learning to come to their own conclusions in life, but they’re only just, now, exploring what they want in life, and that’s when me and my ex are doing our absolute best to let them. I can’t imagine them having to figure out morality on their own, how to untangle themselves from that kind of guilt, at that age. Every eight year old would do what their mother told them, especially when they’re too young to understand death. I know I can’t undo years of guilt that she’s woven into your soul, but listen to me- you weren’t always the genuinely kind, loving, moral person you are now, not because there’s something inside of you that’s bad or wrong, but because you didn’t have a choice. From the moment you had the capacity to be good, you chose to be good.”

Art is crying. Brontë hesitates, but actively chooses, then, to wipe those tears away. Art’s eyes are red from it, but the grey looks overcast at best. There are clouds, but no rain.

“I’m not good,” Art says, and at first Brontë assumes he wasn’t listening, or doesn’t believe him. “I’ve lied bad enough to hurt a lot of people, and I haven’t stopped. I know what you’d think if you knew what I’ve done, Neil, and I don’t think you’d forgive me.”

“Why does it fucking matter if I’d forgive you?” Brontë takes Art’s hand again, starts to lead him back towards the hotel. “Do you know who I’ve hurt with my lying? It’s only just hitting me that I spent fifteen years pretending I was attracted to one of my best friends, how- I’m going to have to apologise for that.” Brontë swallows as another hard truth hits him. “And I’ve lied to you, too.”

A heavy, thick silence falls, and Brontë’s heart drops, because- not because the mission has failed, even though in that second he’s certain it has and it’s his fault- but because he can’t recover from this. He can’t just tell Art, the fucking genius who could guess everything about him from sight alone, that the one thing he missed is that he’s a fucking cop. That he got here trying to bust him.

“Not in the same way,” Art mutters, with an air of finality. “I have one thing I’m not saying that I don’t know how to tell you. I need time, and I…”

“Me too.” Brontë uses his power of not thinking too hard to stop himself from thinking about what Art might see in his eyes. If he doesn’t think about the truth, maybe Art can’t read his mind. “I have some things to figure out.”

Art shakes his head, begins to reiterate, “not in the same way-“, but Brontë doesn’t let him finish.

“I have a proposition.” Brontë waits a moment, hears Art’s caught breath. “For now, until the moment we know how to say it, we let these secrets go. For now, they don’t matter, we agree they won’t matter, and when we tell them we can decide for ourselves if they matter. Okay?”

“You’d agree to that?” Art asks after a moment, “…even without knowing just how bad it is?”

Brontë resists the urge to roll his eyes, or to ask Art how he can be so adorably careful with Brontë’s heart when he barely knows the man. He could say that of course he can, when Art’s making the same promise. But all of that complicates the simple truth.

“I’ll let you lie to me,” Brontë tells him, “because I trust you. And I shouldn’t. But that’s not going to stop me.”

16

Art doesn’t seem to quite grasp just how little Brontë wants to think about anything outside of the hotel room. Brontë all but slams the door behind them, shoves Art up against it, kisses him before he can speak. Art pushes him back for a moment, goes to say something, and Brontë puts a finger to Art’s lips. “We promised,” he whispers, and he doesn’t mean it to come out as a whisper, but it does. “I’ll forgive you from now until I know why I shouldn’t.”

Everything Brontë feels when he kisses Art is beautiful; fireworks and light, soft and warm and exploding in his chest, unable to be held down. Art is a thunderstorm, but Brontë is a lightning rod. He can feel Art’s tears on his cheeks like rain, and all of a sudden the emotion bursting out of Art can’t be held in, and he leaps to Brontë, clutches at him, kisses him like Brontë is life and Art is on the brink of death.

Brontë feels that, in every movement of their bodies. He pulls Art’s shirt over his head, because he needs to feel his skin under his. Art’s burning hot, and he shivers at Brontë’s touch, leans into it anyway.

It’s not like Brontë hasn’t had sex before. There was David. There were girls at college parties; there was Debbie. Art’s body is not the first Brontë’s held under his hands, not by a long shot.

With David, they kissed clumsily, and the shame weighed over everything- but there was this underlying desire that drew them together like magnets, nothing that could properly keep them apart. Brontë was rationalising what his body so desperately wanted to do, and the awkwardness of it remained in his memory years later, alongside the burning desire that it had been more.

When he’d go to college parties in the nineties, he was accepted by people he barely understood, because he could talk like them, walk like them, laugh at their jokes- even though he knew he wasn’t the same. Sex was something he wanted for reasons that weren’t intrinsic. His mates set him up with their girlfriends’ less pretty friends, and after a few drinks, those girls would find some empty room and throw him on the bed. He couldn’t really tell the difference between which girls were pretty and which ones weren’t.

Sometimes they had passion, and he tried to emulate that. Sometimes they seemed to want it as over with as he did. It was empty, it was dull, it was as satisfying as masturbating while staring at the roof at times. He liked it when he focused on the physical feeling, the warmth and the friction and the tightening of muscles and the hands on his chest; objectively, they knew what they were doing, even when they didn’t. He’d never got that far with David, they’d never known how, but at least he liked David.

Still, when he’d found a best friend in Debbie, and believed what he’d been told- that when a man liked a woman it was love- he’d proposed to her, and marriage came with a preset script that they’d have sex. Before that, he had thought the problem was that he didn’t love the women whose names he barely knew, and it was true that sex with Debbie was better. They could laugh, and she cared about learning his body, and he tried too to learn hers; there was a connection, of some kind, and he had to ignore the hole that he would feel inside of himself afterwards, because he assumed his expectations were just too high. Eventually, that hole swallowed their marriage, and now that Brontë looks himself in the eye, he sees the one thing that was missing- the one thing he’d only ever had with David before.

Never, ever in Brontë’s life had he thought that all of it was possible at once.

The attraction. His hands running over Art’s ribs, the way they ran over David’s, and feeling something other than the emptiness of missing something crucial- because what was crucial was here, in the feeling of Art’s stubble, and the blonde chest hair, and the depth of his voice when he moans so lightly at Brontë’s lips on his neck that he probably thinks Brontë can’t hear him. Brontë has never stopped to think about what he likes; he once claimed to like tomboys, blondes, maybe because those parts were as close to the truth as he could get. He likes the fact that he can pick up Art, that Art’s legs wrap around his waist, that when he carries him to the bed and he falls back on it he looks up at him with those intense eyes so darkly that Brontë feels wanted, not just by anyone, but by Art.

The skill, the least important thing but there nonetheless. Art’s shrugging off Brontë’s jacket, undoing the buttons of his shirt as fast as he can, clutching him close with his legs like he’s afraid of letting Brontë go. His hands, too, wander Brontë’s torso, and he knows that the light touch makes Brontë shiver, tests the waters and digs his nails in slightly, and how did he guess that Brontë would like that, just a little?

Art’s biting his lip like he’s never seen someone so gorgeous before, and Brontë has to kiss him. He has to kiss him to stop him from looking with such adoration, because Brontë’s heart is bursting, and that’s too much when everything inside of him is on fire already.

Because there’s that, too, the connection. The way Art’s arms wrap around his back, holding him so close, and they fit together like Brontë was carved out of the same clay as Art. It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t even meet that long ago, because there’s familiarity, as if Art’s ability to pick everything on sight let him know Brontë so deeply, so quickly. The only thing he can’t pick is that Brontë’s admired him for so long from some distant tower, committed himself to taking him down because he was fascinated and there was no other way to let that fascination grow. It feels like they’ve known each other for months at least, years, or maybe it’s just chemistry, the way Art seems to know how sensitive Brontë’s neck is, the pleasant shiver it sends down his spine.

Every time Brontë makes eye contact with Art, he knows he’s in so, so much deeper than he was ever prepared to be. He’s in deeper than he knew it was possible to be. Art is seeing into his soul, and Brontë is letting him, because the only way Art can pull him so wide open is to leave his own heart completely uncovered. And Brontë wants that heart, for better, for worse, for everything.

They don’t say anything. They both know there are things they aren’t saying, and the truth of that should weigh on Brontë’s soul, but he’s promising, when he kisses Art, that he’s not going to let it matter. The logistics will matter later; how Brontë will keep his job from breaking Art’s heart will be figured out someday that isn’t today. In this second, he can’t imagine allowing Art to be hurt.

Art’s undoing Brontë’s belt, and it feels like they can’t get enough skin on skin on skin; Brontë wants to envelop Art, to feel him entirely, and it burns inside him with an intensity he can’t say he’s ever felt. He’s felt love and he’s felt lust and he’s felt closeness but he’s never felt the intensity of everything coming together, and it scares him to think that it matters this much, but it does. It matters so much.

He runs his hands over Art’s chest, the scars of top surgery that Art was worried about him seeing yesterday. As if it would’ve ever mattered to Brontë, as if there would be anything in this world that would stop him from wanting Art in his entirety, knowing everything he knows. Art is safe, and he’s warm, and he’s got some space for Brontë in his heart somehow; he kisses him like he means it and Brontë’s heart beats faster in a way it maybe never has. Maybe Brontë felt love like this sneaking glances at David from across the classroom; maybe he felt lust like this with all the boys who’d lean a little too close in college; maybe he felt this kind of understanding after five years of marriage to his best friend. He’s never known he could feel this much, though.

Art looks like he’s about to cry again, as Brontë’s admiring his chest with a bitten lip, and Art grips the back of Brontë’s head, pulls him down to kiss him. “We should- we should talk,” he says, and Brontë shakes his head furiously.

“Maybe we should. But I don’t want to.”

“It’s not what you think-“

“Art.” Brontë kisses him again, just to shut him up. “Listen to me, okay? I know it’s complicated in reality. I know. I don’t want it to be complicated. It’s simple right now, in this room, and- can we just pretend that nothing else matters? Just for now? Not your mum, not your secret, not my secret, nothing. We just broke into Parliament and I-“

Brontë can’t end that sentence. He kisses him again, and he needs it to be one of his first, not one of his last; he needs this moment to last forever, he needs to have a thousand more moments like this. This cannot be where it ends.

He cannot return to the real world. Not when Art is superreal, arching up into his touch, electrifying underneath his fingers. When the pulse in Art’s neck below Brontë’s lips beats as fast as Brontë’s own heart; when Brontë’s hand, gripping Art’s hip as he travels down the length of his body to uncover more, just that simple touch makes Art moan against his shoulder like it’s heavenly. How, after this, is Brontë meant to return to his cold house, alone? For what? The law? Is there some law stronger than the raw emotion in Art’s grey eyes that forces Brontë to kiss him one more time, lest the feeling overwhelm him, become too much to bear?

Brontë recognises what’s been hiding in his soul. He looks it in the face, knows it, the animal truth, and it hurts him to know he couldn’t have kissed Art fifteen years sooner. It is agony to finally strip Art of his clothes entirely, to have the man laid out in front of him, looking up at him flushed and breathing hard and so wanting that the guilt hanging over him is nearly imperceptible. It’s agony because it’s what Brontë should have been doing every day of his life, and how could he not know? How could they only have gotten here today, so late?

“I need you now,” Brontë says, and the pain in his voice is more evident than he was prepared for it to be. “There is not a single thing you could possibly say that would change that, and I- I hope you know that mine is worse.”

“I need you now, too,” Art says, pulling Brontë close again, their foreheads together, “and that’s what makes it so bad.”

“I know.” Brontë swallows back his own guilt. He has a chance to change it. Will he? Will it even be as possible as he wants it to be? Will it matter to him later like it tears his soul apart now? “I know. Don’t take now away from me, Art, this is the first time I’ve felt like I’ve seen clearly in years. I’m sorry for what will happen later but I can’t ever apologise for now.”

“Fuck. Why is this-“ Art’s blinking back tears again, and Brontë can see the weight he’s carrying. That’s part of why he won’t let him think about it anymore. He can’t drop a weight like that and swing back easily; it’ll be the end when he says it. The beautiful illusion will drop. “Will you trust me?”

“Despite everything,” Brontë whispers. “Because of everything. I trust you.”

He’s said it just enough times that Art finally believes him. Maybe Brontë shouldn’t trust him, but he doesn’t care if he’s wrong to do so. He does. That’s the truth.

Art pulls Brontë down, pushes him sideways, and Brontë’s back hits the bed. His body is stiffer than it used to be, and he can’t see the appeal of it anymore, if he ever could. It’s invisible to him, whatever Art is seeing as he clambers on top of him, looks down at him like he still can’t believe his eyes. Art leans down to kiss him again, and he grinds down as he does, and Brontë’s breath catches in the back of his throat. He wasn’t even thinking about himself, about how this has affected him, until he can feel Art through two layers, until he can feel how painfully aroused he is from what feels like nothing at all.

Art stands just so he can pull those layers off. “Part of me wants to take my time with you,” he says, his voice lower than Brontë’s ever heard it, the grit of his words friction itself over Brontë’s aching cock, “like you’re a virgin, just to see every little thing that turns you on, to drag it all out of you.”

He bites his lip, and he shivers, combining it with a blinking tic. “But at the same time, I just…” he trails off, and Brontë realises Art’s just staring at his cock for a moment. He looks up, makes eye contact, grins widely. “I don’t have the patience for that, Neil.”

Brontë’s never much liked his first name, but he likes the way Art says it, with that deep lilt that controls Brontë’s soul. Art mutters something in Russian, something that warrants a dark look as he climbs back up. “One day,” he says, leaning down and kissing him again, as if confirming that he can’t go without. “But for now…”

He makes eye contact, and Brontë knows that his heart is bared. He’s known every single second since they entered this hotel room again that Art sees him entirely. He sees him entirely, and they know each other completely as Art sinks down onto Brontë.

Brontë breathes heavily, as does Art, and they look at each other, Art searching Brontë’s eyes for the recognition he gives him immediately. Art shudders, sinking slowly, and the warmth envelops Brontë; it’s the same but it’s different, just as all of this is the same but it’s different. Brontë wasn’t expecting this, didn’t know how Art would feel about it. He and David never got past hands and mouths, so he can’t compare to that, but Art feels different than the women Brontë’s fucked. He’s tighter, warmer, not as easily wet- less sweet, more savoury, the difference between white wine and red.

Brontë pulls Art close to him, to kiss him one more time; their bodies fit together exactly, both in the way Art takes Brontë completely inside him, breathing heavily like it takes a lot to manage it, and the way that Brontë holds him, slotting their limbs together. Art fits in the cradle of Brontë’s body like he was never meant to be anywhere else.

Art mutters something else in Russian, and all Brontë has to go by is the deep groan of his voice, the pleasure underlying it all- and the feeling that he knows exactly what’s going on inside Art’s mind.

Brontë begins to move, slowly, letting Art adjust to the gentle movement bit by bit. Art’s muscles clench tight around Brontë, and neither can quite keep silent.

Art wraps his arms around Brontë’s neck, and he won’t stop kissing him- like he risks running out of air, like he risks saying something that’ll burn the moment down. He moans against his mouth, and every single thing that Brontë can feel, he can hear Art moaning the same, as if the same nerves are firing, as if they’re the same person, as if they’re melting into each other and no borders remain.

Art straightens up, reaching down to get himself off as he takes the effort unto himself, moving with a practised grind. Brontë grips Art’s hips, not needing to guide him, just wanting to feel him, to touch him, to have as much of him as he can within his reach.

The moment should last forever. Brontë pretends it does, pretends he can just hold onto Art and keep time from ever moving on. But everything is too perfect.

Brontë was never going to last that long. He never knew that would be a problem of his, because he never knew he could feel like this. He arches up into Art, tries to warn him, and Art just bites his lip again and looks down at Brontë with what Brontë wants so bad to call love, and he promises, “it’s fine, it’s fine,” in a breathless whisper that Brontë decides against all logic to trust, like everything else about Art.

The fireworks in his body usually mean nothing. There’s always an emptiness to them, like everything, an emptiness that Brontë had assumed was just part of life. But now, every muscle in his body feels this, down to his heart, because it’s Art. He’s holding Art in his hands, and Art’s looking at him like that, and he’s perfect, and everything is perfect and full and Brontë can never return to the emptiness again.

He’s breathing heavily, each movement of Art too much now, and Art’s got one hand on Brontë’s chest to steady himself. “Stay there,” he says, the low growl in his voice still doing so much, even now. “You’re perfect, you’re-“

Brontë has to watch him, can’t let his face go, as he throws his head back, and the contractions of his muscles pull aftershocks out of Brontë, so good that it hurts. Art comes down to meet him again, to kiss him again, as passionate as before. Getting his breath again.

There’s a moment, a long moment that Brontë will hold onto forever, where Art holds Brontë’s face in his hands, and there’s a smile on his face that it doesn’t even look like he knows about, just looking at Brontë. Saying nothing; just looking. Seeing him, and smiling.

And then the moment is stolen by a knock on the door.

17

“Fuck,” Art whispers as he scrambles up, and Brontë’s left sitting on the bed, cold now, watching Art like he can’t quite be real. He sits up, trying to process why Art could possibly be panicking. And then he’s hit with the realisation that the problems they left at the door will still be waiting there, regardless of if they acknowledge them or not.

“Who-“ he begins, but Art makes a ssh motion, silently. He’s continuously blinking, but he’s actively holding down his left arm with his right, like that’s helping him suppress a tic.

Art looks through not the peephole, but the crack in the side of the door, as there’s another impatient knock- and then he’s suddenly got Brontë’s face in his hands, and he kisses him again, just one more time, with a whispered request: “just hold her off, okay? Try and convince her I’m not here, but if that fails, I’ve got a plan. I-“

He stops, stutters, and then there’s a third, more insistent knock, and Art drops to the floor, sliding under the bed.

Brontë gets up, his heart in his throat. “H-hold on!” he calls out, the slurring of his voice making him sound tired. He shoves all the clothes they had abandoned on the floor under the bed. He can feel the weight of multiple phones in pockets, so at least Art has that way out, even if Brontë doesn’t. “Just one- second!”

The person knocks a fourth time, as if deliberately ignoring what he’s saying, and Brontë can’t be annoyed. As much as he wants to be, annoyance isn’t something he can spare for her.

-but if it were true, that he had no idea who she was, he would be annoyed. So he’s a little slower taking the robe out of the bathroom, a little slower wrapping it around himself and answering the door. Answering the door like he isn’t shaking.

“Hello?” "Hello?" He hopes his bleary eyes can pass as sleepiness. He hopes it isn't obvious that he knows exactly who he's opening the door for, and that he's never been more afraid in his life.

The woman who smiles up at him is far shorter than he expected her to be. Her smile is ice-cold, and so are her eyes. Her ponytail is pulled back so tight that he’d worry for her scalp; it’s hard to tell what’s silver and what’s platinum blonde. She doesn’t look a lot like Art, although maybe she would, if there was any warmth about her at all.

“Hi.” Her voice is clipped. She sounds like every annoying, older white person who speaks to Brontë like they’re part of some secret club, that’s better than everyone else. Brontë is lucky that he never truly felt he could be a part of that club. He pretends, right now, that that’s all he knows about her, and it’s easier to draw his eyebrows together in slight disdain. Easier, but the fear still has a grip of him. “My name is Anastasia. Can I speak with you?”

If she could see how fast his pulse is, if she could sense it beating in his neck like a lioness might sense her prey’s, she would know it was an act. Did Art get his skills of deduction from her? He’s deduced all of Brontë’s secrets but one. Can Anastasia deduce that he knows exactly who she is?

Brontë sniffs, rubs his nose. The kinds of things a scared person wouldn’t do, but a tired, confused person would. Attention to detail, as if Art is grading him from his hiding place under the bed. “Can you speak with me?”

He tries to put the onus of explaining herself onto her, like she isn’t Anastasia fucking Volkov, like he didn’t listen merely an hour ago to how she made her eight-year-old child kill people. Like he doesn’t know that she’s chasing that same child down, that he’s hiding under the bed.

“Yes.” Her confidence that that’s all she needs to say makes Brontë want to believe her instinctively, but as she leans on the door, trying to press it open, that’s plausible deniability for Brontë to press back, to keep it held between them. She puts more pressure on, just to test if they’re really going to play tug-of-war for her entrance, but they are. “Can I come in?”

“I’m sorry, but am I supposed to know what this is about?” Brontë affects the same spirit he was trying to invoke earlier, the middle-aged white man who knows exactly what he is and wants and deserves. The man Brontë was meant to be, but never really was, because that man has a cold edge to his heart that Brontë doesn’t have. And that man is actually straight. “Who are you?”

Anastasia Volkov affects a freezing smile. She knows she can’t physically win this fight, but she also knows that there is no world in which this comes to blows. “The mother of the girl you’re hiding in here, darling. I know how these things work. Let me in.”

Brontë bites his cheek to prevent the anger showing. He knows Art’s lied to his mother, knows that she doesn’t know- or doesn’t respect, quite possibly both- the fact that Art is her son, actually. But at least it’s possible to call that disrespect accidental or unknowing. It’s not possible to pretend she doesn’t know that Art is thirty-six and not someone who needs chasing up by their mother.

“Excuse me?” What would he do if it were real? If someone he didn’t know said that him while he was just in here alone? “Look, lady- Anastasia?- you have the wrong hotel room, alright? I’m on a business trip. There’s no girls in here.”

She ducks under his arm, and he turns suddenly, knowing that the only thing he could possibly do to stop her now is to physically restrain her. And she’s counting on him not doing that. “Mhmm. Considering her phone is in here, I do find that unlikely. Mr…?”

“Hold on just one second. You’ve tracked your daughter’s phone in here, and instead of thinking that maybe those phone tracking things are slightly inaccurate, you’re barging into a stranger’s hotel room. Can you-“

She holds up her hand, with such force and confidence that Brontë stops speaking, against his own desire. He hates how involuntary it was. “What’s your name?”

He loses sight of the lie. “I’m not giving you my name. Get out of my hotel room.”

“Considering that this room is not in your name, Neil Brontë, I will not be leaving your hotel room.”

Brontë is fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. Does he lie? Pretend not to understand? Admit it? Tell the whole truth?

Pull the only rank he has left and fuck everything up with Art forever? He doesn’t have his badge or handcuffs or any weapons, but he knows he doesn’t need them. He knows his badge number off by heart and when he calls triple zero and has on duty officers sent his way, that’s all he needs to tell them. And then he’ll never get to speak to Art again.

He waits too long to make a decision, and his silence is his answer. “I talked to the nice lady at the front desk,” Anastasia Volkov says casually, “and she informed me, quite politely, that two people entered this room not so long ago. Perhaps she has you fooled with her disguise? She sometimes goes by Artemy. Is that ringing more bells, now?”

Brontë can’t speak. “I- you barge into- you- what do you want?”

Anastasia Volkov seems to have grown bored of him. “Come on out, dear, Mama just wants to talk.” Her voice grows high-pitched, condescending. “I know you’ve been avoiding me, Junior. I gave you so many chances.”

“Don’t ignore me.” Brontë doesn’t know where the courage comes from. He stands tall, takes a step towards Anastasia. She’s barely five feet tall, far too skinny, her hands wrinkled and showing her age far more than her face; she is fragile, and small, and he will not be intimidated by her complete certainty that he could never hurt her. He wouldn’t, but he could, and the way he might is becoming more and more likely. “I have no idea what authority you think you have here, but I will need you to back down and leave.”

Anastasia looks at him for a moment, vague amusement the only emotion crossing her face. She smiles softly. “I see,” she mutters. Her accent comes through a little stronger the more Brontë listens to her. “You do not understand me, apparently. Which I find confusing, as I believe,” she pauses for effect, turning to face him directly, “…you know who I am.”

Brontë would’ve been afraid, in most worlds, of words like that. Words that suggest he’s in danger, his family is in danger, that she knows exactly who he is and what he can do- but in the moment, all he can think about is Art, under the bed, frozen and silent. He said he had a plan.

“I do know who you are.” Brontë takes another step forward, and Anastasia doesn’t back down. “Do you know who I am?”

“You are not anybody who has any authority to stop me.” Maybe she knows. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe, if she was tracking Art’s phone, she somehow saw his name in there, knows they’ve probably talked about her. Maybe she’s got a good network of information from those scared beneath her, and she’s tracked down exactly who Brontë is before Art did, knows the one thing that Art doesn’t know. There’s no way to know in this moment.

He gives her one chance to back down before he pulls the rip cord. All he can think about is a shaking eight-year-old child holding a gun, remembering the name of a blood splatter on a wall. Brontë will have a lot to explain when he gets home. And no hope of returning to the one moment he felt alive. “Would you like to test that theory? I don’t want to test it personally, Ms. Volkov. But if you continue to threaten me, I can and I will.”

“Really?” She tilts her head slowly. “What will you do? I just want to speak to my daughter, after all. Is that a crime?”

“You’re trespassing, for one. A hotel room is a private place and you are here knowingly without the occupier’s consent. All that’s required to put you away for the rest of your life, once you’re booked for that, is enough fucking time to prove everything else you know well that you’ve done.”

Anastasia laughs out loud at that. “You are so funny, do you know that? You speak laws like they’re power. Who is here to enforce these magic words? You annoy me.”

She turns from him, heading towards the bathroom door, and he bites back every urge to say I have the power, to arrest her on the spot. It’s rising, and it’s all he can do. But something keeps stopping him, and he knows exactly what it is.

“Junior!” she’s slamming her hand on the doorframe, looking in for Art, but only for a second. Brontë approaches her slowly before she’s whipped her head back around, immediately giving up on the bathroom, and the very next place she looks is admittedly the most obvious and correct. Brontë doesn’t have time to think.

Anastasia Volkov is on her knees, surprisingly nimble for an older lady, and she reaches her hand under the bed like she’s found some cardigan she lost years ago. “There you are,” she scoffs, and in that moment her voice sounds oddly familiar, although Brontë can’t place it; maybe it’s the sound of his own mother’s voice, or maybe not. “Come out here right this instant, you’ve got work to do.”

Brontë can hear Art’s strangled cry as talons pull his wrist out from under the bed, and he sees a phone clatter to the ground under his hand. Anastasia Volkov keeps talking. “Why are you making this so hard, my dear? Don’t you love your- what is on your face? Ugh.”

Brontë doesn’t know what it is that makes the difference for him. Maybe it’s the sound of something hitting the metal frame of the bed, like Art’s digging his heels in, desperate not to be removed; maybe it’s that assault is a charge floating through Brontë’s head, or that Art has been avoiding his mother for years. Maybe it’s just because she’s pissed him off enough.

Brontë doesn’t have the full story. He doesn’t know what exactly Art is afraid of, what his plan was, or what’s going to happen when he pulls the trigger. He has everything to lose. It might be the wrong decision.

But he can’t watch Art struggle and do nothing. Not when there’s a chance, any chance at all, that all of his problems could be fixed in one moment by Brontë leveraging the power he was pretending not to have this whole time.

Even if it loses Brontë Art. He’s always known it was inevitable, and returning to the real world is better than seeing Art as hurt as he could potentially be.

Brontë moves on instinct before he can really talk himself out of it; it’s as simple as seeing Art struggle, a strangled sound held back, his mother saying, confused, “what’s wrong with you?”, seeing her nails digging into his wrist and leaving red marks.

He grabs Anastasia Volkov’s arm, pulling her back and away from her son, with a practiced force that he’s used a million times before. His voice sounds blankly monotone, a thousand miles away from him, as if he can get far enough away that Anastasia will hear him, but Art won’t.

“You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”

He can’t see Art’s face, can’t hear him say anything, and he cares more about that then the incredulous crime matriarch who is now staring at him as he’s pulling her away from her son. “Do you expect me to believe you have the authority to do this? Let go of me.”

So she didn’t know. Brontë bites the inside of his cheek. Maybe there’s some universe in which he can pretend to Art that this was all a perfect bluff- but he would’ve had to tell him the truth anyway. The idea of getting out of the consequences of his actions is delicious. But it’s not happening.

“You don’t have to believe me.” He drags her back, and when he’s in this state, this mode, the exact amount of force he uses is automatic. “Security will.”

“You can’t just- let go of me!” she yells out, but Brontë is only listening for Art’s voice. Which he isn’t hearing. Brontë will have to tell him that none of this was a bluff.

“Ma’am, I have told you all I am obligated to tell you. I am a police officer with the authority to arrest you and I am happy for security to prove that to you. If you come with me politely I will not have to add resisting arrest to your charges.”

Brontë feels a thousand miles away. His hands move, and despite the strength he’s using to hold her still, Anastasia Volkov is not physical to him; she is an idea that represents the destruction of everything real. It’s silly, he thinks, as he pulls her towards the door. He was never going to be able to live in this moment.

He’ll return to his empty three-bedroom home. He’ll lie to Nimm. Say that Art got away, but he got Anastasia Volkov, so what does it matter? He’ll go through whatever empty tasks he’s given. Maybe he’ll chase Art and someday he’ll find him and he’ll be able to apologise for this. He won’t be able to do it in his police officer’s uniform, holding a gun he knows Art won’t take from him. That he knows Art could turn on him if he wanted to. That he knows Art won’t want to.

Maybe he’ll return to booking whoever the patrol cops decide have committed a crime, and try to turn off the part of his brain that wonders what it’s all for. He’s been given answers. They just don’t satisfy him, the same way that Debbie was fun and loving and kind and gentle but her kiss didn’t satisfy him quite right. It was a comparison he could never make then, but now that he’s kissed Art, he sees perfectly.

He can’t lie to Nimm. Maybe he’ll tell her the truth and she can lay it all out for him, the way she always does. He’s never tried confessing his sins in front of a priest; that wouldn’t fix his problems. He’s never tried therapy, either. But maybe someone else can see clearly what he didn’t see until Art looked at him like he was heaven and earth. He can no longer see it now that the moment is gone. Now he’s just Senior Sergeant Brontë, making an arguably off-duty arrest for technically minor charges.

He’s grabbed Anastasia by her upper arm, and she’s saying things. “Do you have any idea what I could do to you if I wanted to?” she’s saying, and Brontë should care. But he looks back at the bed, the only thought he has that’s coherent, and he can’t let go.

Movement. “Neil, wait, I-“

Anastasia turns, and makes a feeble attempt to struggle against Brontë’s grip on her arm. “What- Junior, your-“

Art gives up his last remaining cover to say these words, a deep, growling voice that voice training could never have given a cis woman, a voice that Brontë loves so much, that speaks right to his soul. That’s why Brontë is listening so closely, even as he’s pulling open the door, forcing Anastasia through it.

Art’s face peeks out from under the bed; his stormy eyes catch Brontë’s, and he says, breathing heavily, “I cheated. Double shot long black, I cheated.”

Brontë’s through the door, dragging Anastasia out into the hallway, giving Art the space he needs to escape. He doesn’t have time to question, to think- that that’s what Art broke his cover for. That that’s the most important thing Art has to say.

It hardly matters. If Art is smart- and he’s infinitely so- Brontë will never see him again.

18

Brontë has been having a bad day.

Getting Anastasia Volkov booked wasn’t hard. He gave his badge number, explained as much as he was obligated to explain, which wasn’t much, and handed the problem off to the local department, giving the relevant information to connect it to his own work. If, or when, they manage to make the connections they need to make, he’ll get credit. Probably a promotion. Maybe somewhere high enough that he can make changes that actually matter.

He knows there are more important things about this. He’s arrested the matriarch of a huge crime family- on minor charges, sure, trespassing and assault, but a criminal record opens up so many official channels that can be used to take down the entire family. He should be concerned about how his colleagues will react, about that promotion. He also should be concerned about potential consequences. She knew his name, but not his job, and neither did Art- so could they really track him down? Maybe they could. It’s a regret that’s floating around his mind, now, if he could go back in time. He’ll have to hope Art will help, as thanks, he supposes.

Because yeah, that’s the thing he’s actually thinking about. Art said he had, or would make, a plan to get himself out of there- which Brontë potentially ruined- but at the time, it didn’t feel like he had a choice. He thought, for a short moment, that he’d see Art again. When he returned to the hotel room after handing her over to security, with a promise to come down and give a statement- that he’d just go and get dressed beyond a dressing gown first- he thought Art might be there. Instead, he opened the door to a made bed, his suitcase laying on the floor beside it.

His phone was laying on the pillow. He had two texts, not far apart on timing, remarkably similar, and leaving him feeling very different. He estimated that the text from Nimm came exactly as Brontë was arguing with Anastasia fucking Volkov, while the text from Art came after Brontë had left the room with his mother under arrest.

From Nimm: I hope you’re doing okay. We need to talk when you get back.

From Art: I will talk to you when I’m ready.

Nimm’s gives Brontë a feeling of dread that he hopes is false. He wasn’t texting her nearly as much as he thought he’d be, caught up in the hurricane that was Art, and although he texted her back the second he could- yes, we need to talk, I’ll tell you everything once I’m back, I’ll be home soon- he felt the creeping sense that something was very wrong with her, too. Art had given him clear advice that he did intend to follow- to just fucking ask- but it felt almost like he was a bad friend, a bad person, that he was up in Canberra making big-time arrests for extremely personal reasons, when she was, potentially, dying. His throat keeps closing up every time he thinks of her dying.

Art’s text gives Brontë hope he knows is false. It’s confirmation that Art knows he wasn’t bluffing. But it’s also confirmation that he’s at least considering a second chance. One Brontë doesn’t deserve, can’t get, can’t make sense in the life he lives- how could a forty-eight year old divorced father ever turn his life so far around that there’s room for someone as hugely important as Art in it?- but it makes it feel possible. And still, frustratingly, out of reach.

Maybe Art could’ve said more; he certainly can text. It’s not like he had to torture Brontë with one last throwaway line that made no sense, but he did.

Brontë has turned it over and over in his head. As he gave the statement at the station, as he caught the overnight bus home, as he lay there drifting in an out of an uneasy sleep, every bone in his body heavy and tired and needing rest yet unable to relax. He tried to think of what the fuck I cheated could possibly mean.

He has concluded a few things. One is that Art would not respond to any further questions. Maybe he’d ditched his phone, or he was just angry, and in either case he felt that I cheated was enough. Maybe he’d changed his mind and decided that Brontë didn’t deserve an explanation.

Or he just expected Brontë to understand. And Brontë can’t understand.

He tried calling Nimm in the morning, as he was standing half-awake at the station in Melbourne, but the call rung out. He stood for a moment with his luggage, a broken heart, and no idea who to follow or where to go. It took some time to pick himself up off the ground.

Connecting bus to the airport, pick up his car, try to call Nimm again; this time it’s declined immediately and he gets a text.

Can’t call right now. There’s been an emergency.

Without a second thought, Brontë responds: are you okay?

I’m okay. I won’t be in to work tomorrow, though.

For a moment, he thinks that’s all he’s going to get, and he wants to be angry, the itch inside his skin so close to the surface, now, screaming that everything is unfair and he at least wants a single thing to make sense. He’s supposed to pick himself up and come into the office today, talk about the high-profile arrest he’s just made, and the one person in the precinct he actually fucking likes doesn’t have the decency to be there.

But it hits him immediately that it’s probably because she’s dying, and he just wants to cry.

She says more, though, which provides limited comfort. Something came up work-wise. I know it’s interfering with a lot of stuff, but we can discuss it at the same time as everything else.

Please let me know what’s going on when you can, he responds back. I have more to talk about than you think.

I know, she says. I miss you too.

That, at least, sounds like her, and Brontë’s heart quiets a little. He buys a shitty airport coffee, and all he can think about is Art. As much as he’s worried about Nimm, Art has him not just longing, but confused. Double shot long black. I cheated.

It’s not that Brontë can’t understand what those words might mean. It’s that he can’t fit any understanding of them into reality.

So now he’s at work, late arrival with solid explanation, and everything sucks. His boss tells him he heard what happened in Canberra and he congratulates him. He asks him about Art, and Brontë suppresses his instinct to flinch. He can do that, as easily as he can suppress every other instinct he’s ever had, and his boss is none the wiser. Brontë tells the same story he told the cops in Canberra- which is, in short, true statements with as much incriminating fact as possible cut out, and a few lies. He claims the mission Art was taking him on never eventuated. He doesn’t comment on the one bed hotel room. He claims there was no evidence of Art committing any crimes to be booked for, previous or present, nothing he could catch- and his boss, like everyone else, smiles and nods and overlooks any plot holes because he’s got a start on Anastasia Volkov.

As if Brontë gives a shit about anything other than Art.

He sits at his desk for a while and just stares. He slogs through paperwork that takes him twice as long as it normally would, and it normally takes him too long. He pulls up a Google search tab and tries to find anything on Art’s social media presence, and finds it non-existent. That makes sense. It all makes too much sense, and it tells him nothing, because there is no further information he can get from Art, about Art, that will do anything to solve the tangled mess in his heart right now.

The answer is just out of reach, and he can taste it, can feel it on the tip of his tongue like a word he just can’t form. But he can’t solve it without something crucial he’s just missing.

He’s got limited information about Anastasia’s arrest, beyond his own involvement in it; he suspects he’ll be updated once anything is finalised. He could go to the whiskey den he met Art at, knock on the door to that apartment, try to speak to him. To convince him that his crimes would be overlooked, forgiven. Because there are laws, but the police don't work to enforce them, they are a tool. Brontë intends to protect Art, to serve the people around him as best he can by making sure Art can still help them- and someone hurting them, hurting Art, is behind bars herself.

This thought is not new, or a revelation- it’s just something he’s never been able to express before. He knows, like all cops, that it isn’t about upholding the law. Law is written by humans to keep some order of things. Morality, which comes from somewhere deep in Brontë’s soul, doesn’t feel even the slightest bit bad about anything he’s seen Art do of his own volition.

Brontë looks through his emails for anything about this assignment Nimm’s been pulled up on. He hasn’t been CC’d in anything. Working from home most of the time, Nimm’s stuff is all on a laptop that isn’t here, so even if he was inclined to snoop, he can’t. She doesn’t even have a desk- Brontë’s got his own (tiny, shitty) office, so Nimm just works in here if she needs it, sitting on the corporate chair across from him. Looking up at him over her glasses every now and then, making quippy jokes and suggesting tangents that don’t lead to much work getting done- but things he has fun doing, anyway.

The only material proof of Nimm’s presence is a series of sticky notes, stuck to the side of his desk, where she’s sat on the floor and connected dots. Her handwriting is shockingly neat, each series of lines so straight and even it could be a font printed on the paper, if he hadn’t seen her writing with a marker before. ID prototype left at the meetup location. Canberra? Three days to prove safety and connect dots. To arrest or not to arrest?

Brontë’s never actually read these notes before. He’s never wanted to get too close, closer than he was wanted. It’s not that Nimm ever seemed like she wanted to hide, necessarily. When they first met, she was shier, almost cold, but now he can make the connection that she just never liked the way most cops were, deep down. She realised he was different before he understood why he was different. The man he has always been was something she saw before he did. She probably didn’t know he was gay, but that’s not the important part of what makes him different. What makes him different is that he didn’t want to arrest Art because he wasn’t hurting anyone. What makes him different is that he only used the power he had when he thought it was his only option to save someone he loved.

Nimm couldn’t have possibly known what Art was like in person. She would like him- they’re remarkably similar- and she wouldn’t have wanted to arrest him, either, because she had the same clue that Brontë had, that Art wasn’t bad.

Maybe that’s why she wrote a note saying to arrest or not to arrest?, like she knew there was a world where Brontë wasn’t going to do that. Like she was expecting it.

He tries to call her again. This time, she picks up. On the last ring.

He hears a big sigh before anything else. “Hey, Neil, um- I’m really sorry we haven’t gotten a chance to talk earlier, first thing.”

He takes that last note off the side of the desk. “Yeah. I hope you’re not cleaning up the mess I’ve made right now.”

She barks a laugh, stifles it quickly. “You know what? That is, actually, exactly what I’m doing.”

Brontë didn’t expect those words. “Oh. Um- nobody told me much after I left Canberra, so, um- I don’t even know where you went. Or what’s going on.”

“Yeah. Hmm.” Nimm mutters for a moment. “Let me think of how to explain.”

Brontë waits for longer than he wants to. He looks down at those perfectly formed letters, to arrest or not to arrest? “Okay.” Nimm sighs. “Don’t panic, firstly. Everything is going to be fine. It’s just very complicated, and you kind of- you kind of stepped in and acted without enough context. Which is what we were trying to avoid, you know?”

“I had my reasons,” Brontë begins, not even defensively, but Nimm doesn’t let him get to the end of that sentence.

“I’m sure you did, and we can talk about those reasons in a moment. It’s moreso that, contrary to what we’d like to be true, getting- even Anastasia Volkov, getting even her on minor charges means fuckall without any proof of the truly bad shit. Because she can afford good lawyers, get out of here as soon as possible, and go after you because you got slightly in her way.”

Brontë pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is she out of processing already?”

“Almost, to be honest. I’ve been- in contact with the Canberra branches to figure out what’s happening, and it sounds like her lawyers are going to be getting her out soon. Your report was, I guess, great, but without, you know, Artemy Volkov pressing the charges himself, they’re not going to stick. And he’s not going to do that, is he?”

“I- I learned a few things, you know, while I was with him. Like that a big part of the bad stuff he’s done is because he had no choice, and she forced him to. I’m sure that’s true for a lot of the Volkovs, but regardless-“

“I just want to make sure we’re clear.” Nimm’s voice sounds just so, so tired, and Brontë tries not to read his fears for her health into it. But he does. “You know our entire mission was to catch Artemy Volkov on forgery, fraud, all that nonsense, right? Are you trying to say he did that because of his mother?”

Brontë’s silence is all the response Nimm needs. He lets it sit for a moment, before he adds, “I never said that.”

“Right. But that was what our job was. Is, I guess. Did you forget that? Or…”

She stops. Brontë stops, tries to imagine what she was about to say. To arrest or not to arrest? Did she suspect he wasn’t going to do it?

“Um- well, we were worried about safety, right?” He’s on the phone to his coworker. Now is not the time for heartfelt confessions. “I did want to be sure it was safe to act. I only acted when I did for- for safety.” Art’s safety. Not his own.

“No, see, that’s the very problem-“ Nimm’s voice is cut off by a coughing fit, and Brontë just runs his fingers over the letters on the sticky note. Her coughs are deep in her throat, and they only make Brontë’s dread worse. She recovers herself. “Your safety, Neil. Your family’s safety. That is why I’m doing what I’m doing right now, because by acting when you did, you endangered them, or at least yourself. I think it’s going to be fine, but it’s going to be fine because I’m fixing it.”

Brontë feels that lingering dread for so many reasons. The thought of harm coming to his children shuts down all critical thought, but there is one thing he at least wonders. “What about you?”

“What?”

“Do you not think you’re in danger because of this? If I am, she can easily connect me to you.”

Nimm pauses for a moment. “I wouldn’t worry about myself.”

That’s the only thing she could’ve possibly said that made Brontë worry worse. Not because of the danger posed to her by Anastasia Volkov, but because that danger doesn’t make a difference to her- almost like there’s a more imminent, existential threat.

19

Should Brontë be worried?

He remembers being worried for his safety. He was worried while sitting in the car beside Art, while on the plane, before he got used to Art, before he knew him. It was as easy to know him as if he’d known him forever. Maybe his anxiety was just felt as if it was fear. It was never like he really thought his family was in danger.

Now, Nimm is suggesting there’s a possibility that Anastasia might go after his family. Brontë doesn’t feel that fear. He doesn’t know what ‘going after’ might look like, doesn’t know what kind of things he should be preparing for, but he’s got faith that Art would never let it happen, if he can do a single thing about it. Even if Art had completely let Brontë drop, never wanted to see or speak to him again- which would be fair- he wouldn’t let Brontë’s children see the consequences of his actions.

Still, Brontë’s a little nervous knowing he’s seeing his children, partially because he’s thinking about that danger, and partially because he doesn’t feel like the same man he was the last time they spoke. He’d be changed in any version of this story, and that might be obvious in the way he finds himself gripping the wheel of the car, even as he’s parked, waiting for them.

Nimm hasn’t called. She’s sent some text updates that basically amount to everything is fine, with a short, clipped tone that implies it isn’t quite- but he trusts he’d be told if it was important. He expects another such text when his phone dings.

But it’s Art, and Brontë’s heart rises and falls and spins in circles and drills a hole in his chest as soon as Art’s name pops up. I’ve made sure your family is safe. So are you. But I’m not ready to talk yet.

Brontë looks at that last sentence, bites his lip, mulls it over. He types out multiple things he erases: will you at least tell me you’re okay?- That’s okay, but can you- Thank you- I wish I’d-

He finally types something he has the courage to send. You don’t have to respond, I just want you to know that I’m sorry things happened the way they did. I’d like another chance, but I understand if I don’t deserve one.

He doesn’t expect a response, certainly not one so quick. It would be disappointing, if Brontë had had any hope of a response at all. I’m too angry to think straight right now. I will reach out eventually. Just wait.

It’s still good news, because at least he intends to speak to Brontë one more time- and he wants to do it right. As does Brontë.

Brontë jumps when the passenger side door opens, and Charlie climbs in without any thought at all, as if she doesn’t know the weight these texts are putting on Brontë’s heart. “Hey,” she says, and Brontë is shocked back into the present- into the one part of him that has, at least, always been genuine, and that’s being a father. “How was your work trip?”

“Good.” Brontë responds without thought, although he winces at the sound of his utter lie. Well- it’s not a lie, per se, because parts were good. It just ended in a way that Brontë feels horrible about. “I’ll probably be able to tell you more about it eventually. How was school?”

She raises an eyebrow at that, but doesn’t comment. “Good. Not much interesting. I found out we had a QSA, so I joined, and I signed up for the play, too. The new drama teacher’s a lot nicer than the old one, so I thought I’d try it.”

“Oh, really?” Brontë finds it easier to let go of the fear and all the problems he suddenly has when he has someone else’s life to care about. “That’s really brave of you, considering how you felt about the stage in year seven. What’s a QSA, by the way?”

“I only didn’t like it in year seven because Ms Shields was so angry all the time and wanted us to be literally perfect, and also I’m a lot more confident now. Ms Black is cool.” It’s hard to tell if she means that Ms Black is nice, or that she’s somehow enviable, or both. “QSA is Queer Straight Alliance, they used to call it the GSA but they changed it ‘cause we all felt it was more inclusive.”

“Well, let me know how the play goes. What do you do in QSA?”

“It’s basically just a club where we do, like, initiatives to make school nicer for queer people, and so on. Like, we wanna do bake sales and stuff to get, like, pride pins, pronoun pins, and stuff like that. I like it ‘cause we’re not just doing it for queer people, actually, like we’re going to try and get pins of the Aboriginal flag for Aboriginal students, for example. It’s just, I dunno, nice. Some parents are getting involved, if-” she stops suddenly, and is a lot quieter when she says, “-if you want. You don’t have to.”

Maybe she stopped because Brontë was looking out the side window, a small part of him just looking to see where Ricky is, but a large part of him trying to hide the lump in his throat. Everything is so clear, now, and it hurts. It’s a good thing, it’s such an amazingly good thing, but there’s a wound somewhere deep down that’s pulled and picked at by hearing about this. Like when Brontë found out David is married, now. He’s happy for David, happy for his husband, but upset that he never got that.

If his school had any single person in it who wanted to help queer kids, instead of beat it out of them, he’d never have married Debbie. He’s happy his life went the way it has, because it’s why Charlie is here now, why Ricky is here, and, part of him whispers, he had to get this far to meet Art.

“If I’ve got time,” he says, and, surprised at the crack in his voice, “...I’d love to help.”

He’s not sure if he sounds sick, or like he’s crying, or if the physical regret in his throat can just be heard from across the sea. Either way, he didn’t hide it. “Dad? Are you okay?”

He’s not crying, not yet, but the pressure behind his eyes makes it feel like he will. It’s stupid, how simple of a thing tears him apart. “Oh, um- you know what, that’s probably a thing I should- we should talk about. It’s just, um-”

“Is everything okay? Did something happen to Grandma, or- your coworker, what’s her name, um- you told me about the one who has…”

Brontë forgets how much he says. Just as much as Charlie, in her teenage social stumbles, forgets what’s too much to say. Brontë actually stopped speaking because he saw Ricky approaching, alone today. As much as this is something he probably needs to tell both of them, it’ll be at least a little easier to tell Charlie, even if he hadn’t talked himself into the corner of having to explain himself. He can imagine Ricky’s response, pretty easily, but Ricky has never been through what Brontë is about to go through himself. Charlie’s revelation and explanation was recent, but at least she’s done it. It didn’t take her thirty years.

But now Brontë’s thinking about Nimm, and he supposes it is a little bit about her. There’s a lot on his mind right now, and the pressure of knowing something’s off with her, knowing she’s not concerned about her own life, knowing she’s running out of energy, just makes the timing of all this so much worse.

“We’ll talk at home,” Brontë tells his daughter, “but nobody is sick or dying, that I know of.” He adds the last bit so it’s at least not a lie.

“You worried me,” she says quietly, as the back door opens, and immediately the tone changes again, just as it did when Charlie first got into the car.

“Hey,” Ricky mutters, his voice slightly artificially deep, like he’s conscious of being further behind in puberty.

“Hey, Ricky. How was school?”

The conversation is much the same as it was with Charlie, except Brontë keeps his cool, his voice doesn’t break, as Ricky’s telling him about how soccer practice went, and how good Jake is at it, and how the maths he’s doing is hard. Charlie mocks him a bit for thinking that algebra is difficult, Brontë reminds them both that they’re still learning and she found algebra hard once, and for a moment it’s normal. For a moment it’s as if nothing ever happened.

If Ricky can tell something is off, he doesn’t say it. Charlie picks up that this isn’t a conversation they’re having in the car. It’s only once they’re home, as Ricky’s gone off down the hall to his room, that Charlie gently tugs Brontë’s sleeve, suggesting he follow her into her room.

“Can we open the blinds in here?” is the first thing he says, in his dad voice, and she groans, but clambers over her bed to do just that. The sheets aren’t made and there’s a few jackets strewn across the covers. He doesn’t touch their rooms when they’re not home- it was always more important to him that their rooms felt like their space- but he’ll still try to get them to make positive decisions about said space. “Vitamin D is good for you.”

“Yeah, okay.” She doesn’t dispute him, but there’s still the grumble in her voice that comes from being told what to do. She forgets it easily, kicking off her shoes and sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Is it serious?”

Brontë hisses quietly through his teeth; for a moment, he forgot the conversation they needed to have. He didn’t mean for it to slip out, because he wanted to know what he was saying before he said it. But here they are. “No, it’s not serious. It’s not bad, either. Don’t worry.”

“You look worried.” She taps on her knees as she talks. “Did something happen on the trip or something?”

Brontë leans against the edge of her desk. Most of the clutter is paperwork from school. Her laptop is sitting open; she’s accumulated a lot of stickers over the years, most of them from video games she likes, a few that came with other things, and a few her friends made her, like the little trans pride flag in the corner. His eyes catch on it.

“Nothing bad happened. I don’t think there’s any way you could possibly think what I’m about to tell you is a bad thing, it’s just that… I don’t know what, exactly, it is that I’m telling you.”

“What does that mean? Either you have something to say or you don’t.”

Brontë shakes his head. “What I mean is, I haven’t figured it out myself, not completely. I think I have, but I just- I wasn’t going to tell you until I knew for sure. It just kind of came up.”

“When we were talking about,” Charlie says slowly, as she puts together the pieces, but doesn’t yet let them click. “...the QSA.”

Brontë shrugs a little. “Yes.”

Charlie looks down at the ground. “It’s not about me, is it?”

Brontë doesn’t quite know what she could possibly be thinking of, but every possibility that flashes quickly through his mind is bad. “No, sweetie, no, it’s not about you. You’ve done nothing wrong, and nothing you said was- it’s not about you.”

She looks up at him, and he can see the gears turning behind her eyes. He wonders if the answer he’s looking for from Art is as simple as the one he’s got for Charlie- she just can’t see the truth as a possibility, not yet. So she stares the obvious in the face, unrecognising.

“I-” Brontë could start this any number of ways. He could explain why this came up, could explain why he didn’t know earlier, could start with talking about the divorce, or his own mother, or even Art, in some extremely censored way that cuts out Art’s- job, he supposes, that cuts out Art’s family and history and all that.

Or he could just say, “I think I might be gay.”

Charlie stares at him emptily for a second, as she processes. And then her eyes go wide, and she covers her mouth, and she laughs a little bit in a way that Brontë might read as mocking, if it wasn’t his daughter. “Wait, really?”

“I wouldn’t joke about this,” Brontë admits, arms crossed, “...but I only figured this out a few days ago, okay? It makes a lot of sense in retrospect, but I haven’t told anyone. Not your mother, not Ricky, not anyone.”

“Oh my god.” Charlie’s hands are still over her mouth. “I’m- are you actually? No, I mean, it makes a lot of sense, actually. Not that that’s- I’m not saying anything bad by that, I just-”

“Take a moment,” Brontë says, and his heart is racing more than he thought it would be, but the fact that she’s smiling is making him smile. He knows, genuinely, that to be gay is a neutral thing, but he was always told it was bad; to tell someone who smiles like it’s good is healing, in what little bit it can be, to the little gay teenager who would never dare call his best friend he secretly had a huge crush on his boyfriend.

“Sorry. I just- that makes sense. Because you and Mum get along super well, but obviously it didn’t work out, so that, like- right? I guess I’m just- I thought you’d have known earlier, that’s all.”

Brontë has to keep in mind that Charlie was seven when gay marriage was legalised. In comparison, when Brontë was born, being gay was still a crime punishable by life in prison.

“You’re a very brave person,” is what Brontë says, “even as it stands, now. I’m not as brave as you, and things were a lot harder for queer people when I was younger. My first- I suppose I would’ve called him my boyfriend, if I could’ve- he was regularly beaten for being too obviously gay. You know what Grandma’s like, the reason we’ve been avoiding talking to her about you- that’s what I grew up with, hearing every day. It was hard.”

“So- you had a boyfriend?” Charlie pulls her knees in close to her chest. “But you didn’t know you were gay?”

“It sounds obvious when you put it like that. Just trust me that it wasn’t that easy, yeah? It was more like, I had a best friend who I didn’t understand my feelings for, and we- you don’t need to know the details.”

Charlie wrinkles her nose up. “Ew. I wasn’t thinking that until you said it.”

There’s some instinct that reels at gay sex being described as ew, but at least with her he knows it’s only gross to talk about because it’s her dad. “Anyway. Like I said, you don’t need to know.”

“Mum doesn’t know? So that’s not why you divorced?”

“I think it’s the real reason, I just didn’t know it at the time. You got it exactly right. We were friends, but that’s all we were, and it took us fifteen years to figure it out. I’m going to tell her, because- because I need to apologise.”

“You didn’t know,” Charlie says, “it’s not like you misled her on purpose.”

Brontë shrugs. “She spent fifteen years married to a gay man. Just because I didn’t know any better doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt her. And, of course, I’ll tell Ricky too, eventually. Like I said, I’m still working it out.”

Charlie nods slowly as she thinks. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and blurts out, “what made you realise?”

“What?”

“Like, you’ve obviously been gay forever, that’s not new. But you just figured it out on this trip?”

Brontë looks at her with a bit of shock, because she’s put together pieces he didn’t expect her to even consider. She covers her mouth. “Sorry,” she says, staring directly at the wall, “you don’t have to answer that. And please don’t answer it if it’s gross.”

Brontë laughs at that. “I like how quickly you figured out that there’s someone.”

“So there is someone!”

Brontë can’t help himself from smiling, as if him and Art are already together, as if it’s that simple. In another life, it’s that simple. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. I hope so,” he says, and he feels weird admitting it, but in this moment, he can ignore the parts of his life that contradict what he wants to be true. He can not be a cop, and just be a dad, when he says, “...you’d like him.”

Charlie laughs again, still in a little bit of disbelief. After a moment, she says, “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I’m proud of you.”

It feels nice to hear that. Not because it’s from his daughter, really, although it does tell him he’s done a good job, raised her right. It’s more so nice to hear someone be proud of him.

It’s nice to know he lives in a world where what he’s always been is not just acceptable, but good, worth being proud of, to those who matter.

20

The last message is the one that was a mistake. Brontë knows it, but he was getting tired of waiting. He’s already strung out waiting for Art to calm down- appreciating, still, Art’s ability to be straightforward and to not let his anger cloud his judgement, but the waiting isn’t easy. Nimm doesn’t know this, and she’s busy cleaning up the mess he’s made- and he’s let her know already that he appreciates that.

Are you in today? Brontë had sent to her, since it was Saturday, and Ricky was over at Jake’s house, while Charlie was in her room playing video games.

I’m at home, Nimm had responded immediately, but I’m still busy. Sorry.

I know. I just thought I’d come see you to talk about things, if that would help.

It’s okay, Nimm had said, and it just felt like a distracted response, like she hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve done everything I need to do for this job and so have you, so enjoy your time off.

Brontë had considered not sending the next message, but he did. Maybe I just want to talk to you as a friend, and not as a coworker?

I appreciate that, I do, and I’m not avoiding you. But not today.

So Brontë had sent the message that he was certain was a mistake. Are you sick?

Because Nimm had immediately stopped responding, and hours later, there was nothing.

So Brontë shelved his concern that one of his only friends was dying, and he let it sit in the back of his mind, festering. Brontë made dinner, dragged Charlie out to eat it, and they talked. She talked about the play, how the one they were doing was much better than previous years when Ms Shields was in charge, and now she’d asked him a question that had kicked over the other jar of bees currently stinging the inside of his mind. “Tell me about this guy.”

Brontë doesn’t know how to answer that. “It’s complicated,” he mutters, something he thought was relatively obvious. “He’s… he’s not talking to me at the moment.”

“Oh.” Charlie’s eating her soup in the same specific way she has since she was a child, pulling the bread apart, dropping it in the soup, saving the crusts for last. Brontë’s never once commented, since it’s odd, but he’d never make her feel bad for being innocently strange. “What’d you do?”

Brontë smiles wryly at that. Arrested his mother, he wants to say. Didn’t tell him I was a cop. Did I tell you he’s the criminal I’ve been chasing down? The mastermind behind most of this city’s fraud and counterfeiting? “It’s far more complicated than I can sum up for you right now. I should’ve been more truthful, I think, or at least straightforward, and he could’ve done the same for me.”

Brontë hasn’t forgotten I cheated. He just hasn’t figured out the obvious that he knows must be right in front of his face. His eyes are crossed, and it’s blurry, but he can still see the answer- he just can’t identify it.

“Have you spoken to him about it?” Charlie asks. “You know, apologised and such?”

Brontë shrugs. “He said he’d talk to me when he’s ready. I’m confident he’ll do that.”

Charlie nods. “At least he can be that straightforward. Some boys can’t.”

Brontë leans ever so slightly closer. “Do you have a boy who’s not being straightforward with you?”

Charlie scoffs. “No, not me. Do you remember what happened with Jenna?”

She starts telling a story about how her friend’s boyfriend is messing her around, and Brontë listens intently, gives his own perspective on things, and he likes this, because he’d never bring up such a thing with his mother. When she asked him if there was a girl in his life, it was unprompted, expectant, and the truth was the wrong answer. He asked that question only because he thought Charlie was hinting, and she wasn’t, but she felt safe to admit that completely, to tell a story that Brontë’s mother would’ve told him to shut up about. Maybe Charlie will have boys in her life, or girls, or something else, or maybe everyone will be her friend and nothing different- but she feels she can tell him the truth.

He is only just now realising the scars he carries from how he was raised, but at least he can be proud that his children are unharmed.

As Brontë is doing the dishes, he’s looking at his phone, laying there still and silent. He’s cursing the fact that he cares so much that neither Art nor Nimm have texted him- as if their reasons are remarkably comparable, but it doesn’t matter. Both leave him empty.

At least he can double-text Nimm, and it’s not too crazy to say, I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you, is all.

She still doesn’t respond, but Brontë tries to weather it and take it as her normal behaviour- maybe she just fell asleep at a weird time, or she’s busy doing something else, her phone on silent and turned down. She’s probably not ignoring him. Probably.

Sitting here upset that someone isn’t texting him back isn’t the type of thing an adult man should be so frustrated over. At least, he’s an adult- he should be able to do something a little bit more mature and reasonable about it.

He considers going to her house, bringing flowers, but he realises he’s never been, doesn’t know what her address is. Maybe it’s weird to show up this late at night, and it’s certainly weird to show up without having known her address- so even if he went and got it from work, it’s not an option.

He knows at least one place he might be able to find Art, though.

He freezes, a dish in one hand, half-scrubbed. It’s a horrible idea. It really is. Art has made it clear that he’ll come back eventually, and it’s only been a matter of days. He would understandably take longer than that to even think about forgiving Brontë, to decide what he wants to do.

But maybe if they just talked…?

Brontë knows it’s a bad idea. But he’s been so damn patient- with every second so painful- and so he allows himself, at the very least, to text Art, to bring up the possibility.

I want to see you tonight.

He winces at himself, and adds, you don’t have to forgive me yet. I just miss you. And he winces worse, but he leaves it be.

His phone dings. He watches, in front of his eyes, as you gonna arrest me too? turns into Art has unsent a message.

Brontë can feel his heart in his throat. I would never and I’ll do anything you need me to do to prove it.

But Art doesn’t respond to that. So Brontë stares at suds and tries to justify it to himself.

Art’s being reasonable. He’s angry, he’s frustrated, and it makes sense. Brontë was expecting to never speak to him again. Brontë doesn’t want to ruin things by pushing him too far, by asking too much of him before he’s ready to give it.

At the same time, though, Brontë doesn’t want to lose him by making him think, or assume, that Brontë doesn’t care that much. He needs to know that Brontë is waiting, that he will wait as long as he needs to wait, but that he won’t be left behind if Art has even a sliver of a feeling that he doesn’t want to let Brontë completely go.

Brontë’s let enough go.

He just has to make sure that Art knows how much he cares about him. He’ll wait as long as he needs to wait for Art to be ready. As long as Art knows he’s waiting.

He finishes up the last dishes and knocks on Charlie’s door. When she calls for him to come in, she’s got her headphones on, on call with her friends, and she takes off one ear, looking at him expectantly.

“Are you going to be okay on your own?” Brontë asks, trying to keep his tone casual. Charlie nods with a little noise of affirmation, and Brontë adds,  “I was thinking of heading out for a bit.”

“Where are you going?”

Brontë feels like it’s encouraging incorrect and gross assumptions if he tells her the truth, and that’s the only reason he says instead, “…I’m checking up on my friend.”

“Your coworker? With, uh.” Charlie doesn’t say cancer. Technically, Brontë doesn’t know cancer, either, but he’s certainly explained his suspicions before.

It would be a better, more productive use of Brontë’s time. Part of him feels guilty that that’s the lie. But he sticks with it, or at least, lets her believe it with a noncommittal shrug.

But she narrows her eyes at him anyway. “Are you going to see that guy?”

“I’d tell you if it was anything particularly interesting,” he decides to say, and although she doesn’t seem to fully accept that answer, she at least gets that he’s not going to say much more.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I’m not a child.”

“I didn’t think you were,” he tells her with a little smile, and then he’s gone.

It is a bad idea. He knows that pretty damn well. It’s just that the alternative is a worse idea- even leaving the possibility open that Art moves on is so much worse than pissing him off. Because at least a pissed-off Art will know how strongly Brontë already feels about him.

He knows exactly where he’s going, and maybe nobody will be there. Maybe he’ll just talk to the hot bartender again- now that he’s let the word gay cross his mind, he can think that thought directly, rather than thinking around it. Maybe he won’t see Art. Maybe Art would never, ever return to a place that he met a cop, because he’ll know his trail has been caught.

If Brontë even finds Art at all, that’s proof he’s been at least a little bit trusted.

The rain that starts to fall on the drive lets Brontë blame the weird feeling in his chest on the atmospheric pressure.

It still takes too long to get there. The whiskey den is this tiny hole in the wall that feels so fateful Brontë can’t quite believe it, and yet, he stands in front of it, the first smatterings of rain hitting his forehead, his shoulders, as he’s staring up at the second floor. Art’s curtains are fully drawn, but Brontë can see the lights are on, in the cracks of the imperfect facade.

Brontë walks inside. There’s music in the background, something dark and a little jazzy. Brontë wonders if there was music before and he just couldn’t hear it over the beating of his heart, or if it didn’t stick because the sound of Art’s voice took up too much of Brontë’s mind. His heart is still beating so hard it hurts, but it’s in rhythm with his step, his thoughts, himself.

The bartender doesn’t look at him with recognition at first. He leans on his side of the bar, looking Brontë up and down; this time he reads the determination in Brontë’s stance and leans back, intrigue in his eyes, but no more hungry interest. “How can I help you?” he asks, cautious.

Brontë sits at the bar and leans far across it. “I’m looking for your boss.”

The bartender raises an eyebrow. “For what reason?”

Brontë sighs. “He knows. Trust me.”

“I don’t,” the bartender says evenly. “What’s your name?”

“Neil Brontë. He knows who I am.”

The bartender turns, and Brontë sees the subtle movement of his hand this time, a button pressed under a counter, that he didn’t see before. “Really?” the bartender asks. “Have I ever seen you here before?”

“Literally last week.”

The bartender narrows his eyes at him, and then it visibly clicks. “Yeah, no, I remember you. You made fast friends, huh?”

Brontë bites his lip. “You could say that.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Brontë looks anxiously around the bar. There’s almost no one here; does it matter? Is there ever? Is this just money laundering, a way to meet people without it seeming suspicious? The group of girls taking up one of the only booths in the dim bar light certainly don’t seem like they’re part of Art’s criminal connections. But who could ever know?

He looks back at the bartender. “If you told him I’m not working, it might make a difference.”

The bartender’s eyes wander over Brontë’s shoulder, and Brontë knows what’s coming before it happens. He feels a hand on his waist, gentle and shocking and familiar, and a voice he’s been longing to hear for days.

“I thought I told you to leave me alone.”

21

“You did not say that,” Brontë says lowly, even as his heart is in his throat and he’s clutching at anything that will keep him stable. Which, right now, means clenching all his muscles and not moving, like Art’s killed him instantly, like vigor mortis. “You said you’d talk to me when you’re ready.”

“I am not ready,” Art says, matter of fact, cold. “Go home.”

“Can I just say-“ Brontë turns on the stool, and Art remains as close as he was, except now they’re face to face. Brontë can’t breathe, because he didn’t think he’d ever get the chance to sit in this moment again. He didn’t think he’d ever be this close to paradise again.

Art isn’t crying, and yet, his eyes still seem wet, like the grey storm clouds are raining; the anger draws his eyebrows tight, but it can’t seem to change his eyes from reflecting Brontë’s sadness back at him.

“-that I’m sorry,” Brontë whispers, and he doesn’t mean to whisper it. It just comes out like that. “And I-“

Art turns sharply away. Brontë feels like he’s known him forever, that movement as familiar as breathing. Art tics, and Brontë hears that click of annoyance. “Follow me,” he says over his shoulder. Brontë knows that Art turned just to break eye contact.

But he said to follow him. And so Brontë does.

“I just-“ Brontë begins as they’re going up the stairs, and Art suddenly stops, raises a hand. So Brontë stops talking. He can wait.

He’s here, and that’s further than he ever thought he’d get.

Art opens his door, and for the second time, Brontë walks into the flat that must be where Art stays, at least most of the time. The messy bed, the laptop sitting open on top of a printer, an open bottle of wine just sitting on the bench. Art leans on the table, like he’s just ran a long way, and doesn’t turn to look at Brontë. He just stops, lets Brontë close the door behind himself.

Silence.

“Art-“ Brontë begins, and Art raises a hand again.

“I-“ Art takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I can not believe the nerve of you right now.”

“I needed you to know-“

“Needed me to know what?” Art’s fist clenches on the table. “You’ll find I know everything I need to fucking know, actually, Neil.”

“You haven’t heard what I have to say about it.”

Art turns, and the whites of his eyes are red and raw with tears he’s held back- or perhaps tears he’s already cried. Or maybe it’s just alcohol, if the swaying as he turns is anything to go by. “What could you possibly have to say, Neil? You came inside me and then immediately arrested my mother. Am I supposed to have uncomplicated feelings about that? Is a little sorry about that supposed to make everything better?”

“I never said that,” Brontë says, emptily. “I want to let you think about everything, I just- you need all the information.”

“What am I missing then, huh? What could possibly have escaped my notice?”

It’s like Art knows nothing has. And he’s mostly right. He just needs to know how much Brontë means it, and so Brontë steps forward and takes Art’s face between his hands. Before he says another word, he just kisses him.

And if he could just not feel the heat of Art’s tears on his face, it might be okay. If he couldn’t feel Art’s hands gripping his shirt, balled into fists, he might not even know he was angry. Because Art does pull those fists towards him, tries to close the gap between them.

Brontë pulls back only to say, “you’re missing how much I care about you.”

Art shoves him back, glares with gritted teeth- pushes him back against the door, still holding his shirt like he intends to throw him out the window. “Oh yeah, Neil? Are you going to tell me you love me? Or what? How long have you known me? Tell me you love me. I dare you.”

Brontë’s heart stops, up in his throat, and he may as well have been actually thrown out onto the street. How is he supposed to respond to that?

No, you don’t love someone after a few days, not even someone like Art, not even someone you feel like you’ve known forever, who changed your life in a matter of days, who told you exactly who you always were deep down, who laid it out and spelled it and sounded it out until you understood. Who you knew before you knew, who looks at you with the softest eyes beneath the anger, who can’t even let days-long rage cloud his view of you, somehow, some way.

“I may as well,” Brontë says, as simple as if he was saying his name. It’s just as true and obvious. “How the fuck am I supposed to stop myself from falling in love with you?”

Art falls back, throwing his hands in the air. “No. Fuck you. You’re not supposed to say that, Neil, you’re supposed to say- you’re supposed to tell me this was fun but it’s nothing, you’re supposed to tell me to come quietly, you’re- you’re supposed to take me down to the station and let this whole house of cards come crumbling down. You’re supposed to make this fucking easy.”

“It is easy,” Brontë says with a caught breath, taking a step closer. Art spins, running his hands through his hair and looking up at the roof, breathing ragged to keep his sobs back. “We can figure this out, Art. I’ll do whatever you need me to do, I’ll- just tell me what I need to do.”

Art turns to him, and a sudden storm carries him back; he grabs Brontë, pulls him close. “You’re a dumb motherfucker and we’re fucking cursed.”

“What-“ Brontë begins, and Art pulls him down, pulls him into a kiss, brings that storm to him.

“You’re hopeless,” Art breaks the kiss to say, kissing him again between sentences. “And we’re screwed. Forever.”

“Art-“ Brontë tries to say, having to grab him by the shoulders to get a word in edgewise. “What the fuck? Can you talk to me?”

“You’re a fucking cop.” Art stares at the ground, and storms away again just as suddenly as he came close. “I’m not my mother, sure, but I’m certainly not a fucking cop.”

“I’m sorry,” Brontë begins again, for the thousandth time. “I wasn’t going to arrest you.”

“But you were.” Art’s voice is clipped, shot through with anger that’s no longer tided by Brontë’s kiss. “You were waiting for the right time. That’s why you came to me. You’re a cop. Your job is literally nothing other than to take me in handcuffs.” He barks a laugh. “And not the way either of us might want you to.”

Brontë’s face grows hot. “Stop it. You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m listening, my love, I’m just hearing a whole lot of shit that doesn’t make sense.” His arm tics, his face, a wince as he holds back a sound. “So you’re going to say, right now, that your purpose was never coming to me with a lie to try and find proof you could arrest me on?”

“Maybe that’s why I came to you, but I- it’s complicated.” Brontë reaches a hand out, wants to make him understand, but he can’t find the words; millions of words in the English language and none of them can string together to rip out Brontë’s heart and show Art how he feels. He moves cautiously to follow him across the room, in the hopes that that might show him the truth somehow. “I could have arrested you the moment I saw you, but I-“

“But you were worried I could hurt you,” Art spits. He’s twisting his wrist around like he’s loosening it up to punch Brontë, but it looks from here like the anger just has nowhere to go. “Like how my fucking mother wanted to hurt you. You’re lucky I fucking distracted her by being forced to come out. She took it almost as badly as I expected her to.”

“I was trying to stop you from having to do that!” Brontë can’t help his voice raising, but he cuts himself down, doesn’t let himself yell. He refuses. He tries to approach Art, sees Art doesn’t back down yet, isn’t scared- isn’t angry enough. “I sacrificed everything, I showed you the truth I didn’t want to tell you, so you could stay hiding and you didn’t have to say a word. You didn’t have to say- what the fuck did that mean, Art? What do you mean, you cheated?”

Art glares at him, and he clicks in anger. “It’s not my fault you’re stupid.”

Brontë is finally close enough that he can grab Art’s face again, and he’s sure something about the hard edges Art is giving off softens a little bit when he does that. “You told your mother by deciding to shout that at me when I left, and whatever the fuck you were trying to say-“

“You didn’t get it. You don’t get it.” Art grips his shirt again. “You’ll never fucking forgive me for what I’ve done.”

Brontë narrows his eyes at him. “I’ll never forgive you? You’re not angry at me?”

“Both things can be true.” Art’s staring at Brontë’s lips, and he looks away all of a sudden. “Just fucking arrest me and end this shit.”

“No.” Brontë wants to kiss him again, but he doesn’t want to stop Art from fucking explaining himself. “Tell me what you were trying to say. What, were you stalking me before this? Do you know someone I know? Did you just fucking gaslight me, are you trying to say that half the shit you’ve been doing is just smoke and mirrors? What?”

“I’m trying to say you’re a fucking idiot,” Art says, and he kisses him, and Brontë hates him for it because his heart is in his throat and he wants to scream and this is erasing every thought he’s having other than how he needs Art. “And you should arrest me because I’d deserve it.”

“Stop this shit,” Brontë growls in his throat, and that just makes Art lean closer in to him, as if on instinct, and Art’s kissing his neck, now, giving up on physical distance. “It’s not that hard, Art, just tell me the fucking truth.”

“About what?” Art nips at the skin of his neck, and Brontë hates how he gasps at the feeling. “Which life-ruining secret of mine do you want, Neil? The ones that’ll land me in jail?”

“You fucking-“ Brontë grabs him by the shoulders, pushes him back, and he’s fully aware that he’s pushing him towards his bed. “You think you didn’t tell me everything that I could already use to ruin your life?”

“You’ve already ruined my fucking life,” Art hisses through his teeth, with an angered tic. “Come here.”

Brontë does that, but not because Art told him to. Art grabs his shirt, and falls back onto the bed- taking Brontë with him, although Brontë braces himself on either side of him. “The fuck do you mean, I’ve ruined your life?”

“The fact that I let you in here,” Art growls, doesn’t finish the sentence; he just pulls Brontë desperately towards him, begins to undo buttons. “…are you wearing a wire?”

“You know I’m not.”

“I know you’re not,” Art echoes, as if it needed to be said. “You should’ve been. I know you can fucking arrest me on nothing. I’ll come quietly.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Brontë no longer holds himself back from what his body is so desperate to do. He crashes their lips together, their chests, his leg between Art’s, and now the magnetic reality that Brontë was so certain he’d never get again is here- but it didn’t exactly come easily, it still refuses. “I’m not arresting you.”

“Why not?” Art’s hands run lightly over Brontë’s chest, like he’s experiencing him anew. He raises his hands up to touch Brontë’s face, and he’s crying plainly now, although the tears don’t choke his words. “Make it easy.”

“You’re the one making this so fucking difficult!” Brontë pins Art’s hands to the bed in anger. “It should be easy! I’ll forgive you if you forgive me and we’ll figure out what we can be because it’s clear we can’t live without being something!”

Art looks up at the headboard, as Brontë, furiously, undoes his belt. “No, it’s not easy. I wish it was easy but it’s not easy and it’ll never be easy, Neil, not ever.”

Brontë essentially rips Art’s jeans down, as if they’re the source of his frustration, rather than the man wearing them. “So what? Clearly it’s not easy to let go, is it?” He’s not sure where the confidence to say this comes from; maybe it’s not confidence. Maybe it’s having nothing left to lose. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“It should be easy,” Art mutters, and his voice breaks a little; he rubs at his eyes, as the tears begin to fall heavier now. “I should’ve blocked your number and moved cities. I could’ve done it, too, despite everything, despite how complicated it is, I just…”

Brontë’s fingers find what they’re looking for, and Art gasps at the touch. Testosterone changes things, and Brontë knew this, but still he’s somewhat unsure how to handle it. He wishes he had the chance, the patience, the time, to ask Art what he likes, to slowly build a picture of exactly what makes him feel good. But he’s a little too furious for that, measuring how he’s doing instead by the way Art’s arching into his touch.

“Despite that,” Brontë says, “I’m here.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?” Art asks, and the bite of anger in his voice is tempered by the sob in his throat. “Why are you here?”

Brontë finds Art dripping wet, and he bites his lip at the implications. “You think I’m stupid because I can’t figure out your dumb fucking riddles, Art? How hard is it for you to figure out why I’m here, when I’ve already fucking told you?”

Art links his arms around Brontë’s neck, as Brontë can’t help himself from sliding his fingers inside of Art, just because it’s so easy, because Art is so ready. The low moan Art can’t hold back is fucking delicious. “You don’t- you don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand.” Brontë curls his fingers up, moves probably faster than he should- but the way Art catches his breath, buries his head into Brontë’s shoulder, is everything. Brontë doesn’t care. “What do you want from me, Art? What will make you believe me? Should I quit? Call your mother personally and apologise? Should I-“

“Don’t get it fucking twisted. I hate her. I’m mad that you put-“ Art arches his back up, a strangled sound interrupting his words- “-you put yourself in danger because you didn’t fucking listen to me, and now- ah- now you’re- mm- now you aren’t listening again! You won’t want this, I promise you- ah- I promise you that!”

“I’m not just going to fucking believe you.” Brontë leans down, kisses his neck. “Are you going to tell me this world-shattering shit, so I can tell you I don’t fucking care?” Brontë decides he’s not leaving Art without a visual reminder of him, and he sucks on his skin until it’s bruised, as Art clutches tight onto Brontë, gasping for a response.

“I- what do you think I’m- I’m figuring it out,” Art hisses through his teeth. “I’m deciding if I trust you and deciding how to tell you, I- Neil, I- you think it’s easy?”

“Yes,” Brontë says, as Art pulls at Brontë’s shirt, silently encouraging him closer. Brontë understands, would’ve done it anyway, as he stops to unbuckle his own belt. “It’s easy.”

“I’ll tell you what’s fucking easy. I’ve already fucking told you, and you just aren’t paying attention. You don’t need me to spell it out for you, you dumb asshole, you know the fucking answer, you just- you didn’t learn a damn thing, did you? Aren’t you an officer, a- you’re a detective. Stop being so fucking reasonable and just see what’s-“

He’s cut off, as if it somehow surprised him, as if he couldn’t feel Brontë pushing his legs apart, making room for himself between them, as if he shouldn’t have expected to feel Brontë inside of him. Maybe it was just how easy it was, how Brontë was already fucking hard just from the sound of Art’s moaning, maybe he went too quick, maybe, maybe. Art doesn’t finish insulting him.

“And you’re making this difficult for no fucking reason,” Brontë says, trying to sound even, despite the heaving of his chest, the warmth around his cock now, the warmth that’s home. It’s everything Brontë has ever wanted. Not the feeling- although maybe a little- but everything it represents, and that’s Art, as his, surrounding him and accepting him and letting him in, in a way Art almost, almost, will really do. But not quite. “Tell me this isn’t what you want.”

“Fuck you,” Art groans, clutching at the sheets. Brontë isn’t moving yet, because he’s watching Art with lidded eyes, wanting to see the way he reacts when he does. “Why’d you have to be a cop, anyway?”

“Wouldn’t have met you if I wasn’t,” Brontë says with a sideways grin. “Did you miss me?”

“Immensely,” Art whispers, and then he covers his eyes with his hands. “Fuck you, why couldn’t I have just- left you on your own up there and disappeared, started again, again, found someone who wasn’t-“

Anger, jealousy, frustration, need, all of the above. They spike, and Brontë uses each thrust as a punishment, makes them hard and fast, doesn’t really care that much if they hurt a little bit, because he’s hurt himself. Art cries out, clutches at the sheets, and Brontë felt that way. He just never said it. He’s always been good at weathering the pain, holding it inside, stopping himself from crying out and screaming at the world for how unfair it was.

But this is unfair. For thirty years he pretended to love people differently to how he really did, and didn’t allow himself to love those he wanted to love this way. For thirty years he pretended not to know who he was. He listened to the voices around him, didn’t know how to listen to his own. Did he ever even want to be a cop? Probably not. It was the kind of thing one just did, when you saw your brothers being doctors and lawyers and knew you couldn’t do that; when your mum looked at you with disappointment every time she saw you, and you had to do something.

Art had torn away from the voices around him, but Brontë couldn’t until now. He’s still floating, up in the air, lost. All he knows is that Art is his tether to reality, his tether to himself, and it’s unfair. It’s so, so unfair that it took Brontë forty-eight years to find him, and that Art won’t even make it easy for him to stay.

He will stay. That’s not a question. He hopes that just as every thrust says fuck you, it says I’m staying. Fuck you, you can’t get rid of me, no matter how much you try, because for as long as you want me there is nothing you can say that will make me not want you.

It’s like standing in the rain, screaming into the void. They stop trying to talk over the wind, but the way Art is glaring at him gets across that he understands exactly what Brontë is saying with his body. Brontë just can’t read his response. He needs to scream these words, needs to let them out; if only he knew what the words being screamed back are.

He can feel the grip Art has on the back of his head, pulling him closer; he can see how Art’s watching him closely, his chin raising as he sees Brontë’s rhythm stagger slightly, as he can sense he’s getting close. Art’s so much smaller than Brontë, underneath him, and yet, he looks down, like he’s got Brontë between his fingers, like he can do anything with him.

Not only is he absolutely right, but he looks almost guilty about it.

Maybe Art does it on purpose. Maybe he makes himself cum first so Brontë wouldn’t get to give him that- maybe he knew Brontë wanted to. Maybe he can sense that’s Brontë close and he knows that the way he contracts from his own orgasm, the guttural moan that comes from his throat, would force it out of Brontë.

Or maybe they’re just that in sync, like they’re made for each other. It’s probably both.

Art traps Brontë in, and Brontë has to trust him, as he always does, and his entire body gives itself over to Art, in the most pleasant loss of control. It’s behind his heart, in that way.

Brontë doesn’t want to move. He wants to sit in this moment forever. But, as if his anger was made clear to him again, Art pushes him up with greater force than Brontë realised he was capable of, and Brontë commits to letting the moment go, as much as he doesn’t want to.

The lay side-by-side on the bed, breathless. Brontë’s just staring at Art’s back, waiting for him to talk. He gently reaches a hand to touch his shoulder, and Art flinches slightly. So Brontë lets it go.

“Get out,” Art says after a moment.

“Art-“

“Give me two weeks,” Art says. “Then we’ll talk. Okay? I know exactly what I need to do. But it will take time.”

He turns over, glares at Brontë- as much as he can with that softness in his eyes. “Can you wait that long?”

Brontë sits up, and slowly- it’s hard when he veritably doesn’t want to- goes about getting dressed again. “I’ll wait as long as you need me to. I just- I needed you to know I was serious.”

“I’m serious, too. You can pass judgement on me then. In two weeks.”

“I won’t pass-“ Brontë begins, but Art’s click cuts him off. He can tell it wasn’t purposeful- each tic is like a signature he couldn’t copy on purpose- but he stops anyway.

“Just go,” Art tells him. “And we’ll see how you feel in two weeks.”

22

When Brontë comes home, Charlie is asleep. Nimm had finally responded to his text, as he was driving home, and he reads it as he’s coming through the door. I’m not sick. I’ll explain next time I see you.

He wants to call her again, but he doesn’t. He regrets not going to see her, in some ways, but he doesn’t regret at all talking to Art. Having a time to wait until, for whatever Art needed- he trusts there’s a reason it was that long- at least gives him an end date to his stress. He can never be too sure, can never be convinced that Art isn’t just going to fuck off to Adelaide or Brisbane or somewhere forever, and leave a hole behind in Brontë’s heart. But he can wait.

His confusion and annoyance about the whole I cheated thing is only renewed. He tries to put together the information like a detective should. He didn’t ask Art about it, but he did notice it was strange that Art’s phone number didn’t change, after his mum tracked him with it. He supposes it could be the same SIM card in another phone- but maybe he’s working with his mother, not against her, at least not completely? It would explain why he doesn’t think Brontë will forgive him. It doesn’t explain what I cheated is supposed to unlock.

Is there anything Art could do that Brontë wouldn’t forgive?

He tries to look at the scene as an outside observer. Art has killed people. Under duress as a child- the argument doesn’t hold up. He’s a criminal. So? Brontë can’t pretend he gives half a shit anymore. He didn’t ever care, not when Art was so specific about making sure nobody was hurt. Think about who his mother is. He’s aware of the Volkovs, afraid of them, so explicitly because of Art’s own description of his mother, and yet, he feels equipped to deal with it with Art by his side. At the very least, he wants to give Art the opportunity to figure things out, and to offer him help. He doesn’t believe Art would let him get hurt.

He lays in bed, staring at the roof, thinking of nothing but Art, unable to sleep. It’s not surprising when the sunlight breaks across his face, and his eyes flutter open, unaware of when he fell asleep. His dreaming mind conjured vague images of Art, something about his mother; Debbie and the kids were there, somewhere, but it was mostly Art, and Brontë wakes up for a moment thinking he’s not alone, thinking he fell asleep in Art’s bed.

It’s probably a good thing he’s awake, as his phone is ringing. He answers without looking. “Hello?”

“Hey, Dad.” Ricky sounds casually upbeat, and it’s strange, how little he knows about the mess in Brontë’s mind right now. At least Charlie’s been updated on the I’m gay part. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Brontë mutters, pausing to look at the time on his phone. It’s not far off 9:30, not that much later than he usually wakes. “What’s up?”

“Jake’s mum was gonna drive me home, but apparently her car is having issues, or something. Can you come get me?”

Brontë blinks, trying to wake himself up. “Yeah, sure,” he says, stumbling up; he can still see the images of Art behind his eyes, and he shakes that memory out. He’s trying to imagine a world where these two realities of his can possibly collide; he saw a possibility over dinner last night, Charlie asking him about Art, but they’re still separate and distinct for now. “Do you need me to pick you up soon?”

“Um, yeah, if possible. Me and Charlie were gonna go into the city today, and, uh, we should probably be there by, like, eleven?”

“I can take you,” Brontë offers. “I’ll come with her to come pick you up, and then drop you off in the city. Sound good?”

“Oh, um, if that’s not too much trouble, I guess. Thanks, Dad.”

Brontë smiles slightly. “I’ll see you in a bit. Love you.”

He hangs up before he leaves Ricky with the awkwardness of having to say it back, or choose not to, in front of his teenage friends. He remembers being a twelve year old boy, and how he ended up hanging his entire life on the idea of what it was okay for boys to do. He doesn’t think Jake or his family are anything other than lovely people, but it’s not like he needs to hear it back. He knows.

He quickly pulls on clothes he can be seen leaving the house in, and goes out to find his daughter. She’s sitting at the table, scrolling through her phone, fully dressed in slightly more black than she usually wears. “G’morning,” she mutters around a mouthful of cereal.

Brontë yawns, as if to prove it is not, in fact, a good morning. He needed more sleep, but he’s never going to get a good night’s rest when Art’s on his mind. Not that he’s going to let on that that’s the reason.

“Good morning,” he returns anyway. “Ricky says you two are going into the city today?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, either not picking up on or ignoring Brontë’s implicit request for more information. “Why, did he call you?”

“He needs picking up from Jake’s. I said I’d take you with me and drop you both off in the city.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Charlie says half-heartedly, still not quite slowing down in eating her cereal, “it‘s fine.”

“I have nothing else to do today,” he tells her. “Where are you both going?”

She pauses, and he can see her think through her answer, decide if she’s going to lie. He hopes that what she does say isn’t the lie. “...climate protest.”

“Oh, really?” his scepticism is only because she might be covering something else up, but her and her brother aren’t likely to do much else together that they wouldn’t be okay with Brontë knowing about. “You know how to be safe at protests, right?”

She leans on her hand in a way that covers her face, and it’s clear she wants to avoid the safety lecture that Brontë is very much going to give her anyway- but at least that explains her reluctance to tell him.

“Don’t start violence in any way. If someone tells you to, ignore them. I doubt there’s going to be counter-protesters for that, but if there is, you absolutely ignore them at all costs, okay?”

“Yeeessssss.” Her voice drags out, and Brontë decides not to comment on the annoyance. “I’m not going to go around punching cops.”

“Good. That should be all you have to do to stay out of trouble.” Brontë takes an apple out of the fruit bowl so he’s at least got something keeping him going. “Do you want some money to buy some food, or something?”

“You used to make us do chores if we wanted money,” Charlie comments, meaning before Brontë moved out of their mother’s house. “Mum still does.”

Brontë shrugs. “I feel like you’re doing a good thing today.”

Charlie smiles softly. “I’ve got money. I don’t think Ricky does, though, I think he spent all of his on the new soccer game he plays.” She covers her mouth. “Don’t tell Mum, she told him not to do that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Brontë takes a bite out of the apple as Charlie’s standing up and taking her bowl to the sink. “Ready to go?”

“Yup. Just gotta put my shoes on.”

While he’s waiting, Brontë stares at his texts again, and there’s nothing- either from Nimm or from Art. There is one from Debbie, though. Thanks for getting Charlie’s name sorted with the school, it says.

Brontë’s honestly confused, and he responds, I didn’t realise they fixed it. I never actually went in and talked to them about it.

Did you contact them at all?

I called last Thursday. It feels insane that it was not even two weeks ago, and he’d only met Art the once then; he should’ve known he was ruined already, by that first meeting. The person I spoke to seemed adamant that they couldn’t change it.

They must have, Debbie says. I just got an email with the correct name.

Well, that’s at least one thing solved, he responds.

How was your work trip?

A lot more interesting than it had any right to be. I’ll have to tell you about it later- I’ve got to go pick up Ricky from Jake’s.

That’s not a usual answer! Tell Alyssa I said hi.

I will. Jake’s mum likes to talk forever with Debbie; she still likes to talk forever with Brontë, but he finds it a lot less interesting than Debbie does. It’s a long, long story.

It involves an apology that Brontë is going to have to figure out how to give. How do you say I’m sorry I married you even though I was never attracted to you? Even though I couldn’t be, but I didn’t realise?

Maybe he can wait until he has a boyfriend to bring over. He hates how giddy the thought makes him, like Art is some teenage infatuation. He supposes he never really got the chance to do that properly- he had repressed and ignored every feeling he’d had for David, for the boys in class he has crushes on in retrospect, and all of that came back to him now with Art and the intense beating of his heart that kept him awake.

It feels silly, sometimes, trying to imagine a world where this all makes sense. The world where he’s a dad was always built on a lot of assumptions that weren’t true. He was a dad because he was married to Debbie, they had biological kids, they were straight, their kids were normal, they were normal.

But Charlie’s putting her hair up in a scrunchie that happens to be pink, and the thing that’s getting Brontë is that she doesn’t see all the invisible walls Brontë’s been feeling for his entire life. She’s wearing a black jumper that they bought her from the boy’s section years ago, and she’s wearing a pink scrunchie, and it shouldn’t mean anything, but what’s so important to Brontë is that it doesn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t, and to her, it doesn’t, because it doesn’t matter if the clothes she wears are boy’s clothes or girl’s clothes, they’re her clothes. Who she is isn’t what the world paints her to be, regardless of what they’d demand from her, one way or the other.

She has everything figured out, everything it took Brontë until this past week to sort out for himself. He’s proud his mistakes weren’t passed on before he knew better. At least he has the rest of his own life to turn things around for himself.

23

Brontë could’ve gone home, he supposes. It’s not like he needed to wait around. He considered joining them in the protest, but the noise was already too much for his ears, it probably would’ve cramped their style, and he would’ve struggled to get out of cop mode. He saw a few officers already hanging around- none of which he recognised from a distance, but still. Charlie hadn’t even wanted to tell him about the protest, so he figures he’s more helpful not being there.

He spends the time trying to determine one thing, and that’s where he’s going to take Art. He hasn’t properly taken someone on a first date in forever, so he isn’t exactly in practice. He loved Debbie, platonically he now knows, but his thought process wasn’t so different with her- it was just the reasons he wanted to impress her, and the options he had available to him. Their first date was thrift shopping and then a pub where he got drunk enough to kiss her, even though the reasons he wanted to were external, not internal. Funny how that’s not too different from that first day in Canberra with Art- the only exception being that he kissed Art despite every external reason not to. Because he was drunk enough to listen to what he really wanted, instead of ignoring it.

The problem is that nothing he can imagine could impress Art. He’s shocked Art even thought about taking him back, in any way, at all; he has nothing to offer. He walks around the museum for a bit, examining each piece of art that he fully believes Art could’ve created with his own two hands if he wanted to, and he wonders what Art could possibly see in him that’s so rare or hard to find, that he seems so desperate to keep it.

He tries to ignore the possibility that Art isn’t as desperate as he seems. If Art wants to use him somehow, to get some kind of in with the cops, would Brontë even stop him? He chose the right target, if so. Brontë’s never given half a shit about being a cop, and he’s sick of pretending he ever did. Nimm’s been right the whole time; something is different about him from other cops, and it’s not just that there isn’t a stick up his ass. It’s that he functions off morality and not rules, not any longer. Art’s done nothing but the right thing.

Brontë’s sitting at a coffee shop now, listening to the first smatterings of rain on the window, staring at the coffee in his hands. He got a different one to what he usually did- he kind of wanted chocolate today, so it’s a mocha, and he can’t stop thinking about how that’s what Art thinks is so obviously giving away his secret. I cheated. Double shot long black. Yeah, of course it makes sense that Art couldn’t just deduce that. How would he know what Brontë did or didn’t feel like, at the very least? Not everyone even has a preferred coffee order, and it’s all bullshit, the reasons Art gave. Brontë managed to guess his closely, but Art’s now claiming he never even guessed Brontë’s at all.

Brontë just can’t wrap his mind around why he lied, let alone how, and it’s then that he gets the call from Nimm.

He was hoping to speak to her, because he feels like she deserves to know how her plan went at the very least- among the thousands of other reasons he has to talk to her- but he immediately feels the drop in his stomach when the very first thing he hears is her heavy sigh. “Hey, Neil. Bad news.”

He closes his eyes, braces himself. This isn’t how she’d open with most of the bad news he fears from her. “What’s wrong?”

“Probably not what you expect,” she says. He wonders what she thinks he’s afraid of- if she knows it’s about her, or if she’s thinking that he’s still worried about Anastasia Volkov. Art’s efforts alone would’ve been enough to reassure him, but he has yet to express how genuinely he appreciates her effort to help, too. “Can you come on down to the station?”

He looks at his watch. It’s been almost two hours, and he doesn’t know how long these things last, but surely Charlie and Ricky won’t be that far off of calling him. “I mean, it depends, I- I’ve probably got to pick up my kids soon, but they are in the city, so it’s not like I’m far away.”

“Yeah.” Her voice sounds dry. “Good news, then, is you can do both at once.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come to the station to pick them up.” She drops that, and then hangs up immediately, leaving Brontë staring blankly at his coffee cup again.

He tries not to feel angry- at the very least, he tries to deal with the worst of it before he has to actually see them. How convenient that he parked at the fucking station, and now he walks through the summer rain as if he barely notices it. They’re good kids, they don’t get into trouble, there shouldn’t even have been anyone to antagonise- how the fuck was this how today should end?

He’s surprised to find Ricky sitting in the waiting room- by himself. It’s not just that he lost Charlie, but Jake came down with them, too, and he’s nowhere to be seen either. Ricky’s got a scrape across his face, the kind one gets from concrete, and his phone is in his hand, smashed. He looks up as Brontë enters, and he gets up and runs to do something he hasn’t done in years- which is to hug Brontë like his life depends on it. He doesn’t seem to mind that Brontë’s not exactly dry, and he shivers from the water cooling on his skin.

As soon as Ricky’s arms are around him, Brontë’s anger takes off its mask and reveals itself to be intense worry. He holds Ricky tight, preempts letting go- but Ricky doesn’t want to let go, so Brontë doesn’t either.

“You’ll have to tell me exactly what happened,” Brontë says, the kind of warning in his voice that tells Ricky he’s not completely off the hook, “…when I sort this out. Where’s your sister? Where’s Jake?”

“It’s my fault.” That’s the first thing Ricky says, like it’s the most important thing- more than answering that question, or saying how he got hurt, or that his phone broke. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I-“

“Ricky, hey. It’s okay. Are they hurt?” Brontë asks, and Ricky shakes his head, finally stepping out of the hug now. “Okay, well, then everything is going to be fine.”

Brontë doesn’t know how to phrase the question, why haven’t you been taken into custody, too?, so instead he asks, “tell me what happened. Follow me.”

He taps in with his access card, leading Ricky behind him. “It was my fault,” Ricky repeats again, as if there’s nothing else that need be said. “I, um- I…”

“It’s okay. You can only get yourself in less trouble.” Brontë doesn’t want to promise no trouble at all, but he thinks this is probably punishment enough.

Ricky takes a shuddering breath. “I yelled at a cop.”

Brontë raises an eyebrow. “And then?”

Ricky stares at him, like the following events should be obvious. “Charlie and Jake tried to hold me back and get between me and the cop, but then- it all happened so fast, he’d shoved me to the ground, and other cops got involved, and then- and then I saw them getting taken away. They didn’t do anything.”

Brontë’s been leading him down the hallways he knows, but doesn’t often travel, to the holding cells as they speak. “So you- did you push them? Use any physical violence at all?”

“No.”

Brontë turns to look at Ricky, tries to see some threat in the literal child in front of him, and finds none. Ricky’s voice is only just starting to drop in squeaky half-steps; he’s got a baby face full of freckles, and he’s only up to Brontë’s shoulder. He might intimidate other twelve year olds, but a cop?

“I know I shouldn’t have said what I said. But I didn’t touch him.”

Brontë searches for an explanation that makes sense. “What did you say?”

Ricky kicks at the ground. “I told him to get out of our way. He was trying to get in the middle of the protest and he took a sign off of someone else, and so I told him to back off.”

Brontë’s been softening already, but now his anger is turning, because the rules are there for a reason. He was already coming to the conclusion he wants to spit out right now.

“What did you say exactly?” he asks, for what little it matters.

Ricky’s voice sounds laden with guilt. “I don’t want to repeat it.”

Brontë approaches the door to the holding cell area now, and he stops right before it. A few cops have walked past them, and haven’t questioned Brontë at all; he wonders how many really recognise him, and how many just know what authority looks like, what can’t be questioned. He suspects it’s all of them, considering how many can see it in themselves- how many can abuse that.

“Honestly, I don’t need you to.” Brontë changes his mind. “I’m going to have some harsh words with whoever brought you in.”

Ricky reaches a hand up to stop Brontë as he turns back to the door. But he can’t say it looking Brontë in the eyes. “I may have, uh- called him a pig.”

Brontë blinks sharply. Part of him reels, part of him can’t imagine his son saying that word like that- but it’s just not the same way he’d have felt that word if he didn’t have something to compare. His reaction is offence, to think that word means something bad about himself- but when he was helping David scrub fag off his locker thirty years ago, he wasn’t offended. He was afraid.

He stares for a moment, not at Ricky, but at the blank white wall behind him. There’s too much here to solve, not just in this moment, but ever- but he doesn’t need to figure it out. He has instinct, and a realisation that the voice inside he’s head he’s never listened to is himself, and that man has something to say.

So Brontë says it. “He was.”

He turns back to the door, leaving Ricky stunned, and Brontë’s smiling a little at the thought. He’ll examine what’s changed one day- or maybe he doesn’t need to rationalise. Maybe he knows exactly what he needs to do today, and explaining can come later. For now, let Ricky be surprised- he’s learning alongside Brontë who Brontë really is.

24

The door opens into a large concrete room. On one side there’s the clunky desk, at which sits a vaguely familiar face, and leaning against it- arms crossed tightly across her chest- is Nimm. She looks more haggard than usual, and Brontë has questions to ask her- especially as she looks at him upon entering, and her eyes are wide, tired, like something is lost beneath them. It’s probably Brontë’s imagination, but she looks paler than before, and he can’t see the bags under her eyes underneath her makeup, but he knows full well that they’re there.

But he immediately sees the holding cell, and he has to bite back that anger again, the protectiveness that makes him want to hurt someone. Charlie and Jake aren’t the only people in the holding cell- there’s an older lady, a hippie-looking guy, a handful of young adults with piercings and dyed hair. Charlie’s talking quietly with one of them, and to Brontë’s relief, she looks rather unharmed, talking animatedly with her hands even as she’s keeping the volume down. Jake was sitting up against the bars, and his eyes light up as he sees Brontë and Ricky walk through the door.

Ricky runs up to him, and through the bars he reaches out, and they grab each other’s hands like Jake’s drowning and Ricky’s just pulled him from the sea. There’s a split second of pride, again, the same way Brontë felt watching Charlie put her hair up- that they aren’t stopping themselves from human contact for fear of what it could be taken as. But there’s no time for that right now. “I’m so, so sorry,” Ricky is saying, and the officer behind the desk gets up, immediately yelling at Ricky to back away- but Nimm raises her hand before Brontë can even say anything.

“Shut the fuck up,” she says to him, quiet, but with a horrible venom. “Can we sort this out, now?”

The officer looks to Brontë, visually processing. He looks at Brontë’s clothes, blue jeans and an unironed shirt still wet from the rain, with an unimpressed look- and then suddenly he’s recognised. “Senior Sergeant Brontë?”

Brontë lets instinct take the better of him. It’s worked so far.

He storms over to the desk, slamming his hands on it, and Nimm backs out of the way to let him. The officer flinches slightly as Brontë’s hands hit the table. “Was this your doing?”

“No,” the man says, raising his hands up slightly. “I mean- I was at the protest, and I was tasked with processing the people we took into custody, but I didn’t-“

“It wasn’t you who turned a confrontation physical with a twelve-year-old boy, and then arrested his sister and his friend, who did nothing?” Brontë demands with a raised eyebrow.

The officer looks far too nervous to be lying when he says, “…I can’t speak to what exactly happened. I was nearby, and I participated in the arrest, but-“

“So you saw no problem with arresting nonviolent, law-abiding teenagers?”

“I couldn’t be certain that-“

“Who was the officer that was in this supposed altercation?” Brontë can see the man shrinking in front of him, but now, his anger is strategic. He leans forward to push the man back in his chair. “Was their bodycam on? Were they wearing their name tag?”

“I don’t know,” the man pleads. He looks nothing like Brontë, but at the same time he’s a mirror- he’s got wide eyes of innocent confusion, emptiness, not in the sense of lack of emotion, but of lack of thought. He can probably do complex math or work through logic problems, he probably feels happiness and sadness and anger most days of the week, but at the same time he isn’t thinking. He’s seeing the imaginary lines drawn around him and he’s stopping at them, the way Brontë did for forty-eight years of his life, and now it’s infuriating to see. Brontë wants to hold him by the shoulders and drag him over those lines, just so he knows that no booby trap will spring, no invisible karma will come. He can cross them to do the right thing.

“Listen to me.” Brontë pauses, searching the man’s eyes for recognition. “You know as well as I do what happened. I know it wasn’t your choice to make these arrests. I’m not saying it was, and at some point, I’m going to have a fucking word with whoever used excessive force on my twelve year old son. My issue with you, officer, is that you didn’t take any action to undo the injustice that followed. Answer me this.”

Brontë looks over at the holding cell, and for a moment, his eyes catch Nimm’s. She’s raising an eyebrow at him, and the slight smile she’s trying to hide is so familiar. He sees her tensing again, holding back a cough, but he looks past her; Charlie is standing at the bars now, watching, standing next to Jake. And here’s Ricky on the outside.

“We both know that these arrests were misconduct on the part of the officer that ordered them, but even in a world where my son acted in such a way that justified his arrest…” Brontë speaks slowly, as if he needs to make sure every word gets through the officer’s skull. “…it certainly looks very bad for every officer participating in this arrest that he wasn’t arrested, even after physical confrontation, but his non-white friend and his transgender sister were.”

The officer looks back at the holding cell, as if trying to connect the dots in his head himself. “It could’ve been a matter of age, I don’t think-“

“Age? My son’s friend is the exact same age as him. They’re all teenagers. There are sociological terms for what’s happening here, and they don’t sound good to a jury in a courtroom.”

He stares directly into the officer’s eyes while he makes his last, most important, threat. “You might think that being an officer, you, and everyone else who allowed this to go through, will be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to escape that stain when the accusation of discrimination comes from an officer much higher up than you.”

Brontë lets the weight of the silence bear down on this man for a moment. He’s never done this before, because he’s always been uncomfortable with the power he wielded. He was a hammer and he was told what nails to hit.

Now, he’s turned the hammer around, and he’s using it to pull the nails out. He knows from his days of hitting the nails in just which ones he can pull out to make the whole structure crumble.

“I- if you want me to let them go, you- you don’t need to th- to bring all that up. We were never charging them with anything,” he says slowly, and Brontë watches all of that wash over him, nothing sticking. At least not obviously, not yet- but he hopes it does stick somewhere deep inside.

“I want you to let all of them go,” Brontë says, as evenly as if he’d planned it all along. He didn’t need to plan it, really- he just knew, the moment he considered it, that that’s what he wanted. “Not just the kids. Everyone taken in at that protest.”

“I can’t-“ the officer begins, despite the defeat in his voice, and that’s when Nimm pipes up with a hidden smile.

“I told you you could,” she says, “and my word alone is enough to authorise that. But now my superior’s telling you. How far up the chain do we need to go before you listen?”

Brontë raises an eyebrow at that from Nimm, but he’s already moving, as if what the officer says doesn’t matter. He probably can’t authorise this, being from a specialist team and not general division. Nimm certainly can’t- he’d give it a ninety percent chance she’s lying on purpose. Maybe nine percent that Brontë’s just wrong.

He goes to where he knows the keys are, in the desk drawer, as the officer is protesting. He sounds exactly like a child, if you take the voice of an adult man and imagine it coming out of a teacher’s pet. I’m not allowed to. I don’t want to get in trouble.

“Just tell them it was on my orders, and they can argue with me,” Brontë says. He’s already imagining the lie, Art’s voice in his head, what would you do if it were true? “Sergeant Nimm’s word should have been enough, indeed, but there should be no question of mine.”

He ignores whatever the officer is saying, now, as he walks to the door and opens it directly up. “Alright,” he says to the whole group, as Charlie ducks out under his arm, followed by Jake, after he untangles himself from Ricky through the bars. “You’re all free to go. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

The reactions are mixed, but Brontë doesn’t really care. The older lady thanks him profusely, her accent so heavy that if it wasn’t the same words over and over Brontë might not understand her. The hippie guy doesn’t say much at all, but he’s gone before Brontë can really consider him. One of the alternative teens gives him a mocking curtsy, and he’s surprised that his first thought is to curtsy back, and that makes her laugh. Maybe she’ll go home and say not all cops. Little does she know.

He turns back, and Charlie’s hugging Ricky, patting his hair down and trying to take a look at his face, which still hasn’t been properly addressed. “Come on,” Brontë says to the three kids, “we’re going to the staffroom, so we can get a first aid kit and get you guys fixed up. Plus, there’s someone I need to talk to.”

They’re all nodding. Brontë feels a hand on his elbow, and it makes him feel haunted, how he turns and expects Art, but sees Nimm. She’s still got her arms crossed, nervous, and he can see the tension in every part of her body, like a spring ready to snap back. “Thanks for that,” she mutters, quiet enough that the officer can’t hear her. “You’re a good cop.”

“Yeah, well,” Brontë says in return, “only because I’m not going to be a cop much longer.”

Nimm looks up at him in shock. “You’re- you’re quitting, too?”

Brontë stares back at her. “What do you mean, too?”

Nimm takes a shuddering breath. “We’re going to have to have this conversation right here, right now, aren’t we?”

Brontë shakes his head. “We’re going to take care of the children, first. And then we’re having this conversation.”

25

It’s something of an odd scene. The kids are standing around, awkwardly, as Brontë gets them the first aid kit out of the laminate cupboard, asks Charlie and Jake if they’re alright. Charlie says she’s fine, and Jake’s wrist hurts but isn’t injured, so Brontë sets them up on a couch and gets the other two to look after Ricky. He insists he’s fine. The three of them keep looking around at the on-break cops who are mostly minding their own business, stuck in their own conversations, with only a passing glance towards the three teenagers now sharing their break room.

“I’ve got a bit of business to sort out,” Brontë tells them, “…but hopefully it doesn’t take long. Just sit and wait, okay?”

“What kind of business?” Charlie asks, and she bites her lip as she questions if she should really say, “…are you quitting?”

“Looks like it. But that’s not what I’m talking about, I’ll-“ he looks back at Nimm, who’s looking at the other cops as uneasily as the children were, and coughs heartily again, face buried in her arm. “I’ll tell you what I can when I know.”

Charlie shrugs and nods at the same time. Ricky’s trying to get his phone working again, and Jake’s helping him, so Brontë turns back to Nimm.

He follows her to the hidden corner of the break room. There’s a wall you can stand against where nobody can quite see you, beside a vending machine, and she heads straight there. The kids shouldn’t be able to see them from this angle, and the passing cops would have to deliberately come and sit at the one table back here- and Brontë would see them coming. This is as private as this conversation can get.

She crosses her arms, foot tapping quickly on the floor. She looks like she’s holding back a sneeze for a moment, like she’s trying her absolute hardest to not sound sick. Brontë doesn’t know exactly what this conversation will consist of, but he won’t let it finish without addressing that.

“All the other cops can still hear us,” she says quietly, the strain evident in her voice. “…just so you know.”

“Not really,” he mutters in response. “But I’ll keep my voice down.”

“I mean, do do that, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” She looks down at her feet, shakes her head. “Do you, um. Wanna go first?”

“I suppose you don’t.” Brontë mutters. “I probably have a lot more to say than you think.”

She looks up at him, her head tilted. He’s got feelings in his chest he doesn’t have time to identify, but considering everything he’s been feeling about this whole situation, it’s not that insane that they burn with a heavy pain. “I’m already thinking you have a lot to say.”

Brontë winces. “How much do you know about Canberra?”

Nimm frowns. “You mean- everything, Neil, unless this is completely out of left field.”

“It is.” He looks down at their feet. Nimm’s still anxiously tapping her foot, and he’s only just noticing the thickness of her boots, how much height that must add to her, despite her seeming about average height for a woman. “I get that we were worried about, I don’t know, the dangers of criminal connections, or whatever, and I fucked that up massively as it is. But I wasn’t actually worried about it.”

Nimm narrows her eyes at him. “Neil, just how left field is this? Or have you-“

“I didn’t want to do it.” Brontë covers his eyes in order to actually spit it out.

“What the actual fuck are you talking about right now?”

“Art. Uh- Artemy Volkov. I didn’t want to arrest him, Nimm, and I only arrested Anastasia Volkov to protect Art.”

He opens his eyes again. She’s staring blankly at him.

He raises his hands up. “I can explain, I guess, I just- I thought you’d-“

“Neil, you dumb motherfucker.” She turns and looks around the corner at the rest of the staffroom, like she’s worried someone’s going to arrest him for that. She stares at the ground, raises her hands up to her face in a show of frustration, and Brontë puts his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“I know,” he says, as her head flips up to meet his eyes, shock still written across her face- and disappointment. “You have no idea the kind of- few days I had in Canberra, Nimm. If you’ll let me explain, I-“

“Oh, trust me.” Her voice sounds almost forcibly high, now, in a tone Brontë reads as heavily sarcastic. “I know exactly what the fuck happened.”

“You would never-“ he begins, but she raises her hands again, waving them around vaguely in front of him, like she can send him away that way. He notices the orange tan across the back of her hands, the press-on nails, and that she’s holding her phone in her hand- and it’s new, not the years-old barely-working iPhone she’s had forever.

And for some reason that is what twigs as strange in his brain, because the fear that’s been looming over his shoulder like a spectre is that she’s dying. And why would a dying woman have a brand-new phone?

“We might need to back up,” she says slowly, carefully, each word thought out, and Brontë decides to completely ignore that.

He crosses his arms. “Can we go back to that in a moment? I need to ask you something.”

He re-appraises her. Her dark brown eyes yield nothing to him, and he tries to see underneath the eyeliner, the foundation, the powder that’s damn near invisible to him, yet shapes everything about her face; he thought she was hiding sickness under there, but does he know that?

“I’m just going to ask you one question,” he says, and he finds himself caught on her eyebrow. The dark lines of thick, brown shading have always looked drawn on, and it was always clear that her real eyebrows were sparser- but they are there, when Brontë examines them. They’re quite substantially there. He doesn’t know what he’s following. But there’s a trail, here, something he can feel more than he can see. “Yes or no question, that’s all.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay.” Her voice sounds lower, in that word. He’s always felt like she forced it up, to cover what he assumed was the husk of some kind of throat cancer.

He leans in closer to her. Her perfume is strong, some fruity alcohol smell, stronger than it needs to be.

“Do you have cancer?”

He sees the tension in her face, the struggle to hold it still. “No, Neil, I don’t.”

Brontë can feel it in his chest. The answer that’s been staring at him as clearly as anything. “Are you faking it?”

“Not on purpose,” Nimm says, holding her head high- but Brontë can see the watering eyes, now, and he hears the rain against the window picking up, hitting hard against the glass. Like the thoughts that have been gently bothering him for days. “I didn’t want you to believe I was dying, okay?”

Brontë puts his arm up against the wall behind her, leaning down even closer, just to see how Nimm reacts. There are still two worlds that exist, the one Brontë has been seeing, and the one he can now feel, just as he can almost hear the beating of Nimm’s heart. He can see the tension, holding back. What could Susan Nimm have to hold back right now?

“But coughing is how you covered it up,” he mutters, cursing a little under his breath. “Can I be unreasonable, for a moment?”

Nimm is looking at him with the softest eyes, lashes fluttering slightly, and he can see the beginning of tears welling up. “Please.”

Brontë kisses Nimm.

You can wear lifts in your shoes to make yourself taller. You can wear makeup that’s just a bit too dark and orange, smudge it across your hands like fake tan. You can draw your eyebrows far too dark and thick, wear mascara so your blonde eyelashes are hidden. You can contour your cheekbones less sharp, your nose thinner, your eyes rounder, your jaw more square. You can wear realistic wigs. You can wear fake nails and jewellery, you can wear shapewear and breast forms under a police uniform that hides it all well. You can wear coloured contacts, put on real glasses to sell the illusion, and to change the shape of your eyes. You can wear flowery perfume instead of cologne; you can shave. You can tighten your throat with voice training to make it high- to keep it high, so you can hide from your mother that you’re not her little girl anymore, and you never were. You can cough to cover, to replace, your tics, always into your left arm, always the arm you’re itching to tic anyway- especially when the person you most care about noticing is polite enough to look away.

But you cannot change what comes through in a kiss. You can’t change that you know this mouth, and you can’t change that you mean it.

Brontë steps back. Who gives a fuck if someone saw that? All he can think about is that his heart has fallen into the earth and he wants to jump out the fucking window.

“Get out of my fucking sight,” Brontë finds himself saying, anger building up like static in his chest.

“Neil, we should-“ Art tries to say, putting his hands on Brontë’s chest, and he’s still putting on that stupid voice. Nimm’s voice. So that’s what he meant by people are listening. That’s why he wanted two weeks. That’s how he cheated, that’s why he thought that would be enough. Brontë was too reasonable.

“No.” Brontë puts a hand up to stop him. “I wasn’t stupid. I trusted you. I trusted Nimm.”

“Oh, I’m sorry that you didn’t realise Susan Nimm was a pseudonym.” Art tries to clutch at Brontë’s chest, but Brontë pushes him back. He looks at the person in front of him, and he’s still seeing his best friend, his coworker, the woman he trusted with everything, and yet, like suddenly seeing through a magic eye painting, he can see Art underneath the veneer of her; he was always there. Of course he was always there. “Listen to me, Neil- we’ve, we’ve both lied to each other, so maybe-“

Brontë lowers his voice and leans in close again, pulling Art even further into the corner. “No. You listen to me. How is it meaningful in any way that I lied to you when you knew the truth the whole time? You knew I was a fucking cop because you were a fucking cop!”

“It’s not the same.” Art’s voice is low, and the tears fall fat and free now, although he’s forced to keep it to a whisper. “I was undercover, okay? I wanted to see what you guys knew about me, and I was planning on only keeping this identity for a little while. But- but you happened.”

Brontë stares, and Art’s trying to avoid eye contact, shuffling uncomfortably- although he lets at least his facial tics out, now, with some minor relief. “The fuck do you mean, I happened?”

“I’ve never had much success, okay? With anyone. Most people can’t handle me. Can’t love me. I’m too much and I make bad decisions because I think I know what’s going to happen and I’m wrong. A lot of people can’t keep up with me. You- god, I knew I was fucked from day one, to be honest.” He laughs a little, wiping tears away. “You, I saw you and my first thought was god damn. I thought you must’ve been a model or an actor when you were younger and you aged like a fine fucking wine, but I just- I thought to myself, he’s a cop, he won’t be any good, his shitty cop personality will come through and you’ll get over it. Then it didn’t and I didn’t. Fuck.”

Brontë doesn’t stop him. As angry as he is, he wants to hear this, if not for any reason other than curiosity.

“You were kind. Like, genuinely kind. I saw you being nicer than you had to be, not using your powers just because you could, I saw your distaste for what everyone around you was doing. I thought to myself, he’s got the right morals, he’s just never been given room to listen to them. I could see you fighting with yourself all the time, and I thought I could see who you were under the cop you were forced to be, and I was right. I was right, wasn’t I, Neil?”

Brontë doesn’t give Art the response he’s looking for. Art sniffs and shuffles his feet.

“I had to make sure you were safe,” Art says after a second. “I had gotten in with you because I was looking at my own case, but I made sure we got put on finding me, specifically and alone, so I could follow through on- basically the plan I did. I wanted you to meet me, as me, and I promise, that as myself, as Art, I didn’t tell you a single lie. Other than the coffee thing. I stopped on the first night because I realised that going that far without telling you the truth would feel bad, and- even when you said you didn’t care, it still felt bad. I wanted to tell you the truth. But then- then you went against what I told you to do, and got yourself in trouble, and I was so angry because I was- I thought the cop won.”

Art reaches a hand up, taking Brontë’s face in his hands. “I see you, and the cop you were trying to be, and I thought- I thought I had you, but when you took her away, I thought the cop had won. I see now that he never had a chance, but that- that’s what I needed to see to know you were safe. To know I could tell you the truth.”

Brontë grabs Art’s wrists. Not hard, but just so that he can take his hands away from his face. “How do I know you are telling me the truth, Art?”

The way his gaze wobbles, it’s like Art’s being held up by sheer force of will, and that will is crumbling. “H-huh?”

“You- Nimm- an entire person, an important fixture of my life that I trusted deeply and thought was dying- she was just a figment of my imagination. An illusion you created.”

“No, I- that friendship, that connection, it was real, it was just with me, it wasn’t-“

“How do I know that? If you can trick me that genuinely, what will ever be enough proof?” Brontë takes a step back, lets Art’s wrists go- and Art does crumble, leaning back against the wall like he’s going to collapse on the floor. “I’ll tell you what, Art, I don’t think I can fucking believe that you actually wanted me that badly. I’ve got nothing to offer you.”

“I don’t want- this isn’t about what you can give me!” Art says, and his voice is raising slightly, wavering somewhere between Art and Nimm in pitch. “I don’t want anything from you, I just- are you going to make me say it now? Here?”

“You said it yourself when we-“ Brontë pauses. “When I met you for the first time as Art. You help people and people help you. I guess I’ve helped you the way you wanted, right? And so-“

Art reaches out, grabs him, and pulls him close. “Will you believe me if I tell you I love you?”

Brontë’s heart rips in half, and the earth shatters beneath him. His voice shakes as he says the only thing he thinks he can say.

“No.”

26

Brontë almost forgets to quit.

He walks into the superintendent’s office. It’s Sunday, so she isn’t actually there, and he’s facing the inspector who runs things when she’s gone. He looks up from his desk with well-hidden annoyance, which is probably because Brontë didn’t bother to knock.

“Brontë,” the inspector says with a nod, gesturing for him to speak.

“I quit.” He says it without even letting himself think. “I’m putting in a formal resignation by the end of the day. I’ll come in soon to clean up my stuff, but I want to use up my annual leave in the notice period. Okay?”

“Excuse me? Brontë-“ the inspector says, but Neil shakes his head.

“Sorry, but no. I’m quitting. Is that going to be a problem?”

The inspector’s mouth is agape. Neil straightens up, leaving no room to be questioned. “Okay. Good. Like I said, expect my formal resignation by the end of the day, and I won’t be coming in tomorrow. Goodbye.”

“What- what about- does this have to do with-“ the inspector is trying to say, but he’s too thrown to get his questions out properly.

Neil doesn’t give him a chance. He backs out of the room. Let them ask their questions; Neil couldn’t answer them if he wanted to.

When he returns to where he left the kids, he can feel the gaze of all the cops in the room, and for the first time, he isn’t one of them. The shift isn’t immediate- it started before Neil walked into the superintendent's office and gave up his badge- but he can feel it, now. The looking down. They were always looking down, everyone always was, but now their gazes are like security cameras, monitoring him. They look away, because his disguise is good. But it’s as much of a disguise as the entire person of Nimm.

“Did you just quit?” Charlie asks, as Neil’s leading them out. She’s insisted on putting a bandage over Ricky’s face that he’s self-consciously hiding with his hand.

“Yup.” Neil holds no illusion of lying to them. “Sorry you had to sit there for so long.”

“And,” Charlie says after a moment, looking back at her brother and his friend as if to confirm they’re also hearing everything she is, “…did you just kiss your coworker?”

“I didn’t realise you saw that,” he mutters. “Long story. Longer than whatever you’re imagining, I promise you that.”

Charlie raises an eyebrow. “Even longer than I could possibly be imagining?”

She’s lucky Ricky has no clue. “Longer, yes.”

“Is this what people are talking about when they say you have a mid-life crisis?” Ricky says, and his tone is light enough that Neil can’t help but laugh. Because it is funny. It’s just also not very funny that Neil’s heart is broken from two separate angles.

“It’s a crisis,” Neil mutters. “For sure. I know things are changing, but- I promise nothing that matters will be any different.”

“That was kinda badass,” Ricky says after a second. “All that stuff you said to get them out of jail. Why’d you get everyone else out, though?”

If Neil focuses on this, he can forget the black hole that sits where his heart once was. “Because they’re probably as innocent as you guys were. And I don’t care if they did, like, punch a cop or something.”

“You should’ve heard him,” Ricky nudges Jake. “I told him what I said and he wasn’t even mad.”

“Are you going to tell us what’s changed?” Charlie asks with a tilted head. They’re approaching the parking lot, now, and what was once a summer shower has turned into a torrential downpour. It occurs to Neil that he could’ve done something different- he didn’t have to quit. He could’ve gone and arrested Art on the spot.

It never occurred to him as an option because it wasn’t one.

“I will when I understand it myself,” Neil promises. His heart hurts too much for him to even think about how the future unfolds from here. “I’ve got a lot to work through.”

The kids talk a lot on the way home, but for the most part, they get that Neil doesn’t exactly want to be included in the conversation. The kids likely realise that the only thing they could possibly remind him of is the fact that they should, probably, be in trouble. He’s just got enough on his mind to forget that.

He forgets right up until he’s almost at Jake’s house that he should probably tell Debbie. What is there to say? The kids got arrested at a climate protest and I’m just assuming they didn’t actually do anything illegal? More accurately, I don’t really care if they broke the law, because I know they were doing the right thing?

It’s not like Debbie won’t know. Ricky will come to her house with that scrape on his face, his phone smashed, and he’ll have to say something. Neil just can’t think of how to explain it to her when he can’t keep a single thing straight in his mind. Nimm was Art all along and now Neil doesn’t know a single god damn thing about the world.

So when they drop Jake off, Neil sighs lowly and says the first thing since they got into the car. All he’d been doing beforehand is imagining Nimm’s face in his mind, peeling back the layers, trying to see Art underneath. It wasn’t any easier just because he knew he was there. “I’ve got to tell your mother something.”

“Oh.” Charlie mutters. Both kids are looking out the window at Jake’s retreating back. “Are we in trouble?”

“I was considering it,” Neil admits as he pulls out. “But upon hearing everything that happened, I think you were unjustly punished as it is.”

“Really?” Ricky says, making eye contact in the rear view mirror. “But I started it.”

“I went through exactly the training that whoever pushed you went through, and in no situation is being insulted by a twelve-year-old worth responding to with violence. Certainly not against innocent bystanders.”

“Is that why you quit?” Charlie asks.

“Straw that broke the camel’s back, I guess. I don’t think either of you did anything wrong, and Ricky, I think your phone being smashed is more than enough consequence for starting it. I’ll speak to your mum and we’ll see about getting you a new one.”

They both say nice things, thanking him for understanding, but Neil just nods and mmhmms in response for the most part. His throat feels locked up.

There’s no longer that divide inside of him. The walls are torn down. Art was right; the man he was the whole time was fighting the cop he’d chosen to try and be, and the cop was dead. Neil killed him today. For the best, he thinks.

He just doesn’t know the man beneath that. He’s never had room to breathe, to stretch, to see how he feels about things. When he thinks about Art, he feels as much like Art is home as he stings with betrayal, and he doesn’t know yet how to move on from this.

Neil doesn’t speak again until they’re home, and he lays on the couch for a moment, staring at the roof, before he summons the courage to call Debbie. His chest is empty. He keeps thinking, now, of the moment when he suddenly knew everything was wrong; it happened first when he noticed Nimm’s new phone, but it wasn’t undeniable until he kissed Nimm. Until he knew that he was kissing Art. He still gets butterflies at the thought, despite every twisting vine that comes with it.

He looks out the window, at the sky, as the phone is ringing. His eyes hurt, they ache. What’s wrong with him?

No, he doesn’t need to ask that question. He pauses, breathes, and feels. He’s seconds away from crying.

He pinches the bridge of his nose as Debbie picks up the phone, and focuses on getting through this one conversation. “What’s up?” she asks.

“Just an interesting situation I felt you should be updated on.” Neil’s spent his entire life hiding his feelings. A few more minutes shouldn’t matter. “The kids went to a climate protest today, and got into a little trouble with the cops. They’re okay, and I don’t believe they did anything wrong, I just- Ricky’s smashed his phone, I suppose.” He swallows and it just comes out. “And I quit.”

“I- huh.” He can hear her buffering. “Everyone’s okay? Nobody’s hurt?”

“Ricky’s got a scrape, but that’s it. I- I haven’t talked to them as much as I should have about it.” His voice sounds strained. She can probably hear the choke in his throat. Has he cried in front of her? In the fifteen years they were married, he can’t remember if he ever cried. He was so numb. “I will. In a bit. I’ve got to be- able to have that conversation, first.”

“What do you need right now?” Debbie asks slowly. “...because I can come get them, if you need.”

“No, I don’t… it’s okay. I just- I’ll have to explain everything,” Neil mutters, “but not right now.”

“Did you quit because of them getting arrested?”

“No. Not really.” His eyes are watering with every emotion he isn’t quite letting her hear. “We’ll talk more when I have a clearer head. I’ve heard their side of the story, and just… with everything, I just thought I should let you know.”

“Neil. Is something wrong?”

Neil doesn’t know how to answer that, because everything is fucking wrong. He just can’t explain it. How do you explain that everything your entire world is built on has fallen apart in an instant, and you’re alone, without any of the fake support you’d built for yourself- and the real support turns out to have been just as fake?

“It’s a long story,” he says for what feels like the thousandth time today. “I promise I’ll tell you when I know how it ends.”

He can’t hold the phone call for much longer. He’s openly crying, now, staring at his ceiling; he wishes he was looking at the sky. He feels limited by a ceiling. “Let’s talk about it later,” Debbie says, and maybe she hears the tears in his voice. “You go get some rest. I’ll text the kids, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

So Neil hangs up, stumbles outside into the rain, and tries to find meaning. He stands there, letting the rain blend with the tears in his eyes, for a long time. Eventually, as it’s getting dark and his eyes are red and raw, he heads back inside and deals with real life. What’s left of his life- the parts that were real.

He wants to mope, but it doesn’t help. He speaks to his kids; he gets Charlie’s side of the story, which backs up her brother’s. He texts Debbie and determines a time to get Ricky a new phone- one that Neil’s willing to pay for. He looks back at the texts where she’s thanking him for sorting out Charlie’s name with the school- he never actually did that. But Nimm overheard him trying.

He wouldn’t put it past Art to have secretly helped. It angers him that he probably did, and Neil didn’t even know.

He deliberately ignores the text he has from Art, although it takes every ounce of strength he possesses to keep himself from opening it. He can read it from the notification, anyway: can we talk tomorrow?

Neil’s heart won’t let him avoid that conversation tomorrow. But he can avoid it now. He swipes past the text notification so he can order pizza or something that won’t make him have to cook dinner, at least. Small comfort.

27

Art doesn’t double-text him at all. Neil just finds him sitting on his doorstep when he returns from dropping the kids off at school.

Art looks haggard. There are dark circles around his eyes, and that almost makes Neil feel bad- but he didn’t get any fucking sleep, either. How are you meant to, when there’s the weight of an entire moon on your chest, and your heart beats like you’re running from death itself?

“Why are you here?” are the first words out of Neil’s mouth as he’s getting out of the car.

Art stands, slowly, like it’s painful for him. “I feel like this is only fair.”

“No, it isn’t.” Neil feels like he’s going to have a heart attack. “I need time, okay? You can’t- you can’t upend everything in my entire life in a single week and then tell me- everything you told me and expect me to just accept that you’re here, when I’m not ready to talk-”

He shuts his mouth, because Art’s looking at him with such exhaustion, and he realises what he sounds like. “Maybe I did this to you. Fine. But I did it because I didn’t know if you knew how much I-”

Art steps forward, and Neil steps back. That single motion makes Art deflate, and here they are, standing outside of Neil’s actual house, which Art knew the address of the whole time because Nimm knew. “Neil,” Art says, his voice choked, “I meant it, you know that? I meant what I said.”

Neil covers his eyes with his arm, because he can’t look at Art right now. He can already feel his heart returning to its place in his chest, just to break again. Art can’t mean it. “I-” Neil stops. “Come inside. Right now.”

Art follows him without question. Letting him into the house feels like the last erosion of boundaries, the last moment when Art isn’t part of Neil’s everyday life. It had to be this way. There just wasn’t another world.

Neil can’t help the snark that comes out of his mouth. “You haven’t sneaked through my home before with a secret third identity, have you?”

“I’ll never be able to apologise enough. I know.” Art’s voice sounds so broken that Neil regrets his words immediately. “I didn’t go into it intending to deceive you, okay?”

Neil takes a deep breath. “I know you didn’t. Do you want- I dunno, some water? A coffee or something? How the fuck do we have this conversation?”

“I don’t know any better than you do.” Art follows him into the kitchen. His ability to effortlessly blend into any scene with confidence isn’t working- but not because Neil could never imagine Art in his home. Rather, Art looks distinctly uncomfortable and restless, and he moves like if he touches any furniture, he’ll break it.

Neil’s feelings are complicated, but not so complicated he can’t identify pity. “Sit down,” he mutters. “I’ll make you a coffee.”

He still struggles to mix Nimm and Art in his mind, to get it through his head that they were never different, as he makes up two cups. “I needed time mainly because I needed to figure out how to tell you,” Art blurts out, and his eye keeps ticcing as he pulls out a chair at the kitchen table. “And to sort out the mess.”

“Are you safe?” is the first thought that crosses Neil’s mind. “From your mother?”

Art shivers. “I think I told you the important stuff. Like, that it wasn’t fun, and I had to come out to her. Which she didn’t take well. But that’s my fault, I suppose- if I’d just shut the fuck up, she never would’ve known.”

“But you’re safe.” Neil looks down at his hands as he’s making the coffee. They’re steady, at least. “She’s not coming after you.”

“She wouldn’t. It doesn’t help anyone for her to do that. She wanted reports of the empire I’m supposed to be building down here, so- so I lied about that and that’s the main thing. But, um.” Art’s leg is nervously bouncing at a rapid pace. That’s something he did as Nimm, too. “She wasn’t exactly jazzed that you were a cop. I think she got your name from my contacts, maybe? But that appears to be all she knew- for whatever reason, the police part was a surprise to her.”

“Mmm. I’m sure she’d be happy to hear I’m not any more, then.” How is Neil having this conversation so casually? It feels as natural as breathing, and it really can’t be this easy. Art tricked him for months.

“It’s not that simple,” Art says, and Neil suspects he means that. He brings over the two cups, and pulls out his own chair at the table. “But I’m working on it. Your family is safe.”

“Why didn’t you stay silent?” Neil asks with a raised eyebrow, and Art looks at him over the mug, frozen for a moment.

“What?”

“You gave me that hint, when I arrested her. I see now why you thought it was obvious.” Neil gives himself credit, still; the possibility of Art being Nimm wasn’t just unreasonable, it required too much betrayal to be believed. Why would it even occur to him? It’s insane. “But you could’ve said nothing and just come to me as Nimm, when it was safe.”

Art looks down at his feet. “I know. Especially since I proceeded to be- I mean, I still think my anger was somewhat justified, but I don’t know if you could tell that I felt more guilt than anger.” He looks at the coffee so he doesn’t have to keep eye contact with Neil. “In the moment, all I could think about was you. How you deserved to know.”

“And then you backpedalled on that.”

Art bites his lip. “Again, I thought the cop had won. When you arrested her, you were solving the problem in the way a cop would, not…”

“The way a criminal would?” Neil asks, eyebrow raised, and for a moment Art looks genuinely worried at that response. “I have to be honest, I just wanted to protect you. And so I did the only thing I had the power to do.”

“I suppose everything else that makes sense to me is- well, it’s not something I would’ve wanted you to do, either. I can’t blame you for helping, I just- wish it hadn’t come back on you.”

“You’ve been very vague about how your mother reacted.” Neil’s fingers drum on the table. He hasn’t touched his own coffee. “Except that it hasn’t been good for me.”

“I think I’ve been- clear enough,” Art says. “I had to have a very long, very heartfelt conversation with her to keep her from having you murdered for pissing her off like that. Her rage isn’t easy to come back from.”

Neil looks down at the tiled floor. It’s not that he’s not afraid anymore. It’s that he feels like he isn’t alone. His heart still drops at the thought of what he might’ve faced- but Art was there to catch it. “And you did it anyway.”

“Only with a lot of begging and pathetic crying,” Art mutters. “It’s harder to play the silly little girl in love card when you’re clearly not her little girl anymore, and she’s also pissed about that.”

Neil hears the word, how casually Art drops it again, and he wants to believe him. He wants to believe him so bad. “What did you tell her?”

“About being trans? I just did my best and let her misunderstand it. She’s kinda determined to do that.”

“I’m glad you had an answer to that, but, uh, I mean- the part before that.”

“Oh, about you.” Art smiles wryly. “Part of the reason I’m so stressed is that I never actually got a full answer from her, but I believe she should leave you alone, now. I was pathetic enough about it and promising that I’d get you to quit. Turns out I didn’t need to do anything for that to happen.”

Neil sips his coffee slowly as he contemplates his mortality. “So she’s not coming after us?”

Art shrugs. “I don’t think so. She wants to see what I’m doing down here, so there’s a good chance she’ll show up- but I’ll make certain she leaves you alone. Her anger will eventually subside. I promise.”

For a moment, their eyes lock, and it’s like Neil can’t even remember what’s keeping them apart; the only thing keeping him from pouncing on Art is the coffee cup in his hands. But he looks away, because it’s still not that simple.

Art sighs. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’ll accept that we’re safe enough, for now. That I made a mistake by arresting her, for several reasons.” Neil tries to process his thoughts, and as he does, the anger starts to hit again, just a little. “But you let me think I had to be sorry that I hadn’t told you I was a cop. When you knew the whole time.”

“Fuck.” Neil can apply the knowledge that Art tics like that when he’s nervous in retrospect; he’s been nervous most of the time around Neil. He was just good at hiding it. “I know. That’s what I can never apologise enough for.”

Neil searches for how to respond to that, but suddenly Art puts the mug down, and he reaches for Neil’s hand- pulls him closer, so he can look him in the eyes. “Listen,” he says quietly, and Neil listens, so closely he can hear the birds outside, singing after the fresh rain. “I never, ever went into it with the intention of deceiving you in particular. I met you under deception. I just- couldn’t find my way out to you. I wish I’d known how to do it right.”

Neil wants to cry again. He couldn’t tell you why. “I just…“

He closes his eyes and tries to just feel. It’s hard, when you haven’t been letting yourself feel for forty years.

“I want to trust you. I do. But how am I supposed to? What have-“ he opens his eyes to Art’s and his heart longs to take that fall, it really does, but he can sense the danger of it, like standing on the edge. “If you could be such a close friend to me for months and that was all a complete lie, how can I ever trust that what you’ve telling me right now isn’t an even bolder lie?”

Art’s leg is bouncing again, and he looks down at it like that’ll get it to stop. He doesn’t even think about letting go of Neil’s hand. “It wasn’t a complete lie. And why would I ever be lying about this?”

Neil shakes his head. “I couldn’t fathom why you’d be lying about being Nimm, either. That doesn’t mean you weren’t lying.”

Art takes the mug out of Neil’s hands, too, puts it on the table; and then he moves forward, links his arms around the back of Neil’s neck, sits in his lap. Neil’s hands move to his waist on instinct, and yeah, this can’t be faked. But it could be for reasons beyond what Neil can imagine.

“What if-“ Neil begins, cutting off whatever Art was about to say- “what if you did this because I was on your trail, and you needed to throw me off? What if, when you’re sure I’ll never be able to be a cop again, you’ll throw me out like I’m nothing?”

Art smiles sadly, tilting his head a little. “I’m sorry that this is how I refute that, but darling, you never had a chance of catching me. I was in the precinct. The only reason you found me is because I set it up that way.”

Neil leans his forehead against Art’s. He can say what he’s saying, and he’s truly afraid it’s true, but he can’t pretend it’s making him want to put any distance between them. “I knew you wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake,” he mutters, unable to keep the smile off his face. “I even told- you. I even told you you’d never make such a mistake.”

Art smiles wryly. “Yeah. I know. It took more effort to plant such obvious and easily traceable evidence than it did to actually forge his documents. I made that for you and you alone. But I figured you wouldn’t know the method, so it wouldn’t matter.”

Neil shrugs. “I didn’t. You’re right.” There’s a question he wants to ask, and it flows off his tongue before he can really stop it. “Why?”

It only seems like Art’s getting closer. Neil wishes he’d back away, just so they can have this conversation civilly, rather than Neil being tempted every moment to pounce on him. “Why what?”

“What about me was it?” Neil speaks slowly, because the words are heavy in his mouth. “I- I know you said you, I don’t know, found me hot or whatever, but… you went to such lengths. For me.”

“What’s the question?” Art shrugs, and he’s just gazing into Neil’s eyes like gazing out the window, like he’s found a beautiful view in the murky void of his irises.

“I just can’t fathom how- how it was worth it. For me. You risked imprisonment. You potentially ruined everything with your mother. You put all that effort into this elaborate song and dance, and then you…”

Neil doesn’t even know how that sentence ends. Art doesn’t need him to finish it. Art kisses him like that’s all he needs to say, and for a moment, Neil is almost happy with that.

But Art does give an answer. “I told you, Neil, I meant what I said. Remember, I was there for months. I knew you. If you’re thinking I could’ve fallen in love with you in a week, of course you’re wrong. I fell in love with you over months, as your subordinate. It was those long conversations we had every Thursday rather than getting any work done. It was the drives when I kept trying to find out your music taste and the way you laughed when I guessed so right. It was going with you to follow up on evidence I invented, hearing about your family, complaining about fucking Greggs together. Fuck. And then just- I knew it when I was looking at you through the office window, one day. You looked up at me, and I just thought- I was hit by the sudden realisation that nobody had ever looked at me like that. You smiled, and you were so- so calm, and kind, and I just- I came in and sat down beside the desk, and I was doing my stupid little connections wall thing, and I think it was the trust you had in me. Nobody trusts me, Neil. Nobody just lets me in because they trust me with their heart, and you- well, you almost did.”

Neil buries his face in Art’s neck. “I trusted Nimm.”

“And that was exactly why I had to tell you. I had to meet you, as me. I had to unravel all the lies I’d been telling because I couldn’t let that go. I couldn’t let you go. I cared too much about you already, as your coworker and friend who secretly had a crush on you and kinda perhaps maybe fell in love with you.”

“It makes sense,” Neil mutters into Art’s skin; his smell is so comforting that Neil wants to fall asleep, here and now, and feel this safe forever. He shouldn’t feel safe, not with Artemy Volkov, the son of Anastasia Volkov- the Anastasia Volkov he arrested, whose rage is directed towards him, now. “I want to believe you, Art.”

“I know.” Art kisses the side of his neck. “I know.”

“I just- I can’t let you go.” Neil can’t help but admit it. His heart is aching so much, but it’s back, now that Art is here and he’s so close and they couldn’t stay apart if they wanted to. Neil can’t tell Art to leave, any more than he could tell gravity to invert, or storm clouds to dissipate. “Give me some time, okay? To- to get used to everything. Just don’t leave me alone in that time.”

“Does that mean…” Art mutters, leaning back to catch Neil’s eyes. “…you’ll give me a chance?”

Neil takes Art’s chin in his hand. “Just one. Just for me to see if you’re telling the truth.”

Neil has been struck by lightning. It happens every time he kisses Art, and the world suddenly makes sense again.

He just hope this choice doesn’t come back to burn him.

28

Neil knows, logically, that this is not the world’s smartest decision.

Artemy Volkov, the criminal he’s been chasing for months, was undercover as, essentially, his only friend. Artemy Volkov, the criminal he’s been chasing for months, now claims to be in love with him. Artemy Volkov is sitting on Neil’s lap, arms around his neck, and Neil’s kissing him back, hungrier than the first two times. He’s picking him up, to a surprised sound and a little giggle, and carrying him into the bedroom.

This is about the dumbest thing Neil’s ever done.

He just quit his job for, primarily, the criminal mastermind who’s been playing him. The criminal mastermind who’s smart enough, experienced enough, to have set all this up for some goal Neil could never, ever fathom, because he cannot play chess far enough ahead to even know the endings this game could possibly have. The criminal mastermind whose shirt he’s unbuttoning with shaking hands, as fast as he can, because it’s unbearable to have it on a moment longer.

“We’ve got time,” Neil purrs to the man who lied to him for months. “Quite honestly, we’ve got days.”

Art bites his lip. “I don’t have days worth of patience. Come here.”

Neil leans over the man he can never trust fully again. Or can he? He could choose to. How tempting it is, when he’s looking up at Neil like that.

“What was your plan if I caught you?” Neil asks, as he kisses at Art’s throat. His tone is playful. “What were you going to do if the cop did win?”

“Depends.” Art succeeds in pulling Neil’s shirt over his head, running his fingers over Neil’s back, making him shiver. “As Nimm? Told you the truth. Trusted that you were the good person I knew you were. As Art, if it turned out you really were just a cop?”

Art grabs at Neil’s belt, pulling him down by the hips. “I reckon I could’ve seduced you out of the handcuffs.”

“Mmm.” Neil nips at his ear. “Were you secretly hoping for the handcuffs?”

Art laughs lowly, a sound that goes straight through Neil’s body like a shot. “Maybe I’d prefer you in handcuffs.”

Neil knows he feels something about that. If it’s the idea, or just Art’s voice, there’s no way to know, especially when the second is definitely at least part of it. “I’ve never thought of it that way before.”

“You’ve thought of it before?” The mischief in Art’s voice is not just endearing, but intoxicating, and Neil is fucked, because even if this is all a game, Art won long ago. Art won when he sat next to Neil in a bar. Art won when he picked up evidence he’d planted and convinced Neil that he had to be the one to follow up on it.

Neil runs his fingers over Art’s ribs and grins against his neck. “We can take turns.”

“Go on, then.” Art’s been disguising his gorgeous, husky voice for months in order to pass as someone who never existed. If he tried, he could remind Neil so easily why Neil shouldn’t be doing this. He won’t, because he wants it as badly as Neil does- as badly as Neil knows he shouldn’t. “Tell me what you were thinking.”

“I’ve had mere days where I’ve accepted how fucking badly I want you, and a lot of it’s been flashbacks. Don’t expect me to have detailed fantasies laid out for you.”

“Not even a little one?” Art pulls Neil’s face to his. His eyes are beautiful, like if every star in the sky was so bright it tore the night apart. He tears Neil apart. “You didn’t once think of what you’d do to me if you had me tied up, waiting for the cops to come? If you were driving back down from Canberra with me, arrested, in the back seat, and you could stop the car in the middle of the night on the side of the street…”

Neil pushes him back down against the bed and sits up. “I’d never abuse my power like that.”

Art rolls his eyes as he uses the leverage now to undo Neil’s belt. “I know you wouldn’t. I was just fantasising about being roughly used in the middle of nowhere, okay?”

Neil’s face grows hot again. “Is that what you want me to do?”

“Hmm? I don’t think you’re up to the task.” Art tries to shuffle, to sit up, and Neil pins him down by the wrists, just to argue against his point- but that just makes Art’s grin darker, and he says, “I think you’re way too sensitive for that. Don’t worry, I also had plans to turn an attempted arrest into you, tied up on a chair, still confused as to why you liked it so much when I was touching you so slowly it was torturous.”

He shifts his weight suddenly, throwing Neil off balance, and he has to let go of Art’s wrists to keep from falling over. Art moves so quickly that Neil can barely keep up, first kneeling in front of him, and then pouncing on him and almost immediately turning the situation completely around. His gaze down at Neil is hungry. “I think you’d be so, so sensitive, because nobody’s taken the time with you before, and even if they have, they wouldn’t like I do. I want to see you squirm.”

Neil swallows back his audible moan, which mainly comes from Art punctuating that sentence with a grind down on Neil’s hard cock through his jeans. “I-I don’t get roughly used?” he says with a sideways grin, taking the opportunity to pull at Art’s belt, to get it out of the way.

He has to admit that it’s impossible, at the very least, to believe that Art is faking the way he’s looking down at Neil so darkly, the depth his voice falls to when he says, “do you want that, darling? I can give you that.”

Neil looks up at the roof. It’s never been something he’d allowed himself to think. Even just being with a man, being with Art, is so much that it’s hard to contain himself; he feels like a teenager again, with all these hormones driving him insane. “You could do anything,” he admits, because it’s the only thing he can conclude in this moment, “and I’d let you. I’d like it. You fucking betrayed me and I’m still here with you, aren’t I?”

Art’s face falls. Neil knows those words hurt him, but he also knows it won’t change anything. He regrets saying it, it slipped out, but also maybe Art needs to remember that Neil still doesn’t quite believe him. He needs to remember that all this isn’t over.

“I’ll do anything to prove I mean it,” Art says, and he stops what he’s doing now to kiss Neil sweetly, to try and carry that meaning through that kiss. “I promise on my entire life and everything I hold dear.”

“I know.” The problem is that promises aren’t enough and Neil is impatient. He pushes up against Art’s hands, finding himself easily stronger when Art isn’t trying, and he sits up so they’re face-to-face- although Neil has to lean down for that. “But don’t make promises right now. Unless it’s a promise of what you’re going to do to me.”

It seems to take Art a moment to brush aside Neil’s comment. He tries, though, running his hands over Neil’s chest, across his ribs, his back; he leans in, kissing gently at his throat, over his shoulder, his collarbone. “I don’t want to just do anything to you,” he’s saying as he does this. “I want to do things you fucking love. I want to blow your fucking mind, Neil, you don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand.” Neil pushes Art back, because it’s the only way he can get him lying flat, the only way he can start to finally take his jeans off. “I’d like anything you do to me, Art, that’s the problem. I’ve been wanting you for so long that anything you do will fucking break me.”

“Fuck.” Art shivers at that. “For so long?”

“I’ve only known you- as you- for what, a week or two? But I wanted you fucking instantly, the connection was just there.” Art’s hips sliding free of his jeans naturally tilt up, towards Neil. “I know why, now, but to be honest, if I as a gay man was ever going to go for a woman, it would’ve been the one you were pretending to be. You had me long before I knew you did. I’ve been ignoring that I’m gay for fucking decades and it’s all flooding to me now.”

Neil presses a kiss to Art’s stomach. “That, and any day without you feels like it lasts fucking forever.”

They make eye contact, as Art’s now laying naked on the bed and Neil’s leaning over his bottom half; and both of them are thinking it. Neil couldn’t really stop himself if he wanted to. Art’s hand cards through Neil’s hair, so gentle at first, loving, and that makes Neil’s heart ache.

But then, Neil digs his nails into the outside of Art’s thighs, silently telling him not to be so gentle. Art gets the message, his grip on Neil’s hair forceful now, and his direction made clear. Neil didn’t need to be told. He wanted this.

He still plays coy with it, kissing the very tip of Art’s cock as if he doesn’t know how desperate Art is, bucking up against his mouth. It’s a matter of semantics, what to call it. It’s a lot smaller than what Neil worked with on David, but the action’s the same, flicking his tongue over the head and watching the way Art thrusts up towards his mouth. Art’s fingers grip tighter in his hair, and Neil grins up at him mischievously.

“Don’t play with me.” Art could’ve gone whiny and submissive and begging, and Neil would’ve fallen for that just as hard- but he also can’t get enough of the way Art snaps in comfortable authority, in a way Neil can’t back down from. He doesn’t even get a chance to think; he just does as Art guides him to, takes him in his mouth.

It’s like sucking dick on easy mode, with the added benefit that if Neil wants- and he does- he can press his fingers inside Art, slowly, as he focuses most of his attention on Art’s dick. He can’t help but notice not just the hardness of Art’s cock against his tongue, but also the ease with which Brontë can slide his fingers inside of him. “That’s good, baby,” Art mutters, his words punctuated with a shiver. “You’re so good, darling.”

Neil looks up at him. This is the man who played him for months, this is the man who made a fool of him. He curls his fingers up harder than he has to. Art arches into the feeling.

Neil lets himself be guided for a while, lets Art have this. He wants Art to have this, in truth; he can’t see a world where they leave this bedroom any time soon. When one of them cums there’s the other and it’ll be maybe seconds, Neil predicts, between the moment he cums and the moment he’s throwing himself at Art again. He considers stopping early, at the point where Art’s moaning lowly, clutching at the sheets, bucking up against Neil’s mouth. He could stop him here, make him desperate, make him rut like that against Neil’s leg, unable to get the release he needs so much.

But Neil can do this again, and soon. He intends to get every possible reaction out of Art, and as much as he’d enjoy torturing him like that, he himself wants to turn things around.

“Oh, shit,” Art mutters, pulling at Neil’s hair so hard it hurts. “Fuck, baby, I’m going to- right now?- I’m going to-“

Neil doesn’t stop, the gentle push of his fingers and the desperate movement of his tongue, especially not as Art’s pushing up into his mouth, further, needier, biting his lip and moaning like the sounds of the earth moving underneath Neil’s feet. The twitching of his cock every time Neil runs his tongue over it, overstimulating, is intoxicating, and Neil can’t help the way it makes his body burn with desire to get this out of Art.

He sits up, and he could, if he wanted to, push that overstimulation further; he could fuck Art until he was senseless, and he intends to, eventually. But he has another plan, and there’s this twist in his stomach that almost wants to call it revenge. It’s not- not when Art would do this gladly, not when Neil just did exactly what he’s about to ask Art to do- but some part of him feels like he wants to push it. Like he wants to demand.

What he really wants to demand is proof that Art really does love him, but no such proof can ever exist. So he circles the bed instead, stepping out of his jeans as he goes. This is what he gets instead.

Art is laying on the bed, breathing heavily, and he seems to read Neil’s mind before he says a single word. Neil actively chooses to say nothing, in fact. He lets Art’s eyes say everything he needs to say; the way Art looks at Neil’s cock, his gaze focused and far away at the same time, hands reaching for it as if subconsciously moving, as if he doesn’t need to think about it.

Art’s laying on his back, and he shuffles up so that his head hangs off the bed, giving Neil the perfect angle. Neil doesn’t even get the illusion of dominance, not really, the way Art’s so ready with an open mouth to take him in. He still gets the feeling of sliding into Art’s mouth, his throat, so warm, so deep, like it’s easy. Like it’s nothing, like it’s all he’s ever wanted.

Art clutches the bed as Neil thrusts slowly into his throat, and the feeling goes right through him, like whiskey through his chest. Art’s so small that it’s easy to reach down, to feel him flinch, the way his throat constricts around Neil’s cock from a single touch to his own dick, still sensitive now. To reach inside of him, to feel him gasp as Neil’s fingers press inside of him again. Neil moves slowly, carefully, feeling Art gagging at the pressure, at how he pushes- and yet Art lets him do this. And yet, it seems like he likes it.

So maybe Neil pushes it a little. Maybe he fucks into his throat as if it isn’t possible for it to hurt- only because he knows Art would stop him if it hurts too badly, but also, only because there’s some part of him that wants Art to feel it. The lump in his own throat that he feels every time he thinks about Nimm, about how every part of his only friend was a lie. He wants Art to feel as used as he did when he kissed who should’ve been a completely different person, and found Art.

The problem is so distinctly that, despite the parts of Neil that say these things, it isn’t that simple. It never is and it never will be. Because he’s not just mad at Art.

He couldn’t put a name on it, still refuses to, but you know things before you know things. Neil knows it, looking down at Art and trying to pretend he doesn’t see the whole man; glad that from here Art can’t see how lovingly he’s staring at him.

Neil can’t get fully into the headspace of fuck you, whichever way you take those words, because the next time Art says he loves him, it’ll be hard not to say, I love you too.

29

There are multiple problems Neil still needs to solve. The same goes for Art. Both of them are procrastinating on these problems, and Neil blames Art entirely. If Art was more productive, maybe it would’ve forced Neil to do what he needed to do. But both have been as stuck with the other.

They’ve talked about things that don’t matter. A lot of their communication has happened non-verbally, one could say, to the point where Neil’s dick hurts. But they’ve also just laid there, at times; Art on Neil’s chest, where Neil’s had to look down at him and think to himself, where’s the obvious clue that I’m missing, here, that proves you just want me dead?, and he’s had to walk it back, only because if Art wants him dead, there’s no point in fighting. He just won’t survive.

It’s only on Wednesday that Art actually suggests even leaving the house. Neil didn’t send Art home on Monday- he just couldn’t- and he didn’t feel the need to do it Tuesday night, either. Why would he? He’ll need his own space eventually. But not now. Now, he needs to not be as alone as he’s felt for his entire life.

“We’ve got to go to the precinct,” Art mutters, after a long moment of drawing circles on Neil’s bare chest. He’s lying naked on top of Neil, as comfortably as if he’s always done it every single day for years. “At some point. I ended up calling in what PTO I have, too, but we’ve still got to leave our jobs properly.”

Neil runs a hand through his hair with a groan. His muscles are heavy and he’s not convinced he can move ever again. “Unfortunately,” he says. “I don’t want to face everyone.”

“You don’t have to face them. We just collect our shit, and then leave.” Art turns, leans his chin on Neil’s chest. “I guess we don’t have to, it’s just unnecessarily suspicious. Like we were chased away.”

“Why? You’re worried that whoever replaces us in the investigation will know that we both randomly abandoned the post because you were the person we were looking for the whole time?”

“Of course not.” Art grins at him. “Why would they ever need someone to replace us? You found me, after all.”

Neil pushes Art’s hair behind his ears, makes sure he can see his grey eyes. They’re fully open, not a single lie kept behind them- and yet, Neil isn’t sure he can ever be convinced that he isn’t just seeing things.

“You found yourself,” Neil argues. There are a lot of things he could say, things he wants to let spill forth, locked inside his throat- but when he looks at those eyes, he still can’t quite see Nimm, still can’t quite believe he could have been fooled so thoroughly.

He wants to believe it’s all this simple, that everything’s fallen into place. But Art is completely capable of lying to him, and of having reasons Neil could never comprehend.

It’s the same thing Neil has been thinking for days, now. That this isn’t as simple as a respite. This is a test. Neil’s letting him in, and when Art turns his back Neil doesn’t get the feeling he’s looking back over his shoulder. The problem is, Art would know not to look back.

Neil watches the muscles in Art’s shoulders as he’s pulling his shirt over his head. Are they tense? Like he’s aware he’s being watched? Neil saw that tension in Nimm constantly, always- but the moment he sees it rise in Art, Art’s shoulder shrugs in a tic, and then the tension is gone. Was it lying, all that time, that had him so tense- or can he lie as easily as he can turn and smile at Neil, and all that tension is purely physical?

“What do you have to get?” Neil asks as they’re driving up to Art’s apartment, first. “What did you bring home?”

“I have to get my disguise,” Art says, and there’s a twinge of guilt in his words. It stings for Brontë to realise what he means. “It’ll take me a while to get it on. I’m sorry.”

“Is that why you only ever worked from home most days?”

“Partially. I was hardly working when I was at home, anyway. I’ve always got to be moving, got to be doing things and thinking things, and I mastered slamming out bureaucratic nonsense with the least amount of effort possible years ago when I did my arts degree.”

“You did an arts degree?”

“I’m not sure why I bothered, frankly, but yeah, up in Sydney. Sociology. Actually, to be honest, I do know why I bothered. It was because staying in a dorm was the first independence of my entire life, and I had room to breathe.”

When Art’s saying things like this, how could Neil ever assume it’s a lie? He says it so casually, looking out the window, tapping his fingernails together. Like Nimm used to do. Like Art’s always done in the passenger seat of Neil’s car.

“I can relate,” Neil says offhandedly, although it’s not what he’s thinking about right now. There’s still the smatterings of a summer storm on the horizon, but the heat remains, and so the air is thick, regardless of the true tension between them. “You know. My mum’s the normal version of yours, and all.”

“You went to uni,” Art says offhandedly, “right? You did a semester of law and gave up.”

“How did-“ Neil sighs. “Yeah, right. I must’ve told Nimm that at some point, huh?”

“I don’t think I heard it recently,” Art answers. “Fuck. Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s not fair,” Neil says as he’s pulling up to the parking spot, “that you know so much more about me than I do about you.”

“I told you the truth a lot as Nimm,” Art says as he clambers out of the car. He waits until they’re walking up to the door of the whiskey den together before finishing, “…as much as I could, I did.”

“I distinctly remember not knowing much about Nimm,” Neil says, and he finds it easier to talk like Nimm really is a separate person, as if she’s just died or something, when he says, “explicitly because she was so vague with me.”

“I was vague, yet honest. Every time we mentioned family, I was like, yeah, not a huge fan of my mother, my dad’s dead, got a few brothers. None of that’s a lie. I just, you know- you didn’t ever really have reason to consider that I might be talking about, you know, me.”

He stops to take his keys out and open the whiskey den’s door; it’s still early enough in the morning that they’re not yet open, and the room is completely dark this time as Art leads him through it and up the stairs. The only light is the sun from outside, and the room is thick with the heat that’s trapped in here from it, with nowhere to go.

And so Neil’s in Art’s apartment for the third time, but for the first time, he feels like he really sees it. He never actually paid attention to the laptop that Art always leaves sitting on the printer, until now, when he realises that Art didn’t even bother getting a different one to bring to work as Nimm. If Neil had ever gone and looked at the desk, examined the handwriting, he would’ve seen the multiple different hands Art could write in, but he would’ve definitely noticed that the general notes he kept were exactly the freakishly font-like writing of Nimm. If he’d gone to look through the drawers that Art’s pulling out now, he would’ve found the police uniform, the high-quality wig Art’s gently rearranging as he takes it out.

“The deception- it wasn’t even well hidden,” Neil says, as he’s examining the handwriting on Art’s shopping list, pinned to his fridge. “It was all right in front of my eyes. It just didn’t even seem possible. It never crossed my mind because why would it?”

“That’s the trick,” Art says. “You did figure it out, though. Eventually.”

“No, I didn’t.” Neil turns to see Art sitting on the floor in front of a mirror, a pile of makeup boxes sitting in front of him. He’s rubbing foundation that looks absurdly orange at first onto the back of his hand, and then he’s using a brush to move it from there to his face. Once it’s rubbed in, thinned out, he can recognise it easier as Nimm’s shade. “You gave me clue after clue after clue and it never even occurred to me.”

“But it did,” Art argues. He’d shaved at Neil’s house this morning- and all Neil had thought was that Art was sharing his space, getting comfortable, and Neil was letting him. And yet, now, he realises Art had been thinking ahead. There’s where Neil still feels betrayed, even now. “You didn’t just decide you were going to kiss Nimm, did you? You kissed me because you knew it was me.”

Neil sighs. He comes to sit down next to Art, watching the focus in his eyes as he spreads that colour over his face. How far ahead is he thinking? Far enough ahead that he’s already planned to fuck Neil over? “I suspected it might be. If you hadn’t been choosing to make it as obvious as possible, I wouldn’t have.”

Art smiles wryly. “I still think you should get credit for figuring it out. What made the difference in the end, by the way? Was it just seeing me?”

“In part,” Neil says. Maybe he’s just giving everything away to the enemy, still. What if Art’s hatred of his mother was feigned to make him seem more palatable? What if he’s working for her? Neil can’t put the pieces together to make it make sense- but he couldn’t put together the pieces that Art was Nimm, either. “It didn’t seem possible to me, but you were sure acting weird as Nimm. It’s just that I had attributed, essentially, all of it to what I thought was cancer. And I realised when you had a new phone that that didn’t make any sense. Why would someone who was dying buy a whole new phone? And nothing else you’d done made any sense if you weren’t dying.”

“I suppose I’m lucky you came to exactly the wrong conclusion, huh? You saw everything you would’ve needed to see to know I was in disguise. It was hubris, this particular bluff.”

“I think you can’t call it hubris if you’re completely successful until you deliberately tank it,” Neil says. “Why a woman? I mean, maybe I just don’t get it, but wouldn’t it have been- what’s the word- dysphoric?”

Art sighs a little, stopping with the makeup brush for a moment to let his eye tic. “Gender is one of those things we all think of as immutable. People don’t see it as possible to change so easily, even if they know people can be trans. If I’d disguised myself as a man, and you were looking for a man, it would’ve been a lot easier to see me, because myself and my disguise weren’t in two separate categories. You know? The point is that it’s as far from me as it can be.”

Neil looks at the dozens of different products Art has laid in front of him; he’s still only touched the one, spreading colour down his neck in a way that’s completely mismatched, but not far off of what many white women do. And that’s the point. “I suppose it’s certainly easier to disguise your actual face like this.”

“I mean, you can use makeup to disguise yourself so many different ways. I used to use it to disguise myself as a man, you know, and that was part of what lead to me realising I could just be a man, that that’s what I wanted. It was breaking all the stupid rules of society that made me realise they’re completely arbitrary, made up, intangible, you know? Same goes for a lot of things. Nothing makes you realise how fluid and malleable the law is until you’re a career criminal who’s been undercover as a cop for months.”

Neil considers not saying it. He doesn’t want to compound the guilt. But he says it anyway. “That’s exactly why it’s so hard to trust you, you know? I want to believe you, but I have things that anchor me in this world, and you- you can just cut those lines so easily. You’ve made it so I can’t trust anything I thought I knew. How am I meant to trust anything I think I know now?”

Art stares at the mirror, and Neil can’t tell if he’s sad, or guilty, or just thrown for a loop; but he slowly puts the makeup brush down. “I’m not going to tell you what to think,” Art says after a moment, “but I will tell you what I think. There are tethers I can’t cut. I can’t change the way you feel deep down. I can’t change your innate sense of morality. I can’t change your heart. Most of the things tying you down were always fake, and I want you to see that- and I think you have. I just need you to recognise what’s not fake, and could never be. Fuck.”

Art shivers, and Neil wants to get closer to him again, to push the makeup aside and jump on him before he’s suddenly not the man Neil’s horrifically, horribly, falling for. That’s what his heart wants, and that’s simple.

But it’s not as simple as Art is saying it is, because otherwise, he wouldn’t be contouring his face into Nimm’s.

30

The bad feeling starts when they pull into the station. It’s the feeling of being watched, and maybe it’s just knowing where the cameras are, knowing now that Artemy Volkov is sitting beside him in the car.

“I’m just emptying out my locker,” Art says. Watching him turn into Nimm like a shapeshifter changing faces was somewhat terrifying, but it makes it easier to see him under there, now that Neil knows what to look for. “Shouldn’t take long. I left my Nimm phone in there, just in case my mum was somehow tracking it through the SIM card instead of the phone itself, and I’ve got to turn in my badge and gun.”

Neil’s about to question how Art was ever able to hold the gun, but he realises he never saw Nimm take it out of the holster- and she always held it strangely, in a way he blamed on nails. He taps his fingers against the wheel anxiously, looking out around the parking lot, like he’s going to find someone waiting for him. He asks a more relevant question. “How did she find Nimm’s phone to track in the first place?”

“It was just my old phone, so it was my own laziness.” Art sighs. “Sometimes I do just make careless mistakes, believe it or not. I just can’t know how it could possibly be a mistake until I’ve encountered the consequences.”

They climb out of the car, and everything about this moment is so distinctly familiar. Neil keeps his eyes on Art, tries to remind himself not just that this isn’t Nimm, but that Nimm never existed. It’s easier to think that when he hears Art’s voice, and not Nimm’s- which, now that he knows them both, aren’t that far apart. But watching Art’s retreating back, he still can’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that it was always, always Art he was looking at, when he sees Nimm forging on ahead as she always, always has.

Neil sighs and turns around, eyes casting over the parking lot for someone who’s going to call them out. He doesn’t see a soul, and yet, every moving shadow has him jumpy, and he can’t figure out why.

Their lockers aren’t far from one another, but Neil also has to clean out his desk. “I’m going to go do the office first,” he tells Nimm. Art. It’s always been Art. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

Art nods sharply as he turns down that hallway, and Neil almost makes it to his office without incident.

“Hey, Brontë. Haven’t seen you around in a few days, what’s up?”

Neil knew other people would be here, but at the same time, he hoped everyone would mind their own business. It was always an unrealistic hope, to want to disappear off the face of the earth as far as anyone other than his direct supervisor was concerned. But he was hoping.

Of course Greggs would never consider minding his own business.

Neil turns with the world’s fakest smile, the exact same one Greggs has always been getting. “Good morning,” he begins, trying to think of how to make Greggs leave him alone as fast as possible. If he was ignoring the invisible strings completely, he’d just tell Greggs to fuck off.

“There’s been rumours around the office that you’re leaving,” Greggs says, lowering his voice like it’s a scandalous, sexy secret. “Especially since, some people are saying, you and Nimm quit at the same time. Did something happen out in the field?”

Before Neil can even think about a real answer, or how to politely say fuck off, Greggs is continuing. He’s wiggling his eyebrows, still speaking just slightly too loud. “Some people were saying that right before you quit, something happened between the two of you in the break room.”

Neil narrows his eyes. “Fuck off.”

He takes a mental snapshot of the shocked blinking, the look on Greggs’ face, the way his dumbass smile is wiped completely away, and Neil grins that fake grin again as he turns and makes it to his office, closes the door behind him.

The bad feeling grows stronger, and for a moment, Neil looks up and tries to find what’s wrong. He’s used to ignoring this, when instinct tells him something he can’t substantiate- but if he hadn’t ignored it, hadn’t been reasonable, maybe he would’ve had a hope of figuring out Art’s lie a little earlier. Maybe he would’ve had a hope of figuring out his own lie earlier.

He looks back over his shoulder. Greggs isn’t there- nobody’s there. The blinds are drawn, and there’s movement behind them, but nobody peeks through them. The feeling can be described as if he’s being watched, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that exactly.

Neil takes out his phone, and he sends a text to Art. He almost sends it to Nimm, knowing he’ll look at that phone first, but he doesn’t. I’ve got a weird feeling that something is wrong.

He doesn’t need a response, so he doesn’t wait for one, and goes about packing up his desk anyway. The feeling hangs over him like a guillotine, like if he looks up he’ll see the blade coming down, and he holds his head high to keep it from slicing him.

He doesn’t have a lot to pack up. He’s got a single picture of the family trip to Cairns a few years ago, various personal development documents he might need to find another job, a mug that says Best Dad Ever that Ricky got him from his school Father’s Day stall when he was six. He finds a small stack of birthday cards, from Debbie, her sister, his mother, the kids- one signed by everyone in the office, and one signed individually by Nimm.

Art always used his perfect handwriting as Nimm. Maybe he didn’t care, and just assumed nobody would notice. It was true that nobody did. Dear Neil, happy forty-eighth birthday! Don’t you dare complain about being old- you’ve got two years before you’re even halfway there. Love, Susan Nimm.

He’d asked her- him? He was speaking to a man pretending to be a woman, speaking to the woman he was pretending to be- he’d asked what halfway there meant. Didn’t Nimm know the life expectancy is eighty and going down?

Nimm was still a real person in his mind, then, and she’d laughed and said that he better make it to one hundred, so that Nimm could be around to annoy him for at least the next fifty years.

Neil wonders now, as he’s reading those words again, if Art loved him then. If Art really is telling the truth, that he loved him before Neil even knew they’d met, these words are proof of that. The truth, filtered through a joke, behind a lie. Art spelling out his pseudonym in the hopes Neil would be able to tell that’s what it was.

Maybe Art’s always been telling him the truth.

Neil puts the thought aside for now. His phone dings, and he’s got a text- from Nimm.

He looks up at the window into the office area, suspicious, just to check nobody’s watching him. Art’s texted back from Nimm’s phone, and maybe it’s as simple as that was closer at hand; he won’t necessarily read anything into it yet. But his back is raised, and he doesn’t like the nonspecificity of, I’ll just be a moment longer. Meet you at the car?

If Neil is being reasonable, it’s nothing. But he has nothing to lose by being unreasonable.

Will do, he texts back. Art doesn’t need to know what he’s thinking, if there’s nothing to it after all; he can explain when he knows it’s safe. But Neil can’t help but feel like these pieces fit a puzzle he doesn’t want to put together- and every time that’s happened these last few weeks, that puzzle was the truth.

So he takes the little cardboard box back to his locker, and takes everything out of it, as intended. The extra uniform shirt, the badge, the gun, everything he’s supposed to be bringing back to his supervisor. He slides the gun into the box and covers it with the shirt. Maybe it’s nothing, and maybe it’s even a bad idea, but he can always come back, can always claim he just wanted to get something from the car first, and that’s why he’s going back out there.

He walks like the lie is true. Like nothing is wrong, he has not been watched at all this whole time, like he and Art haven’t managed to silently communicate that their alarm bells have both been going off. He takes the box to his car with all the confidence of a man who should be doing exactly what he is doing.

Which is why he doesn’t look around the car too much, doesn’t let it show that he won’t be ambushed. Even though he knows it’s coming. The car is empty when he unlocks it, or so it seems, and it seems empty when he opens the driver’s side door, leans over to put the box on the passenger seat, steps in and closes the door, takes the box back up, reaches in like he’s just going to grab anything, like that anything is not a gun.

He pauses, when, as if perfectly timed, he feels the barrel against the back of his head.

He remembers how panicked he was taking this particular assignment. Now, it seems insane to have ever been afraid of Artemy Volkov; even before he knew it was the man himself setting him up, Art was never known for violence, subtle or otherwise. Anastasia is a reasonable person to be afraid of, and yet, something inside Neil is completely calm in this moment. His heart is racing, and fear is there, but it’s a tool, an experience, and not a vice that crushes him. He moves very, very slowly when he wraps his fingers around his gun. It’s been a long time since he’s practised on the shooting range. He’s never had to shoot a gun outside of that.

He looks up in the rearview mirror. “Are you really going to kill me in a police station parking lot, Anastasia?”

He’s most shocked that she came here herself. It’s a good sign, honestly; if she sent someone else after him, it would be certain that their job was to kill him. She’s here because talking is on the table.

“I’ve gotten away with it before.” Her accent is somewhat stronger than last time, like she doesn’t care how she comes across. “Everything can be made to look like a suicide, enough that it’s not worth investigating.”

“I suppose we got off on the wrong foot.” Neil has the gun safely in his hand, now, and he moves so slowly, so slowly, as he begins to pull it out from the box. He won’t shoot it, in basically any universe, but maybe it’s worth proving that he has it. “Considering, at this rate, I think I’m your future son-in-law.”

The safety clicks off. Now Neil’s heart is racing, and he imagines how it’ll now have to be Art who breaks the news to his children. Yeah, sorry, my mum didn’t approve of me dating your dad, so she killed him. Well, it was always going to be Art.

“In your fucking dreams, you son of a bitch,” she hisses, and Neil agrees with those individual words entirely- which he finds funny, although he’s not sure the little smile he can’t hold back is the most helpful thing right now. “You’re just like every other stupid, ugly man who thinks a little bit of flirting is true love. You were played so well that even after leaving your job as the man in charge of catching us, you are convinced you were not played.”

There’s a different kind of fear, but Neil doesn’t have time for that. If she’s right, Art’s already won, so what does it matter?

“If that’s true,” Neil says instead, “why are you here?”

“Hmm.” Anastasia sounds annoyed, but she holds the gun steady. Not more annoyed than she already was, at least. Neil would like to think she’s bluffing. But he’s not convinced. And he doesn’t see Art anywhere. “I have other reasons to be here. I am auditing.”

“Ah, right. Seeing if Art’s the kind of psychopath you are.”

“Am I supposed to be insulted?” Maybe she should be. Maybe Neil’s doing the wrong thing by pretending not to be terrified right now. “I am checking up on her.”

At least she’s not pretending she doesn’t know who Art is. “I don’t think your son needs checking up on.”

“You believe this?” Anastasia asks, eyebrow raised. “You think you have not been tricked, but you don’t even know that it is a disguise?”

Neil shouldn’t let anger make his decision for him. But that’s when he turns, and points the gun with all that rage directly back at Anastasia. “You know as well as I do that that is who he is.”

He catches her blinking in surprise, although it doesn’t seem to faze her for long. “Your hand shakes.”

“Not enough for it to matter.” He turns in his seat to get a closer look at her, to level the two of them. “Do you want something?”

“I came here to see what was happening,” she says, “and to decide what I should do about you.”

Art did say that he wasn’t completely convinced that they would be left alone. “I hope you know that I arrested you solely because I felt it was what would best protect Artemy. And I’m going to continue to make every decision on that same basis.”

“How sweet.” Her mouth twists in a smile so dry and empty that it leaves Neil’s mouth parched. “I’m glad you pulled a gun. It gives me hope that you have balls.”

“Do you want me to shoot it to prove it?”

The silence after those words is palpable and oppressive, and Anastasia is still smiling like her mouth is stapled that way. She stares with icy eyes like if she stares long enough, Neil will falter.

“I don’t want to play games,” Neil growls lowly. “I may not be a cop anymore, but I am sure that won’t be important when I walk your ass back in there, and-“

“And I get out again.” Anastasia’s face falls in disappointment. “You are still a cop. You do not know that the law is nothing but a tool I am immune to the touch of.”

Neil straightens his arm. Makes his aim more threatening. “Are you immune to bullets, then?”

Anastasia smiles again, just that little bit, still fake and pulled by strings. “Are you?”

“Here’s the thing,” Neil says slowly. “I’m not a fucking cop. I never really was, not that it fucking matters. The reason I will always win between the two of us is not because I have the law on my side- because you may be wrong about me, but you’re right about the law. It’s just a tool and it does nothing against you.”

Anastasia raises an eyebrow. “Then you have nothing on me, do you not?”

“Wrong. I always win out of the two of us because unlike you, I’d do absolutely anything for Artemy Volkov, and he’d do the same for me.”

Neil is acting on instinct and nothing else when he knocks Anastasia’s gun to the side, and he hears the whistling of a bullet before he knows if it’s even worked, if he was even right; that bullet could be Anastasia’s, ricocheting somewhere, that crash could come from his own bullet he didn’t even realise he’d fired going through the back window. But it doesn’t.

Anastasia cries out in pain, and Neil sees her grabbing her hand- and dropping the gun on the floor of the car. “How did you-“ she begins, as Neil reaches down to grab that gun, just in case.

“I didn’t do anything,” Neil says, “except love your son unconditionally, the way you never did.”

He takes both guns, clicks the safety on, and steps out of the car. There’s a bullet hole clean through one back window, and it’s probably lodged somewhere in the opposite side door- or Anastasia’s hand. He knows Art didn’t want to kill her, and it’s definitely for the best that she’s not dead, because that’s a crime that even Art probably couldn’t easily get away with here and now.

He traces the path of the bullet to the other side of the parking garage- ludicrously far away- and there Art, still as Nimm, registering as Nimm in Neil’s head, is holstering the gun as quickly as he can. He’s wiping his hands on his legs, not even bothering to hide the way he’s ticcing like crazy. Even when Neil knew, Art still hid his tics when he was presenting as Nimm, just in case anyone was looking. But he probably can’t right now.

“Art!” Neil shoves both guns in his pockets and runs towards Art. What he just confessed to Anastasia isn’t a lie. He was being reasonable, knowing Art could be lying to him- but he doesn’t feel it. He certainly can’t feel it now. “You pulled a gun for me?”

“Fuck, fuck. Duh,” Art says, and it’s strange to see Nimm doubled over like this, speaking in Art’s voice, ticcing like Art- even stranger to lean down and wrap his arms around Art’s waist, to pick him up and spin him, when he smells like Nimm and Neil can feel the hair of Nimm on his face. It’s odd to kiss Nimm, but less so as he knows it’s Art. Because he has to kiss Art desperately, now. He just doesn’t have a choice. “Told you I have perfect aim.”

"I believed you," Neil says, slipping both of his hands into Art's. He'll never quite get the hang of seeing him under there, but he feels him, the way he's always felt him. He knows he's there. "Thank you, Art. Maybe she'll believe now that we actually love each other."

It’s not quite the confession the way he wants to confess it. But it’s something.

“We should probably talk to her. With the power in the conversation.” Art rocks back and forth on his feet, and then he suddenly leans into Neil’s chest. “I don’t want to worry about you any more. She better accept that I love you,  just while we work on a plan.”

“A plan?” Neil wants to think about what Art is saying. But he’s also thinking about how easily Art said I love you, something he’s said already, as if Neil didn’t just say he loved him too.

“To stop her,” Art elaborates. “Whatever it takes. I don’t want to add her to my list of names- fuck- not here, not ever. But even if that’s what we did, we’d have to dismantle everything else first. Like we were pretending to do with me, but- but for real.”

Neil squeezes Art’s hands. “I’m with you, every step of the way. I should’ve just said what I felt from the beginning, Art, and I’m sorry that I was trying to be reasonable. Maybe you could’ve been lying to me, but you’re not. So I won’t lie to you.”

He takes Art’s face in his hands, and he knows Art’s under there, even if he can’t see it. “I love you,” he says, clear and direct and leaving no room for miscommunication. Art’s eyes are wide and bright and true. “I love you and I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. It’s unreasonable, but it’s true.”

They kiss like magnets coming together, unable to be held apart a second longer. Neil can’t see Art under there, but he can feel him, and he knows the truth. He always has, and from now on he won’t pretend otherwise.

31

Neil feels a weird sense of deja vu, sitting in front of Debbie’s house. Last time he was here, it was only- what, three weeks ago?- and he’d been sitting with a fraction of this apprehension, texting Nimm desperately for help. Now Art’s sitting right beside him, in person, undisguised, and he looks almost as nervous as Neil does.

“Do you think she’ll be angry?” Neil asks, tapping the steering wheel anxiously. It’s a big change from what the last week has been. After Art shot his mother, there was a lot of work to do, and Art spent the weekend doing it, with what help Neil could give from home with his kids. He explained very little to them, far less than he normally would. He wouldn’t elaborate on why his car was in the shop, or where Ricky’s new phone had come from, aside from a friend of mine bought it and no longer has a use for it. They’d been able to confirm that the tracking was in the SIM card, and so when Art had thrown that on the ground and crushed it under his heel, they knew the phone itself was safe. Neil had felt strange, watching the last remnant of Nimm disappear into the dust.

“You know her- better than I do,” Art says with a blinking tic. “It’s funny. I’m more nervous for this than I was for everything else we just did. Conferring with my entire criminal network to establish what hers is doing, setting these safety nets in place, contacting my brothers and risking everything to see if they’ll want to help me destroy our mother from the inside- that’s all fucking fine and dandy in comparison to being introduced to your family.”

Neil laughs a little. “We can wait, if you want. By all accounts, we’ve not exactly been dating long.”

Art’s staring out the window. “We’re different, though, aren’t we?”

Neil looks at the house he lived in for fifteen years, and then the man he’s been dating for- officially, days. He’s only known that he’s known him for weeks, and they first met only months ago. It’s strange which one feels more like home, and even stranger that that feeling is reciprocated.

“Yeah,” he admits with a sigh. “I promise you’ll do fine, okay? There’s nothing you could possibly do that would make them hate you. It’s not even anything formal, I just asked if I could stop by while everyone was home, so- we can leave the moment you’re uncomfortable.”

Art holds the bouquet towards him. He was holding it while Neil was driving; Neil had tossed up about it, but he ultimately felt like the white tulips and the violets that were supposed to mean I’m sorry might add sincerity to that message. “You’re going to go in first, right?”

“I’ve got to say the gay part first,” Neil says. He’s starting to feel more comfortable with that word in his mouth, now, because he’s starting to realise, not just on the level of what’s true, but what he can feel to his bones, that anyone who has a problem with it can get fucked. “So yeah. I don’t know, we’ll wing it.”

“I don’t really want to wing it. Fuck.”

Neil leans over to him as he takes the flowers from Art’s hand. “All you have to do is be nice when I introduce you. I promise.”

He kisses him for reassurance, and Neil takes that same kiss for luck as he steps out of the car.

It’s just past the time when the kids would be home from school, and with the weather just right as the sun is falling, the front door’s been left open, the screen door unlocked. Neil knocks on the wood anyway as he’s coming in, just to announce himself. He’s hearing the giggling voices of teenagers already. “Hello?”

“Dad?” Charlie calls down the hallway, sticking her head out of her bedroom. “Why are you here?”

“Did Mum not tell you I was coming?”

She stares at the flowers in his hand for a moment, raises an eyebrow, and then turns her head the other way down the hallway. “Ricky! Did Mum tell you Dad was coming?”

“She said it in the car!” Neil makes his way down the hallway slowly as he’s hearing this telephone game play out. “You just weren’t listening! Mum? Dad’s here!”

He hears Jake’s voice, and another he’s pretty sure is Rohan’s. He gets a distinct impression that he wasn’t particularly clear about the gravity of what he was planning on saying. He can see Art still standing behind the screen door when he turns around, and he gestures for him to come in.

Charlie looks over Neil’s shoulder, and her eyes widen slightly. She has the decent sense to whisper as she says, “is this the guy you were talking about?”

“Yup.” For some reason, that’s what makes Neil nervous. He stops and processes the feeling: maybe it’s just that he’s worried they won’t like Art. Or Art won’t like them. Or maybe because he can hear Debbie’s voice, now, and it’s hitting him that this is real; that there is no longer a single bit of separation between the parts of a real life he had before this, and the real life he’s found. Charlie is looking at Art, and he’s awkwardly raising a hand to wave at her.

She waves back, and Neil says, “I’m going to introduce everyone in a minute, but I kind of have to explain myself to your mother and Ricky first.”

Charlie nods slowly. “And what are the flowers for?”

“Apologising.”

He doesn’t get a chance to explain further, as he sees Debbie standing at the end of the hallway, a dishrag in one hand and a glass in the other. She looks him up and down, and her eyes catch on the flowers, too. “Neil. I didn’t expect you just yet, uh- what’s up?”

She seems caught off guard, but he is, too. “Can I get everyone together, please? I have something to say.”

He’s not a huge fan of the apprehension she has as she turns around, looks towards the living room where Ricky’s voice emanates from. “You mean, right now?”

“Yes. I mean, at least, you and the kids, I suppose- although I don’t really care if Ricky’s friends hear or not.”

Charlie is visibly hiding her mouth, to prevent her smile from showing. Debbie doesn’t have to say anything- Ricky pops his head out from the living room, also looks Neil up and down, and says, “what’s with the flowers?”

Neil sighs. Suddenly, his heart is beating rapidly, because for all he’s changed his thought about this, has he even said the words he needs to say out loud? He said all this to Charlie, and that was something, but now the woman that was married to him for years is staring with- nervous anticipation, like he’s going to pull out a weapon. On some level, he is. He’s supposed to- has to- tell her that he never liked her the way he pretended to, the way he thought he had to. That every date, every kiss, every time they had sex, was a lie. That his vows were lies. That he didn’t even know they were lies himself, because he believed them so deeply.

“Maybe the flowers have changed the tone of this more than I wanted them to,” he says quietly, because now Ricky and Debbie are just staring at him, and he can feel those gazes, like they’re lasers guiding rifles. “Look. Debbie, I- I need to apologise.”

“Neil, I-” she begins, but he holds the flowers out towards her, cuts her off.

“Let me say it,” he says, because he has to, or he’ll explode. “I need to apologise, because you were my best friend, and for fifteen years, I was- I didn’t even realise I was doing it, but I was being terrible to you. You were my best friend, you are my best friend, and I-”

“Neil, please, haven’t we talked about this?” Debbie raises her hands up, doesn’t even reach for the flowers. “I didn’t- I didn’t think you felt this way, or else, I-”

“Debbie, what are you talking about? Just listen to me, I-”

“No, I’m listening, I just- you know, Steve is just in the backyard, and, you know, you and I didn’t really work out. It’s- it’s nothing personal, it’s just-”

Neil’s face falls as he realises, and he presses a hand to his face as it goes red. “Do you actually think that’s what I’m saying right now? Do you-”

“I just, I feel like if you wanted to have this conversation, you at the very least could’ve given me some warning, but- like we talked about, we both didn’t feel that it was right for us, right? We-”

“I didn’t feel like it was working out because-”

“Neil, I really, really don’t want to have this conversation, especially in front of-”

“I’m gay!”

The silence rings out after that. He’s embarrassed, now, realising what she thought, and yeah, he too thought it was clear that there was nothing between them. That was the fucking point. He thought it was so clear that it didn’t even occur to him bringing her flowers and trying to apologise could look that way.

He takes advantage of that silence. “I’m apologising for letting you marry a gay man, Debbie. You were my best friend, and that’s what we should’ve stayed. I didn’t do it on purpose, obviously- I thought I could just choose you, and it would be that simple- but it’s not. And I’m realising that now. Okay? I thought you should know. And, uh,” he finally looks up at Ricky, whose face is oddly blank- as if he’s just been told what’s for dinner, or the weather- and adds, “I thought you should know, too, Ricky.”

Ricky blinks. “Why did you marry Mum if you’re gay?”

“Ricky,” Debbie says as a sideways warning. She takes the flowers now, slowly, her face almost as red with embarrassment as Neil’s.

“No, it’s a valid question,” Neil says with a sigh. “Put simply, I didn’t know being gay was an option, Ricky.”

“Isn’t it inherent? Something you’re born?”

“It is. But when I was your age, that wasn’t what we were told. Being gay didn’t magically make me immune to hearing that.”

Charlie’s looking behind Neil, at Art, who Neil must assume is still standing quite awkwardly by the door- neither Debbie nor Ricky have spotted him yet. “I knew,” Charlie comments into the silence. “Only like a week ago.”

“No fair,” Ricky whines, because anything his sister gets first is fair game to whine about. “Why’d you tell her first?”

“I didn’t plan on that either,” Neil says, but he’s not as concerned with the reaction of his son. Ricky’s a good kid, Neil’s always known that. It was Debbie he wanted to specifically apologise to, and how he’s watching her face, looking emptily at the flowers, and trying to imagine what she’s feeling. Sure, Neil was married to someone he was innately incapable of finding attractive for fifteen years- but that was a him problem, that he’d made Debbie’s. He has no idea how she’d feel in this moment. “Debbie?”

“Mmm?” she looks up, snapping out of her thoughts. “Oh. Um- congrats, I think?”

He shakes his head slowly. “I’m very specifically apologising, Debbie. It’s not, you know, homophobic to be mad at me for marrying you anyway.”

Debbie sighs lowly. “I dunno, Neil, I’m not mad. We’re literally already divorced, and I already knew that we spent years and years trying to make a spark where there wasn’t one. It doesn’t matter why, if you didn’t know either, does it?”

“Is that really your first thought?”

Debbie shrugs. “I think the positives and the negatives even out, right? Yeah, maybe you should’ve known earlier, but it’s not your fault. It means there’s nothing wrong with me, and you’re still a great friend. Besides-” she turns suddenly, reaching out and ruffling Ricky’s hair before he can dodge away, back into the lounge room- “like I’ve been saying. You gave me some pretty good kids.”

“Ew, Mum,” Ricky calls back at her, and Neil can hear Jake’s laughter.

“Wait,” Neil says, as Debbie’s turning to head back down the hallway. “One more thing. Nothing bad, just- I kinda needed to say that before I could say this. Ricky, come back here.”

“Come on down to the kitchen,” Debbie says over her shoulder. Neil’s face is still burning, and when he turns to look at Art, Art’s trying to stifle laughter; which is exactly what Charlie is doing, too. Neil doesn’t think it’ll be a problem for them to get along- just hopefully not always at his expense.

Ricky gives a questioning look to Neil and jabs his thumb back towards his friends. “They can come if they want,” Neil tells him, and as he walks past, he waves towards Jake and Rohan.

He turns, partway down the hall, to make sure Art isn’t walking in alone. He’s not- Charlie’s beside him. Art’s holding his arm down, keeping his anxiety hidden, as he says to Charlie, “you know that coworker of your dad’s? That was me. In drag.”

Charlie stares between them for a moment, and Neil catches Art’s eyes, sees the slight smile in them. “That both makes more sense,” Charlie says after a moment, “and way, way, way less.”

Neil shrugs. “Come on. You can’t keep finding out everything before your brother does.”

So Charlie runs on ahead, leaving Neil and Art to walk side by side. It’s only as they’re emerging into the kitchen- at the same time as Steve’s walking back in from the backyard, the three boys are congregating by the kitchen table, and Debbie’s placing the flowers in a vase- that Debbie lays eyes on Art for the first time. She seems shocked again, and Neil can feel the weight that must be on Art’s shoulders- it isn’t just the ex, but the kids, their friends, the ex’s new man, all of them waiting for an explanation as to who it is they’re looking at. And they all already know.

“This is Art,” Neil says simply. “My boyfriend.”

He takes Art’s hand, because he doesn’t care. He remembers feeling weird about Rohan meeting his daughter, and that’s because he was afraid; it felt like every stare was a judgement, and every judgement was death. But everyone is staring and Neil doesn’t care, because they shouldn’t judge, and even if they do, why should that change anything? Neil has found truth in the hand interlocked with his. Those hands could craft any brilliant lie they want to, but they chose to undo all of that for him. Art chose him to tell the truth.

“It’s nice to meet you!” Ricky echoes, and Charlie waves again, like she hasn’t met him already.

“Oh.” Steve missed the first conversation, but the dots aren’t hard to connect. “Congratulations, Neil. It’s lovely to meet you, Art.”

Steve crosses the room to be the first to shake Art’s hand, and he falters only a second at Art’s shiver, at the tension in his body that doesn’t seem to quite go away from it. But Art keeps that handshake as warm and strong as Steve could hope for.

Neil and Debbie make eye contact as their partners shake hands, and for the first time Neil thinks everything might be perfectly alright.

“Excuse me,” Art says almost as soon as that handshake is over, and all but runs into the other room- and for a moment, everyone looks at Neil expectantly.

“Sorry for just dumping this on you out of the blue,” he says, mainly to Debbie and the kids. “I didn’t want it to be some grave announcement, you know?”

“Is he okay?” Steve asks, and Neil realises that’s what they all wanted to know.

“I’m going to assume he doesn’t want to swear in front of the kids.” Further staring, and Neil almost rolls his eyes. “Yes, everyone, he’s fine. He’s got Tourette’s, okay?”

Funny, that, how as soon as everyone has an explanation for why someone is different, they relax immediately. Maybe that’s why Rohan’s still looking at him- but he’ll figure out that Neil is gay, the same way he figured out Charlie is trans, and maybe he’ll end up figuring out that Art’s trans as well. It doesn’t matter; what difference does it make to Neil? He’ll tell the truth when it comes down to it.

He’s ready to tell that truth in its entirety, regardless of how comfortable everyone around him is. It’s safe now, to say it. He knows what to keep silent- namely, Art’s profession, the truth of how they met- and what he never needs to keep silent again.

That being that he loves Art, for better, for worse, for everything.

32

When the kids are at Debbie’s, Art and Neil are planning how they’re going to make their way up to Sydney, slide in through the cracks in Anastasia’s heavy, oppressive reign, and break the concrete from the inside out. But that takes time, and it’s Saturday morning, so for right now Neil finds Art sitting on the floor of Charlie’s room, trying out different shades of eyeshadow on her hand.

Charlie looks up as they walk in. “Hey, Dad. Art’s helping me get ready for Jenna’s.”

Jenna’s birthday, which Neil is obviously required to drive her to. Considering his job these days is, essentially, stay-at-home-dad and supporting Art’s criminal empire- most directly the newly launching plans to take down his mother- it’s not like it’s a problem. “You’re wearing makeup?”

She looks away and covers her mouth, and he hopes his tone wasn’t too incredulous. Art looks up at Neil through his fringe. “We’re seeing how we feel about it,” he says.

Neil sits himself down in the doorframe, just to get on their level. “My only possible objection was just that I don’t want you ever feeling like you have to do things, Charlie. I think you’re good at determining what you want for yourself, though, so I’m not worried.”

Charlie nods, still not looking just yet. “I know. I’m not- I’m not good at this, though. And, uh- Art’s good at makeup, so.”

Art puts the brush he was holding down, lightly patting Charlie’s hand. “Play around with some colours and see what shades you like together. I’ve gotta talk to your dad for a moment.”

He sits up, gesturing for Neil to follow him into their bedroom. Neil’s bedroom, technically, but it’s theirs. Art’s clothes are in some of the drawers; his toothbrush is sitting on the ensuite sink. It smells like his cologne in there every morning after he showers, and the king bed never feels lonely anymore. They’ll spend some days in Art’s studio above the whiskey den, during the week, but spending time apart just… hasn’t really happened. It could. But it hasn’t.

“So, um. Fuck.” Art tics as he walks into the room. “Real quick. I wanted to show you that I made these, but- I don’t expect you to, you know, think it’s a good idea, necessarily. It’s kinda just- um. Fuck.”

He’s pulling out a folder as he talks, laying it out on the bed, and Neil sits on the other side of it. “What is it, love? Don’t be nervous. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Art pulls a few pieces of paper out of this folder, looking at them in the light, squinting slightly. “I just- you know how we talked about, when we take my mother down, it might be a good idea to fake my death? That got me thinking.”

“Oh?”

In the sunlight streaming through the window, Art’s golden hair lights up as it shines through from behind; like a halo, like the sun bursting through a storm cloud. “I’d need- fuck- I’d need a new identity, right? And this- I can destroy these, easy. Or if, down the line, we change our mind after I’ve already used them, I could just as easily fake divorce papers, if- if you don’t mind another.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Are you- did you make…?”

“Look, there’s a lot of stuff here I’ll probably end up using anyway, you know? Birth certificate, change of name, the expired documents that would’ve been from before. But, um. I’d need you to, at least, sign off on this before I ever went and used it for anything. I’m not going to use it for anything, for a while yet, but, um…”

Art hands Neil one of the pieces of paper he’s holding, and it’s familiar enough- Neil has another, with Debbie’s name, somewhere in the bottom of a drawer. This isn’t the formal certificate of marriage, but the one that would’ve been signed at the ceremony, the one that a couple would have framed in their home. The couple declared on it is Neil and Arthur Brontë, but there’s only one signature, and Art is holding a pen.

“Arthur?” Neil asks, before he remembers the more pressing question. “Wait- are you proposing to me right now?”

Art shrugs. “Fuck. I go by Art anyway, so if Artemy Volkov is going to be dead, why not be Arthur Brontë? If- if you’re okay with that, of course.”

Neil stands up and makes his way around the bed, moving so fast that Art can only blink in surprise before he’s pushed back by Neil kissing him.

“It’s-” Art raises a hand to Neil’s face, biting his lip as he tries to form words. “It’s not too much?”

Neil knows something he could never imagine he’d know every time he looks into Art’s eyes. In retrospect, he should’ve known it from the moment they met; it’s nothing but an oversight, a drastic mistake, believing what the outside world told him instead of what he felt, that Neil couldn’t have said it any sooner.

“Of course it’s not too much.” It’s unreasonable to be giddy about this. Unfortunately, they have always been different, and they will always be different. Neil’s committed to unreasonable a long time ago. “You know if we do this, we can’t get married in some beautiful garden, or some church, or have a long stupid honeymoon or in-law drama? You’ll never be able to see our mothers at the same wedding.”

Art grins, silly, giddy too at the fact that Neil’s not saying no. Giddy that Neil’s taking the pen out of his hands. “Who says we can’t? Sure, we should probably give that some time, but who says we can’t have the paper signed whenever we feel like it? It’s just paper, after all, and I can change it any time you want me to.”

It’s true, that they’re different like that, that it’s far easier to break apart, that it’s meaningless. But it wouldn’t matter. Neil’s answer would be the same regardless.

“You’re insane,” he grins. What does it matter that this was made by Art, and not some government entity? It’s true, more real than the one with Debbie’s name on it ever was. Neil can see that as clear as anything. It’s just paper, but it’s paper that says I love you, I trust you, and I’ll love and trust you forever. “And now you’re my husband.”

Neil signs it.