He smacks himself in the face with the heel of his palm.
He breathes.
“I’m not surprised…”
Then he’s lost control of his voice, he’s yelling, he’s crying.
“I didn’t think I was the fucking patron saint of shit! Fuck you! Fuck. You- you act like I expect things? Good things? In me? Fuck! Off!”
He muffles a frustrated scream against his hands, wadding it up into up his blazer. It takes some of the steam out of him. His voice is hoarse, getting tired. Quickly he’s stopped yelling and downgraded to pathetic wet sniffling.
“I’m not surprised. I-I beat people up till they can’t fucking walk and I lock women in my apartment. Why would I be surprised? That’s fucking stupid…”
He manages to pull himself to his feet and collect their bowls, he walks over to the sink. The water squeaks and screams to life but he just stands there, looking at it. He is very stupid. He was the stupidest man in Elysium and now he’s the stupidest man on the Ryslig peninsula.
“You’re a homo-sexual.”
Edited 2022-05-17 02:20 (UTC)
cw mentioned violence against women & police brutality
[Jean takes a step back, impassively watching Harry unravel for what's not the first time even today. It's a very typical tantrum for him: self-loathing, self-pitying, violent and loud and completely pathetic. He wants Jean to disagree (no, Harry, you're alright, you're no worse than the rest of us) or at least give him a good fight, but Jean just stares at him. Disgust isn't strong enough—or it doesn't encompass enough, or Jean is already so disgusted with the world that it doesn't even register. He's tired. For a moment, he entertains the idea of leaving Harry to his misery and going back to bed.
...And yet, Harry remembers something, which can't possibly be true. He didn't remember Jean's name, or Judit's, or his fucking own, so why would he remember the Unsolvable? It's probably just—those movies again, fictionalized crimes bleeding into Harry's already fractured mind. He hurt lots of women, then. Eight for every rerun of the film, over and over again. It felt real to Jean, and so it must have felt real to Harry. He doesn't especially feel like comforting him on that fact, though. Let him squirm. He has beaten people, so why shouldn't he feel like it?
Jean leans against the counter, letting his own temper cool down as Harry's rises. One of them has to be at least pretending to be reasonable.]
Stop acting sorry for yourself. You're a grown-ass man...fucking insufferable.
[He hesitates, picking at his facial hair.]
Yes. Great deduction, Mullen.
cw pathetic homophobia and toxic masculinity, censored slurs
He splashes water on his face and shakes his head like a dog.
“Fuck. I knew…?”
He doesn’t have to ask because he’s starting to remember. Or extrapolate…something. It would’ve pissed him off, right? After he got it out of Jean. It really would have pissed him off. No, no. He knows it pissed him off. The idea that Jean could be getting it up the ass from some limp dicked f*g made him fucking furious. It was nothing like when McCoy would fuck off on one of their nights out to chase pussy and leave Harry in the lurch.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (Instead it was Jean going to those underground bars where you can’t. Jean drinking without you. Jean laughing. Men watching him.)
While he just rots alone in his empty apartment, because Jean is young and men want to fuck him even though his face is a mess and Harry can only touch him when he holds him down and spits on him. Jean is his satellite, he’s not supposed to escape his orbit. Or the pull of his shitty apartment and miserable liquor soaked movie nights.
“Fuck.”
Harry is red, sweating. He’s going to die. Or something.
“Fuck!”
cw blasé suicidal ideation, references to homophobia
See? This is the shit I mean. You're such a goddamn freak about all of it—no way in hell you would tell anyone if you were bi-sexual or whatever. It'd fucking kill you quicker than the liquor or speed.
[It would be funny to get this kind of rise out of Harry if it weren't also desperately, horrifically hurtful. Jean has thick skin—he has to—but reliving the shittiest conversations he's ever had over and over again isn't exactly pleasant. Another lifetime of meeting Harry. God, he'd rather kill himself. He's going to kill himself. This is his own personal hell, and it's going to repeat into infinity, every time Harry crumples under the weight of capitalism or whatever the hell it was that Trant said.
Jean raises his voice to be heard over the sink, not especially caring if the other tenants hear all the yelling going on. He's gotten used to it.]
Hey, tell me this, though: was it you who told Torson and McLaine, or did they just assume? Haven't been able to figure that one out. Fucking McCoy, too. Every god damn day.
He just rinses them. He’ll clean them with soap and shit later. Or maybe not. Who gives a shit?
“I don’t know.”
EMPATHY - (…every day?)
He shuts the water off. Doesn’t turn to look at Jean. The noise that comes out of him is short and sharp, a kind of sob or high pitched bark of laughter.
“Probably.”
It would certainly match the emerging pattern he’s noticed. Where he ruins everything because he’s a self obsessed psychopath. Because he’s jealous.
VOLITION - (Stop. You don’t even know if you did this.)
EMPATHY - (Every single day, Harry. You did this to him. The way you’ve been feeling? That but *every single day.* For what? Why? Did you like him? Is that what your love looks like?)
He should leave. Right now. But he knows there’s nothing really outside of that door. Abstractly there is an address in his mind. He can’t remember where it goes to, not really. There’s only his lightless room on Perdition and Main. There’s no Kim. He didn’t make that soup. He doesn’t know where it came from. Someone else did that. And that’s fine because even if Kim was real he couldn’t live with him anyway.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (There’s still all the promises of a boozy piss stained gutter to fall into and the relief of getting knifed in an alley. The night hasn’t even started yet. The day is young.)
I just assumed all this time. Not exactly like I could ask them personally without making it worse. Or ask you.
[It's a resentment that has build up to banality over the years. It's just a part of his life, Harry's intervention or no, so he can't muster up the usual blistering anger. Harry doesn't exist anymore. Whatever happened might as well have never happened in the first place, and all of Harry's last five years are going to vanish when Jean does. And who has Jean's memory when he goes? Fucking Harry? He's alone. Especially here, he's alone.
Jean crosses his arms over his chest protectively, trying to sum up some authority in the situation.]
You're a fucking nutjob, though. You did it to everyone—some version of it. It started out as talking behind people's backs, and then you got sicker, and didn't care as much anymore.
[He pauses, looking at his shoes.]
Judit isn't going to trust you after what you said to her.
EMPATHY - (Jean used to laugh at your jokes. He thought you were funny. There was a time where he used to hang onto every word that came out of your crooked mouth. He thought you were cool.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (And *she* thought you were friends. Jean really talks like he’s going to see her again. He has to tell himself these things, even if he doesn’t believe it.)
Judit is a baffling piece of the puzzle that is Harry's former life. He doesn’t know where she fits exactly. She was just…new? Right? Somehow he held off saying shit in front of her. So she was there for what, two months maximum? He’s actually a little impressed with himself.
“I don’t know why she did. In the first place.”
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Her former partner was killed. It was a bad scene. You were there, afterwards.)
SUGGESTION - (Like a hero or a sturdy shoulder to cry on. Or a vulture, if you’re feeling unkind. Trauma? Survivors guilt? It’s a key that opens many doors. A multi purpose tool. Every officer in Revachol has lost at least one person in the field.)
[Like Kim.]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Yes. Kim lost his Eyes.)
[Jean?]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (That one's you.)
[Have I lost anyone?]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Probably.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Yourself.)
[I did that on purpose.]
LOGIC - (…JM!)
Harry snaps his fingers and spins around, he’s remembered something- or cobbled something together. Maybe. He looks pleased with himself.
“Oh…was she with the hookah parlor idiot? Dead guy? I fucking hated him. Right?”
[But nobody ever seems to believe Jean. Bewitched by the shitkid. She knows now, though, and he takes quiet satisfaction in that, as if he wasn't the one who talked with Harry behind her back. Horse-faced woman. He doesn't know if it's sadder that Judit thought they were friends, or that Harry managed to pretend they were for that long.
Jean feels a pang of loneliness. He misses Jude. His brain has been nagging at him for awhile now to seek out that kind of contact again, but he's not going to find another Judit here, so why bother? They weren't even especially close. She just felt safe to be around. Comfortable only by virtue of not being uncomfortable. He'd try to be safe for her, too, but now she's gone, and he's alone.]
What? Yeah—yeah.
[He almost smiles at the recognition; it's some kind of progress. Even if it is for Joseph fucking Mills and not anything actually important.]
JM and JM—Judit Minot and Joseph Mills. Stupid fucking asshole—and I mean that. He was shit to her, he was shit to everyone else, and he got beaten to death while they were out on a call. Wouldn't be able to solve a murder if the weapon got shoved up his asshole. Real ape-type.
“His fucking jokes. I remember his godawful fucking jokes. He was a creep.”
EMPATHY - (He misses Judit. He’s worried he won’t have that again.)
[If he wants someone to bitch at I’m right here.]
Harry beams, immediately warmed by Jean’s approval. His feathers ruffle and the crest on his head perks up. He kind of just..forgets about Judit for now. Even though she was kind to him, even though she was one of the last people on Elysium who cared if he lived or died. She’s not here, but Jean is.
“I remember the silk mill. Kind of. I remember the desks. I remember the horse shit smell, mostly…”
INLAND EMPIRE - (Hold up.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Jean wants you to remember. He wants you to remember all these terrible things you’ve done.)
[…I don’t want that. I don’t want to know that Harry.]
INLAND EMPIRE - (You really don’t. It’ll just make you worse. The nightmares. Your mood swings.)
Harry is talking about that awful fucking kebab stand where everyone gets sick and keeps going back to anyway when his voice stops. He looks away.
[Jean listens with rapt attention to the things he already knows by heart: Mills, the mill, Jamrock night shifts and stairs leading up to the precinct and the horses, back when they had horses, back when Jean had another good thing to grudgingly count in his life. It's exciting, and he rarely gets excited. He hates Harry, but for a moment, he can pretend that he doesn't, because at least he remembers something. If not what he did, then where he did it—if not Jean's name, then their office. Jude. Major Crimes.
His face falls when Harry stops talking, and he quickly composes himself back into irritation.]
Fuck are you talking about? Why not?
[He tries not to take it personally, which is nearly impossible.]
Harry winces a little. Time tread that fine line of sympathetic without being wildly pathetic.
“It’s scary.”
RHETORIC - (My bad.)
AUTHORITY - (Oh my god. He’s going to eat you. He’s going to eat you and steal your rank because you just open your mouth and say the dumbest shit ever.)
RHETORIC - (The disco ball got me freaked out! It *is* scary and I don’t want to remember!)
Talking about the fucking precinct is scary? It should be the easiest goddamn thing you could remember. If I have to hear about Dora still, you can bother to try and think about the rest.
[His tone colors itself with more aggression, insistent to talk over any objections Harry has. Jean has to pick up where he left off.]
...The kebab cart that made everyone sick, yeah. I think we all hoped we'd get used to it. Pryce would send out the new guys to go get his lunch from the cart three blocks down instead—probably a good idea. But at least it was open no matter the weather. And the weather is always fucking bad.
[As he talks, he picks up more steam.]
The sidewalks get frozen to hell in the winter, so you have to be careful or else fall on your ass where all the guys in the front-facing offices can see. Nearly broke my fucking ankle when I first started working there; I don't know how you managed it in those shoes. It could be dangerous for the horses, too, but they usually kept the roads in a little better shape, if only for the motor carriages...
INLAND EMPIRE - (Home can be scary.) Of course it’s scary! Everything he hears is awful. Every single time! He thinks it can’t get worse and then it does!
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (It’s a never ending cavalcade of horrors, always on its way to reach you.)
LOGIC - (Since when have you made him hear anything about Dora? Nothing recent…)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Her name still hurts you. Jean knows this, he’s stunning you with it. You’re unable to move on, unable to pull away from the memory of freezing ice slick streets and the looming shadow of the old silk mill. The winters are the worst. They’re always the worst.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Bodies freeze in the gutter. The wind pulls and pushes endlessly against your raw skin. She tells you where she is bleeding and hurting. And you listen. And the people on the street stare when you scream and beat your knuckles bloody on brick walls. It never ends. From the windows of the old silk mill you can see a crumbling tenement building and you wonder how much longer you’ll be able to spot it on the grey skyline. Before it’s rubble.)
He makes a face as the kebab stand starts coming back to him. They really thought they’d gain some immunity to food poisoning from that shit.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (Sound logic.)
HALF LIGHT - (It was maggot infested.)
“Maggots. That shit had fucking maggots in it…”
ENCYCLOPEDIA - (In an island off the coast of Messinia there is a cheese that is considered a rare delicacy, casu martzu. A kind of cheese made of sheep’s milk that is purposefully introduced to living fly larvae. It is served rancid and squirming with insect life.)
[It takes him a few seconds to connect the dots back to what Harry was saying, and he nods vigorously. He knows he's teetering on the edge of the pit again, so he tries to keep his momentum going, talking quickly before he doesn't feel like talking at all.]
It's possible to bring your own lunch in, probably, but nobody ever does. Bunch of bachelors. You could find stuff in the dumpster that was healthier for your body than the kebab stand. You did, couple times. Fuck—ing disgusting, but better. Not worse, at least. Sometimes McLaine buys a big can of that rancid processed meat shit and fries it in the office. Whole. The fucking worst.
[Never in a thousand years would Jean ever think about being homesick for his horrible job in his horrible city, but he is. Missing Judit is one thing, but he's starting to miss the rest of it—the bad parts, the worse parts, from his nightmarish colleagues to the slow poison of his lifestyle. Harry has to remember, or else Jamrock and the 41st may as well be gone.]
There isn't any fucking privacy in that goddamn shithole, besides Pryce's office and the closet they put Jules in. Everything carries. You can hear someone take a piss in the washroom from the front door. Everybody throws shit at everybody else.
EMPATHY - (He’s talking, this is good. You’re doing good. You’re helping him. He wants to die a little less right now. Or he’s stopped actively thinking about it as much.)
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (Look at that energy. This is probably the most he’s said in days.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (You used to do this for him. You used to be good for him. In the old days you’d bring him food. Make sure he ate and get him talking. More of the same the next day. Slowly you'd lure him out of his apartment with the jogging. Jean's a lot like an ornery horse. He needs steadiness.)
“…yeah. Loud.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (Horrible place to be hungover. The clomping of boots, constantly. Then the smells. You weren’t the only person throwing up in the trash bins.)
PAIN THRESHOLD - (You can hear a pen drop from across the room. Twisting knives in the back of your hangover. Fuck McLaine and his little girl laugh. Squealing bastard.)
EMPATHY - (No privacy to cry in peace. Everyone knows everything.)
HALF LIGHT - (Smothering closeness. Sweat and unwashed male bodies packed together like horses. And you, always twitching and pacing. Like a tiger. You nearly mauled a young patrol officer who startled you.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (That was *your* fault, you brute. Jean handled it.)
“I remembered uh. Finding a burger in the trash I guess…”
HALF LIGHT - (Muffled screaming from the holding cells, the closest any room got to being soundproofed. McCoy stomping his boots on the stairs out of the dungeon, hollering for Gottlieb. He’s a sloppy trigger happy maniac. He'll never make captain. Things started going sour between you after that first Yefreitor. And his big loud voice booms. “Been an accident down here!”)
COMPOSURE - (And everyone looks the other way.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Don’t go there. Don’t go down to the dungeon. You don’t have to remember it.)
VOLITION - (Pull back. Now.)
“Gave that shithole 10 years maximum before it collapses on us all.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jesuisfatigue) wrote2022-05-09 02:38 pm
cw police brutality, vague references to violence against women
He smacks himself in the face with the heel of his palm.
He breathes.
“I’m not surprised…”
Then he’s lost control of his voice, he’s yelling, he’s crying.
“I didn’t think I was the fucking patron saint of shit! Fuck you! Fuck. You- you act like I expect things? Good things? In me? Fuck! Off!”
He muffles a frustrated scream against his hands, wadding it up into up his blazer. It takes some of the steam out of him. His voice is hoarse, getting tired. Quickly he’s stopped yelling and downgraded to pathetic wet sniffling.
“I’m not surprised. I-I beat people up till they can’t fucking walk and I lock women in my apartment. Why would I be surprised? That’s fucking stupid…”
He manages to pull himself to his feet and collect their bowls, he walks over to the sink. The water squeaks and screams to life but he just stands there, looking at it. He is very stupid. He was the stupidest man in Elysium and now he’s the stupidest man on the Ryslig peninsula.
“You’re a homo-sexual.”
cw mentioned violence against women & police brutality
...And yet, Harry remembers something, which can't possibly be true. He didn't remember Jean's name, or Judit's, or his fucking own, so why would he remember the Unsolvable? It's probably just—those movies again, fictionalized crimes bleeding into Harry's already fractured mind. He hurt lots of women, then. Eight for every rerun of the film, over and over again. It felt real to Jean, and so it must have felt real to Harry. He doesn't especially feel like comforting him on that fact, though. Let him squirm. He has beaten people, so why shouldn't he feel like it?
Jean leans against the counter, letting his own temper cool down as Harry's rises. One of them has to be at least pretending to be reasonable.]
Stop acting sorry for yourself. You're a grown-ass man...fucking insufferable.
[He hesitates, picking at his facial hair.]
Yes. Great deduction, Mullen.
cw pathetic homophobia and toxic masculinity, censored slurs
“Fuck. I knew…?”
He doesn’t have to ask because he’s starting to remember. Or extrapolate…something. It would’ve pissed him off, right? After he got it out of Jean. It really would have pissed him off. No, no. He knows it pissed him off. The idea that Jean could be getting it up the ass from some limp dicked f*g made him fucking furious. It was nothing like when McCoy would fuck off on one of their nights out to chase pussy and leave Harry in the lurch.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (Instead it was Jean going to those underground bars where you can’t. Jean drinking without you. Jean laughing. Men watching him.)
While he just rots alone in his empty apartment, because Jean is young and men want to fuck him even though his face is a mess and Harry can only touch him when he holds him down and spits on him. Jean is his satellite, he’s not supposed to escape his orbit. Or the pull of his shitty apartment and miserable liquor soaked movie nights.
“Fuck.”
Harry is red, sweating. He’s going to die. Or something.
“Fuck!”
cw blasé suicidal ideation, references to homophobia
See? This is the shit I mean. You're such a goddamn freak about all of it—no way in hell you would tell anyone if you were bi-sexual or whatever. It'd fucking kill you quicker than the liquor or speed.
[It would be funny to get this kind of rise out of Harry if it weren't also desperately, horrifically hurtful. Jean has thick skin—he has to—but reliving the shittiest conversations he's ever had over and over again isn't exactly pleasant. Another lifetime of meeting Harry. God, he'd rather kill himself. He's going to kill himself. This is his own personal hell, and it's going to repeat into infinity, every time Harry crumples under the weight of capitalism or whatever the hell it was that Trant said.
Jean raises his voice to be heard over the sink, not especially caring if the other tenants hear all the yelling going on. He's gotten used to it.]
Hey, tell me this, though: was it you who told Torson and McLaine, or did they just assume? Haven't been able to figure that one out. Fucking McCoy, too. Every god damn day.
cw more of the same + relapse talk
REACTION SPEED - (Dishes.)
He just rinses them. He’ll clean them with soap and shit later. Or maybe not. Who gives a shit?
“I don’t know.”
EMPATHY - (…every day?)
He shuts the water off. Doesn’t turn to look at Jean. The noise that comes out of him is short and sharp, a kind of sob or high pitched bark of laughter.
“Probably.”
It would certainly match the emerging pattern he’s noticed. Where he ruins everything because he’s a self obsessed psychopath. Because he’s jealous.
VOLITION - (Stop. You don’t even know if you did this.)
EMPATHY - (Every single day, Harry. You did this to him. The way you’ve been feeling? That but *every single day.* For what? Why? Did you like him? Is that what your love looks like?)
He should leave. Right now. But he knows there’s nothing really outside of that door. Abstractly there is an address in his mind. He can’t remember where it goes to, not really. There’s only his lightless room on Perdition and Main. There’s no Kim. He didn’t make that soup. He doesn’t know where it came from. Someone else did that. And that’s fine because even if Kim was real he couldn’t live with him anyway.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (There’s still all the promises of a boozy piss stained gutter to fall into and the relief of getting knifed in an alley. The night hasn’t even started yet. The day is young.)
no subject
[It's a resentment that has build up to banality over the years. It's just a part of his life, Harry's intervention or no, so he can't muster up the usual blistering anger. Harry doesn't exist anymore. Whatever happened might as well have never happened in the first place, and all of Harry's last five years are going to vanish when Jean does. And who has Jean's memory when he goes? Fucking Harry? He's alone. Especially here, he's alone.
Jean crosses his arms over his chest protectively, trying to sum up some authority in the situation.]
You're a fucking nutjob, though. You did it to everyone—some version of it. It started out as talking behind people's backs, and then you got sicker, and didn't care as much anymore.
[He pauses, looking at his shoes.]
Judit isn't going to trust you after what you said to her.
no subject
EMPATHY - (Jean used to laugh at your jokes. He thought you were funny. There was a time where he used to hang onto every word that came out of your crooked mouth. He thought you were cool.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (And *she* thought you were friends. Jean really talks like he’s going to see her again. He has to tell himself these things, even if he doesn’t believe it.)
Judit is a baffling piece of the puzzle that is Harry's former life. He doesn’t know where she fits exactly. She was just…new? Right? Somehow he held off saying shit in front of her. So she was there for what, two months maximum? He’s actually a little impressed with himself.
“I don’t know why she did. In the first place.”
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Her former partner was killed. It was a bad scene. You were there, afterwards.)
SUGGESTION - (Like a hero or a sturdy shoulder to cry on. Or a vulture, if you’re feeling unkind. Trauma? Survivors guilt? It’s a key that opens many doors. A multi purpose tool. Every officer in Revachol has lost at least one person in the field.)
[Like Kim.]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Yes. Kim lost his Eyes.)
[Jean?]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (That one's you.)
[Have I lost anyone?]
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Probably.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Yourself.)
[I did that on purpose.]
LOGIC - (…JM!)
Harry snaps his fingers and spins around, he’s remembered something- or cobbled something together. Maybe. He looks pleased with himself.
“Oh…was she with the hookah parlor idiot? Dead guy? I fucking hated him. Right?”
no subject
[But nobody ever seems to believe Jean. Bewitched by the shitkid. She knows now, though, and he takes quiet satisfaction in that, as if he wasn't the one who talked with Harry behind her back. Horse-faced woman. He doesn't know if it's sadder that Judit thought they were friends, or that Harry managed to pretend they were for that long.
Jean feels a pang of loneliness. He misses Jude. His brain has been nagging at him for awhile now to seek out that kind of contact again, but he's not going to find another Judit here, so why bother? They weren't even especially close. She just felt safe to be around. Comfortable only by virtue of not being uncomfortable. He'd try to be safe for her, too, but now she's gone, and he's alone.]
What? Yeah—yeah.
[He almost smiles at the recognition; it's some kind of progress. Even if it is for Joseph fucking Mills and not anything actually important.]
JM and JM—Judit Minot and Joseph Mills. Stupid fucking asshole—and I mean that. He was shit to her, he was shit to everyone else, and he got beaten to death while they were out on a call. Wouldn't be able to solve a murder if the weapon got shoved up his asshole. Real ape-type.
no subject
EMPATHY - (He misses Judit. He’s worried he won’t have that again.)
[If he wants someone to bitch at I’m right here.]
Harry beams, immediately warmed by Jean’s approval. His feathers ruffle and the crest on his head perks up. He kind of just..forgets about Judit for now. Even though she was kind to him, even though she was one of the last people on Elysium who cared if he lived or died. She’s not here, but Jean is.
“I remember the silk mill. Kind of. I remember the desks. I remember the horse shit smell, mostly…”
INLAND EMPIRE - (Hold up.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Jean wants you to remember. He wants you to remember all these terrible things you’ve done.)
[…I don’t want that. I don’t want to know that Harry.]
INLAND EMPIRE - (You really don’t. It’ll just make you worse. The nightmares. Your mood swings.)
Harry is talking about that awful fucking kebab stand where everyone gets sick and keeps going back to anyway when his voice stops. He looks away.
“I don’t think I should do this.”
EMPATHY - (That isn’t what he wants to hear.)
“Not all at once. It’s a lot.”
no subject
His face falls when Harry stops talking, and he quickly composes himself back into irritation.]
Fuck are you talking about? Why not?
[He tries not to take it personally, which is nearly impossible.]
no subject
“It’s scary.”
RHETORIC - (My bad.)
AUTHORITY - (Oh my god. He’s going to eat you. He’s going to eat you and steal your rank because you just open your mouth and say the dumbest shit ever.)
RHETORIC - (The disco ball got me freaked out! It *is* scary and I don’t want to remember!)
no subject
[Jean raises his eyebrows in plain disbelief.]
Talking about the fucking precinct is scary? It should be the easiest goddamn thing you could remember. If I have to hear about Dora still, you can bother to try and think about the rest.
[His tone colors itself with more aggression, insistent to talk over any objections Harry has. Jean has to pick up where he left off.]
...The kebab cart that made everyone sick, yeah. I think we all hoped we'd get used to it. Pryce would send out the new guys to go get his lunch from the cart three blocks down instead—probably a good idea. But at least it was open no matter the weather. And the weather is always fucking bad.
[As he talks, he picks up more steam.]
The sidewalks get frozen to hell in the winter, so you have to be careful or else fall on your ass where all the guys in the front-facing offices can see. Nearly broke my fucking ankle when I first started working there; I don't know how you managed it in those shoes. It could be dangerous for the horses, too, but they usually kept the roads in a little better shape, if only for the motor carriages...
cw nasty food, insects
INLAND EMPIRE - (Home can be scary.)
Of course it’s scary! Everything he hears is awful. Every single time! He thinks it can’t get worse and then it does!
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (It’s a never ending cavalcade of horrors, always on its way to reach you.)
LOGIC - (Since when have you made him hear anything about Dora? Nothing recent…)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Her name still hurts you. Jean knows this, he’s stunning you with it. You’re unable to move on, unable to pull away from the memory of freezing ice slick streets and the looming shadow of the old silk mill. The winters are the worst. They’re always the worst.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Bodies freeze in the gutter. The wind pulls and pushes endlessly against your raw skin. She tells you where she is bleeding and hurting. And you listen. And the people on the street stare when you scream and beat your knuckles bloody on brick walls. It never ends. From the windows of the old silk mill you can see a crumbling tenement building and you wonder how much longer you’ll be able to spot it on the grey skyline. Before it’s rubble.)
He makes a face as the kebab stand starts coming back to him. They really thought they’d gain some immunity to food poisoning from that shit.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (Sound logic.)
HALF LIGHT - (It was maggot infested.)
“Maggots. That shit had fucking maggots in it…”
ENCYCLOPEDIA - (In an island off the coast of Messinia there is a cheese that is considered a rare delicacy, casu martzu. A kind of cheese made of sheep’s milk that is purposefully introduced to living fly larvae. It is served rancid and squirming with insect life.)
no subject
[It takes him a few seconds to connect the dots back to what Harry was saying, and he nods vigorously. He knows he's teetering on the edge of the pit again, so he tries to keep his momentum going, talking quickly before he doesn't feel like talking at all.]
It's possible to bring your own lunch in, probably, but nobody ever does. Bunch of bachelors. You could find stuff in the dumpster that was healthier for your body than the kebab stand. You did, couple times. Fuck—ing disgusting, but better. Not worse, at least. Sometimes McLaine buys a big can of that rancid processed meat shit and fries it in the office. Whole. The fucking worst.
[Never in a thousand years would Jean ever think about being homesick for his horrible job in his horrible city, but he is. Missing Judit is one thing, but he's starting to miss the rest of it—the bad parts, the worse parts, from his nightmarish colleagues to the slow poison of his lifestyle. Harry has to remember, or else Jamrock and the 41st may as well be gone.]
There isn't any fucking privacy in that goddamn shithole, besides Pryce's office and the closet they put Jules in. Everything carries. You can hear someone take a piss in the washroom from the front door. Everybody throws shit at everybody else.
cw police brutality
EMPATHY - (He’s talking, this is good. You’re doing good. You’re helping him. He wants to die a little less right now. Or he’s stopped actively thinking about it as much.)
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (Look at that energy. This is probably the most he’s said in days.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (You used to do this for him. You used to be good for him. In the old days you’d bring him food. Make sure he ate and get him talking. More of the same the next day. Slowly you'd lure him out of his apartment with the jogging. Jean's a lot like an ornery horse. He needs steadiness.)
“…yeah. Loud.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (Horrible place to be hungover. The clomping of boots, constantly. Then the smells. You weren’t the only person throwing up in the trash bins.)
PAIN THRESHOLD - (You can hear a pen drop from across the room. Twisting knives in the back of your hangover. Fuck McLaine and his little girl laugh. Squealing bastard.)
EMPATHY - (No privacy to cry in peace. Everyone knows everything.)
HALF LIGHT - (Smothering closeness. Sweat and unwashed male bodies packed together like horses. And you, always twitching and pacing. Like a tiger. You nearly mauled a young patrol officer who startled you.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (That was *your* fault, you brute. Jean handled it.)
“I remembered uh. Finding a burger in the trash I guess…”
HALF LIGHT - (Muffled screaming from the holding cells, the closest any room got to being soundproofed. McCoy stomping his boots on the stairs out of the dungeon, hollering for Gottlieb. He’s a sloppy trigger happy maniac. He'll never make captain. Things started going sour between you after that first Yefreitor. And his big loud voice booms. “Been an accident down here!”)
COMPOSURE - (And everyone looks the other way.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (Don’t go there. Don’t go down to the dungeon. You don’t have to remember it.)
VOLITION - (Pull back. Now.)
“Gave that shithole 10 years maximum before it collapses on us all.”