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"He's not half bad," the police colonel said when Jim was passing her by on his way back to the interrogation room, two cups of coffee in his hands, a bottle of water under his arm. He stopped and glanced through the one-way mirror. Adam sat in his chair, not overtly rigid but with his spine pulled straight, his shoulders pulled back, and his head held high. His two fingers were raised in a shh-I-am-talking-now gesture. Jim didn't allow himself to linger over his profile even for a moment.
"Pity I can't say the same about your men," he replied with a casual half-shrug, shifting his gaze from Adam back to his interlocutor.
Colonel Ondrušová raised an eyebrow and stretched her lips in a sharp smile. She was a short woman with cropped hair and cool gray eyes. Jim liked her—inasmuch as he liked any Prague cop. "It was a good co-op, though," she said, relaxing her posture to lean on a wall with her shoulder. Settling in to talk.
The coffee was getting lukewarm. A fleeting memory in his head: Adam, a steaming cup, laughter, The hotter the better. A flare of irritation spiked and burned in Jim's chest like a mouthful of vodka going down. He flexed the muscles around his shoulder blades to get rid of it. Adam would damn well drink this shit cold if need be. They weren't here on vacation.
"We haven't booked anyone yet," Jim reminded her. "Wouldn't bet my arse we will today."
"You think he's innocent?" Ondrušová tilted her pointed chin at the man sitting on the other side of the table from Adam and the very young policewoman who was trying her best to not flinch every time Adam stretched his arms.
Jim turned away from the room and leaned his back against the cool glass. "No," he admitted. "I'm sure he did it."
Ondrušová shrugged. "Well then. The CASIE will make him confess. I heard it always gets results." The CASIE was a tool. It didn't get anything. "Thought it would have sooner, actually." She raised a hand before Jim opened his mouth. "I know, I know. Procedures. But I do think your guy would be well within regulation to push for more."
The guy's name was Adam. He was brilliant and kind (and not his). Jim bit back a sigh. "You in a hurry to go home? Nothing's stopping you." He wanted to add the investigation was way below her paygrade anyway, any sergeant could've handled the case of a biochip-smuggling ring. Polish, not Czech. Probably why they were investigating at all. But, well. Pot, meet kettle.
Ondrušová smirked. "I need to look good in front of the new boss. Tell him to speed it up?"
He'd rather not. It was common decency to not rip a man open and go elbow-deep into his insides looking for an answer if he was willing to give it up on his own. Adam simply needed some more time. Jim had been living in Prague for too long to frame it that way, though. He brought his cup up to his lips and took a sip. The coffee tasted like two-day-old shit. Adam would love it. "We just want to make sure we're really doing this by the book," Jim finally said.
Nice, impersonal statement. And a truthful one.
The suspect had been warned that the person interrogating him was equipped with a social enhancer and every information obtained this way will be admissible in court. The law wasn't new—although some have changed after the HRA had been shot down; even the government of the Czech Republic couldn't ignore forever the shift in the international politics after Brown's successful lobbying—but only very recently the Prague police had opened up to using augmentations to lawfully gather evidence when other methods failed. Or, more accurately, to using Adam, as their ranks were still oddly lacking in augmented officers.
In Prague you never had to scratch at a surface for long before rust shone through.
Jim pushed himself off the wall. "I'm going in," he unnecessarily told Ondrušová. She waved at him, already turning around to watch Adam work. Maybe it would be better to stop now, Jim wondered. They'd been going at it for hours. The cops changed and Jim took breaks, but Adam… Adam had to be exhausted.
Pressing at the handle with his elbow, he pushed the door with his hip and walked inside. The cop lifted her head and looked at him with a relieved smile, but Adam kept his eyes on the suspect, as per the rules. When Jim hadn't been looking, he'd slumped down in his chair and was now slouching, long legs outstretched, head tilted, body pushed forward, toward the suspect. One hand, palm up, was reaching out to him. Adam, Jim thought and very nearly smiled.
He put down his cup, gave the cop her water bottle, and bent over to put Adam's coffee in front of him. Up close, he could see slight wrinkles that had formed around Adam's mouth. The kind one might want stupidly to smooth out with one's thumb. Or to kiss away and—
Adam broke protocol. He turned his head towards Jim with a smile that halted before it fully formed. His hand, reaching for the cup, twitched in an act of minuscule defiance against the syntheticness. Jim's hand twitched, too. Coffee splashed all over his wrist. Their eyes presumably met, but all Jim could see before he turned his face away was the blurred reflection in Adam's shades like an unwilling shadowplay.
He very gently placed the cup on the desk and fished out a kleenex from his pocket. Blood was pounding in his ears and he had to swallow hard before he managed to say, "Let's continue." All he heard was a long, drawn-out fuck rattling in the echo chamber of his skull.
◉◉◉
In his apartment, Jim poured himself a glass of wine. Just one. Just to see if anything could get past the knot in his stomach.
◉◉◉
What stopped him from scheduling an honest-to-God official meeting was the fact that he'd never done it and it would be difficult to explain to the employees at large.
He called Adam into his office like he always did, over the Infolink, and waited until he showed up. The only thing different was that he wasn't getting any job done in the meantime. His eyes kept skimming the latest reports and shifting to the side, to the speech he'd prepared and memorized and dreaded to have to give.
You're a fucking idiot, he reminded himself. You deserve everything that will happen. Holy hell.
Adam, too, looked and behaved as usual when he entered Jim's office after an hour or so. Put together and irritating, professional and late, face impassive and shades down—heaps upon heaps of contradictions dressed up in an expensive coat. Jim very carefully avoided looking him in the eye. There was no reason Adam should soften his looks or behavior. He wasn't the one who'd fucked up.
"Boss," he greeted Jim. "You wanted to see me."
An hour ago, part of Jim wanted to snap. Slide back into the role of Director Miller and ramp up the harshness and hope that if he avoided the problem stubbornly enough, it would go away at last. Not like he hadn't already proven himself he didn't have a moral spine to speak of.
Adam would let him, too. Because Adam was unreservedly kind.
"Agent Jensen," Jim said. "Have a seat." He'd gestured at a chair he'd cleared off folders and shit earlier in the day.
Adam raises an eyebrow at him, cocking his head. "I'd rather stand when you chew me up about my late paperwork if it's all the same to you."
It shouldn't surprise him Adam was already going off the script. "It's not about that. We need to discuss—"
"The Dublin fuck-up? I already explained my reasoning. In detail."
"Adam," Jim hissed even though he'd promised himself he wouldn't call Adam by his name ever again. "What happened yesterday crossed a line. I never should have—"
Adam shook his head. "Nothing happened. We caught the bad guy. It's all good."
Jim wanted to rub at his temples. Or at least tell Adam to get fucking lost. "I feel like I really should address my—inappropriate behavior. You don't have to pretend—"
"I know what you omitted in your report," Adam interrupted him. "That I broke protocol and looked at you with the CASIE on."
"Your breaking protocol is not the biggest issue here!"
"Not something you usually say."
"And I won't again," Jim snapped. "I'm trying to apologize here. My judgment is compromised. I put you at risk—"
Adam smiled. "Nobody puts me at risk as much as I do."
"Not the fucking point." But definitely something to discuss in the future. If they still worked together after today. "Adam, I—"
"Jim," Adam parroted back at him, and well. Jim deserved it, didn't he? Fucking hell. "You did nothing out of line yesterday. We're good," he bit at his lower lip and worried it between his teeth; Jim should look away now. "I hope?" Against his better judgement, Jim slowly nodded. "Great. I'll be off to catch up on work then."
Jim let him go. Mostly because he didn't know what else he could do.
◉◉◉
Snow crunched under his soles on his way back to the Nº 33—a rare occurrence in Prague these days, but for once he was grateful for the cold burning his throat and lungs with every breath and clearing his head. He'd stayed in the office as long as he could, mostly shuffling his papers from the left side of his desk to the right and back again. Ever since his not-talk with Adam he'd been unsettled in his skin like a snake about to shed.
A fitting comparison for someone who lied. Perhaps a bit unfair to snakes.
Jim thought back to the excuses he'd given himself about why working with Adam on this op wasn't a terrible idea at all and almost laughed.
Better that he hadn't. Past midnight, laughter on the streets was frowned upon.
Inside, he nodded at the dozing-off night porter and lightly stepped on the first step. He was quiet; despite recent evidence to the contrary, he wasn't so big of an asshole as to purposefully wake up his neighbors going up, even though they kind of deserved it for being insufferable pricks.
He knew something was up after he cleared the first landing. Putting his hand on his gun, he pressed closer to the wall. He'd kind of hoped assassination attempts at his life had run out with the London fiasco. Then he smelled cigarette smoke and— "Adam," he said and the cloak came off.
Adam was sitting on the top stair with his knees spread and arms hanging loosely and like he belonged there. Jim was pretty sure he'd just put off his cig. "What the fuck?" he asked.
Adam smiled. "Your neighbors are so funny when they run around looking for the source of smoke." He got up.
Jim let it slide. "Tell me you haven't been sitting here since you left work."
A flash of teeth. "Okay. I won't."
Funny thing was, Jim had thought about having that conversation outside of the office, on personal grounds. Then he'd thought he should never meet with Adam off-the-clock. And here they were, so close Jim could rumple Adam's coat without as much as moving his hand. He took a step toward his apartment. "You should leave." He punched in his code. "If there's something you want to address regarding our talk earlier, swing by my office tomorrow." The door opened. "If not, we'll see about moving you more firmly under MacReady's command." It would be a pain, but it needed to be done.
"I'm not here to chat," Adam said, walking up behind Jim. His augs ran so warm Jim felt the heat coming off his body through a jacket and a woolen coat.
Maybe it was simply Adam. As if there was anything simple about him.
He should say Don't. He should say—something. Anything would be better. Instead, he stepped inside and let Adam walk in and close the door behind them.
His hall had never seemed so small before.
Adam put a hand on his shoulder, too close to the neck, too heavy, too there. "Adam," Jim warned him, but there was no warning in his voice, just terrible, rough hope.
"Yeah," Adam said and turned Jim around.
He did taste like cigarettes. Smelled like them, too. The fabric of his coat was so stiff Jim's fingers slipped right off of it. He put his hands inside, to Adam's sides and around his waist. The dip of the small of his back was lovely and so deep it could hold and hide Jim's every secret and every fear. Jim pressed in with the pads of his fingers, and in and in and in, eager to bruise, ungentle in his care.
They were ungentle men.
Adam bit his lip before pulling away an inch. "Yeah," he said again, and kissed Jim again, and this time it lasted so long Jim thought he felt air particles rearrange themselves around them, here, in this space he hadn't made his but Adam had.
When they came up for air, it was Jim who this time said, "Yeah."