Work Text:
“Why must this place look so depressing?” Adam says dramatically as he throws the door open and barges into Leo’s office. The door bangs against the wall, ruffling papers on the table – and Leo’s feathers.
“Good morning to you too,” Leo replies in a measured tone, neatly ticking a box on the report in front of him.
Adam waves off Leo’s efforts towards a civilized work environment, and promptly serves him a second helping of complaints instead: “I mean, do the walls have to be black?”
It would look awful on Leo’s file if his team lost yet another detective because of him, Leo reminds himself as he looks up. Adam is standing in the middle of the office with a mug of coffee in his hand and a frown on his face as he stares at the wall. Leo doesn’t follow his eyes: he doesn’t care one bit about the damn wall. Besides, with all the overtime he works, he probably sees it more than his own sister.
Now, Adam... Adam, he only gets to look at every fifteen years or so. And he can tell Adam doesn’t care at all about the wall, either. Leo knows all of Adam’s annoyed looks, and he knows this act is not it.
“There’s nothing wrong with that wall. It’s modern. Slick,” he says, keeping his eyes on Adam, carefully mapping the blank contempt on his face. “I don’t mind it, really – and it’s probably easier on the cleaning staff, too.”
Adam’s eyebrows lift all of a sudden. “Oh!” He says. “I hadn’t thought of that.” And with that he skips over to his desk, humming a suspicious rendition of the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black and looking thoroughly unbothered, his mood cleared like an April sky.
It’s not that Leo doesn’t enjoy helping his coworkers find peace with the office’s colour scheme, but this does not make any sense. Leo frowns some more before turning back to his neglected report and the soothing task of chronologically ordering testimonies.
· · · · ·
It’s mostly all that Adam has been doing ever since he came back: ask Leo stupid questions.
He asks: “ Where are last year’s files stored? ”; and: “ D’you know a good pizza place around here? ”; or: “ What is Pia looking at me like that for? ”.
And in return, all that Leo seems to do is give answers. He explains every last detail and points to every right place; he even does his best at laying out the mystery of Pia’s mercurial moods.
It’s fine, Leo tells himself. Someone does have to show the newcomer around, after all, and it might as well be his new (not-so-new) partner.
It’s not like Adam’s questions are difficult, either. They’re straightforward, never stray far from familiar topics, calling for evident answers. By all accounts, easy questions.
Really, Adam is an idiot if he thinks Leo is not going to notice that Adam is conducting a standard interrogation procedure on him. A very, very slow one, but Leo is not one to pass up on any opportunity to enjoy a piece of procedure – everyone in the Saarbrücken criminal investigation department knows that.
Everyone has heard the theory about the additional end-of-year bonus Leo supposedly gets for the beauty of his reports and his heroic nagging about the code of conduct – though his trigger-shyness had put a damper on that one. But the gossip mill had kindly busied itself churning out an explanation for Leo’s mistake. Esther had told him all about it in her review of station gossip, which Leo never asked for but ends up sitting through nearly every single day anyways. Leo would have pulled the trigger, he would have – if only the shooter hadn’t already surrendered by the time he had finished rattling off the list of legal prerequisites for use of firearms by a police officer.
“I mean, it’s a long one, isn’t it, article…” Esther had made a show of hesitating, and “fourth section, second subsection, article 57” had slipped out of Leo’s mouth right before he glared at her for the obvious bait.
Kommissar Leo Hölzer is a serial file-organizer, he’s a procedure freak, he probably reads the Saarländisches Polizeigesetz before bed every night–
So, when Adam keeps asking easy questions with a smile on his lips but doubt in his eyes, Leo can practically see his carefully highlighted academy textbooks unfolding before him. Interrogation procedure, third paragraph: Use of psychology. Start with the safer topics, build familiarity, lull the suspect into a sense of security – and then strike. Really, all that Adam’s technique is missing is a warrant and an interrogation room.
But Adam can’t have reached the third paragraph without at least skimming through the introduction, and virtually every introduction to every textbook reads the same: a successful interrogation is a planned one. Even as Adam looks at Leo like they’re standing on either side of an observation mirror, Leo can feel himself looking right back as he wonders what Adam’s plan is.
Adam is impulsive and convoluted and sometimes plain rude, but a bad detective he is not, and he is looking for something. Leo catches him staring from time to time, when he thinks Leo’s attention is elsewhere. As if – these days, Leo’s attention is scarcely ever on anything that isn’t Adam, and so he doesn’t miss the way Adam looks at him: wondering, pondering. The difficult questions float in his eyes, right under the easy ones, like debris in a river. Leo frowns – no, not quite like that – the only river around is the Saar, and the Saar could never look as clear and impossibly blue as Adam’s eyes, and…
Well. Leo has never been too good with metaphors, anyways. The absence of German literature had been a definite perk of police training.
· · · · ·
Once during a coffee break, Esther jokes that Adam looks like the Slenderman, standing around the office, and Leo has to begrudgingly admit she’s not wrong. It’s the black skinny jeans, he thinks – but it’s not only that. The Slenderman roaming his workplace, Leo could probably deal with. He did see much worse daily on the job, after all. But this, his childhood best friend treating him like a case to be cracked, that was much stranger.
· · · · ·
Leo lets Adam conduct a handful of interrogations during the Hofer case, and they all begin the same way. It turns out Adam is remarkably good at small talk when given an interrogation room and ulterior motives. Despite the bitter taste the realization leaves in Leo’s mouth, he can’t stop looking at his pleasant smile and calculating eyes on the video tapes.
By the time the police car door slams shut behind Lida, though, Adam still hasn’t gotten to the difficult-question-asking part of his interrogation on Leo. The car turns right after the bridge and then it’s nothing more than a faint roar in the distance, soon swallowed by the quiet of the woods. Adam stares at the tracks left behind by the tires, deep, neat prints in the dirt road, and Leo stares at Adam. Exhaustion settles in his bones like dust in a file room as the adrenaline wears off.
Leo has half a mind to try and force a smile when their eyes meet – but why bother? For all of Adam’s looking, Leo has no secret for him to uncover. It’s all laid bare in front of Adam, if he wants to look. The corner of his mouth tightens and he clasps Adam on the shoulder.
Adam is warm under his hand, solid – there, there , and he doesn’t know who moves first but an instant later their arms close around each other in a tight hug. The embrace is all eyes squeezed shut, hands clutching at jackets, trying to press closer. A sob shudders through one of their chests, and it doesn’t even matter who’s – they stand there, on the dirt road which smells like humus and industrial waste, the same emotions rising and falling through them, and it’s like being kids again.
But they’re not kids anymore. “When did you get taller than me,” Leo mumbles in the side of Adam’s neck. The warm skin there smells heady-fresh, like convenience store aftershave.
“Do you like it?” Adam replies. That’s yet another easy question, Leo realizes, and he silently steps back to get into his carseat.
(“Yes,” is the easy answer.)
· · · · ·
Leo had meant to drive them back to the city, drop Adam off, and go home to unwind – he really had.
But it is pretty clear his plans have not quite reached completion when he wakes up to a ray of sunshine on his face and soft snores from the pillow next to him.
Leo’s entire body tenses up like his bed is the field of an undercover mission and Adam is some thug pointing a weapon at him. Except the weapon is the stray lock of hair falling into Adam’s face and the way he looks years younger with his mouth half-open in sleep. In a few deft moves, Leo has rolled out of bed and finds himself safe and sound in the hallway.
Caro is blearily drinking coffee at the kitchen table, and the familiar sight of her hair sticking up on one side of her head sets Leo right again.
“Morning, Leo,” she says, smiling absently, before seeming to remember something. “Hope you had a good night – lots of shoes in the hallway, huh?”
Leo must have made a funny face at that, because Caro’s smile widens as her eyes narrow. “Adam stayed over,” he mutters.
“Adam?” She looks much more awake as her eyebrows lift in surprise, a chance at sibling harassment doing all the things coffee never could.
“Don’t say a word. We were both exhausted last night after we closed that case. It was just – convenient.”
“Convenient,” Caro says meaningfully, amusement glittering in her eyes.
“Shut up. I’m first on the shower.”
“Congrats for closing the case, by the way!” Caro calls after him as he retreats down the hall. Leo decides to spare her his thanks.
When he gets out of the bathroom, Adam is all but making coffee, wearing one of Leo’s shirts, looking for all the world as if there is nothing unusual about him waking up in Leo’s bed. He’s even got a nice little chat going with Caro, which manages to be only marginally awkward – well. It isn’t awkward, right until Leo walks into the kitchen, at which point Adam snaps his mouth shut. He looks Leo up and down with wide eyes, and then turns away from him, fixing the coffee maker with a look halfway between shock and distress.
Caro breaks into a smile, like Leo’s childhood best friend ignoring him in his own kitchen is the most exciting thing that has happened this week. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Adam!” She says cheerfully as she gets up, and as she passes her brother on her way out, she adds in a fake whisper: “Leo, you should consider putting clothes on.”
· · · · ·
Leo doesn’t mean to make it a habit, but, well. If there’s one thing Adam does with dedication, it’s taking Leo’s life off the rails, and so this is the third evening this week that Leo unlocks his door with Adam in tow – and it’s only Thursday.
Tonight, though, he’s too exhausted to really think about Adam’s toothbrush and hair products on his bathroom counter, or about his fast-dwindling collection of t-shirts. Tonight, Leo is only eager to reunite with his bed – empty as it might or might not be – after a long day of chasing after dead ends and staring at Adam.
Between Adam’s investigation and Leo’s investigation of his investigation, they must totalize an impressive amount of listless staring at each other. Surely, the only reason why Esther has not reported it in her gossip updates yet has to be the memory of Leyla – Pia’s predecessor, who had a gap between her front teeth when she laughed at Esther’s quiet sarcasm, and whom Esther barely looked away from for a whole year.
Leo had also ended up catching them making out in a police car, but that was neither here nor there.
But Adam and him are not the same. For one, they have all this backstory – Leo has so much to say to Adam that it shuts him right up. He wouldn’t know where to start digging at the dam which holds all his memories neatly bottled up. As long as their partnership yields satisfactory results (and it does), who cares how much silent drama and mystery goes on between the two of them in the meantime.
They are going to have to talk about it at some point, though, Leo knows. There are many reasons why Adam is currently looking for hand lotion in Leo’s bedside drawers instead of his own, but the least complicated one is the panic attack Leo had walked in on right as he meant to call it a day.
It feels a little bit like putting a plaster on a gun wound, to only watch from the other side of the bed as Adam squirts too much lotion out of the tube, to let him rub the excess off on Leo’s hands, and not talk about anything, but it’s enough for tonight. Leo turns off the lights before he has time to linger on how soft Adam’s hands are, how they might feel on him, under his lips–
In the darkness, Adam lists what helps with his attacks, in a tone so detached he might well have been speaking about somebody else until he mutters quietly, “I don’t have them that often, anyways.” Leo doesn’t mind. Procedure is good, it’s comforting – as is Adam’s knee pushed against his calf under the covers.
· · · · ·
One week later and Leo can’t sleep.
Insomnias aren’t exactly strangers to his everyday, nor are all-nighters puzzling over hard-to-crack cases. But this week has been a slow one. Saarbrücken is not big enough for weekly homicides, which Leo is thankful for on a law-abiding citizen level. But on an emotional level, well – he has to admit some modicum of crime would be a great way to take his mind off things right now.
Caro walks into the kitchen right as Leo turns the kettle on. Her jeans are covered in paint and she looks exhausted, which makes sense with the hour nearing three in the morning.
“Good session at the studio?” Leo’s attempt at avoiding the worst of her ribbing is hopeless, but that will not stop him from trying.
“I’m nearly done with that project for the Munich clients,” she says like it doesn’t matter much, even though she’d been stuck on that one for a week now.
“That’s great! Can’t wait to see it.” She hums and simply stares at him, and the kettles starts whistling anxiously, quite aptly reflecting how Leo feels about the entire situation.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh,” Leo says. Stalling, mostly. “Tea?”
“That’s not going to help you go to sleep.”
“Ginger tea,” Leo corrects, because he’s her big brother and hence has to be right all of the time.
“Are you sick?”
“I... like the taste?”
Caro sighs. “Why don’t you just call and invite him over? That’s what people do when they want to hang out with the guy they like, you know.”
“Oh, so that’s why I’ve never met that Dani you keep going on about?”
Caro just looks at him unimpressed and says: “Well I’m going to bed. See you.”
Leo vengefully chops the ginger root which Caro had left to shrivel at the bottom of the fridge and dumps it into the warm water. All the while, he pointedly avoids thinking about how Adam has, indeed, not stayed over for a full week, having finally gotten his own apartment, and really, all evidence points towards that being the trigger of this particular kind of insomnia.
His denial session is going great, thank you very much, until he takes the first sip of his tea – suddenly, he’s thrown back to that one winter when Adam had been sick with the flu, and Leo dutifully sneaked into the kitchen to brew ginger tea for him every morning for a week. Cinnamon had sat next to the ginger powder on the spice rack, and back then Leo had wished he’d known how to make Christmas biscuits to cheer Adam up –
· · · · ·
The next morning, Leo comes into work with a temper, deep dark circles under his eyes, and a still-warm box of baked goods under his arm. “It’s a shame Adam’s taking the day off to get his electricity sorted. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so grumpy for once after one of those,” Pia says in passing as she bites into a jam biscuit.
Stalking angrily into his office doesn’t take the edge off Leo’s annoyance with Adam’s whole person, so he turns a new page on his expensive Moleskine and writes Adam at the top, and then gets to work listing – everything.
· · · · ·
“Wasn’t there something in those academy books of yours, about the ethics of using investigation techniques for personal gain?” Caro asks dubiously a few days later.
Leo snatches the notebook out of her hands – there was not, actually. As much as it was frowned upon for police officers to blur the lines between professional and private, it was more common sense than actual written-down rules.
“Adam started it. I’m just trying to figure out what the object of his investigation is.”
“So let me get this straight. Adam’s hiding from you that he thinks you’re hiding something from him?”
Leo looks at her and wonders, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, what it must be like in that artist's mind of hers.
The very next night, he decides that whatever it’s like, he doesn’t care for it, because he comes home after a date to find Adam taking up his favourite spot on the couch, with a beer in one hand and a piece of carrot dipped in sauce in the other.
“What is going on here,” he asks, and Adam has at least the decency to look a little bit guilty. Caro – not so much.
“Can you believe Adam knows the leader of this one group of underground artists I met when I was in Berlin last year! How cool is that?”
Leo just looks at them some more. “That’s fantastic,” he deadpans before disappearing in the shower.
He does bring three beers when he comes back to the living room in a fresh set of clothes, and proceeds to have what is, all things considered, a great evening. Maybe that fact should not surprise him. Caro always manages to be hilarious when speaking about art – she always claims that a good painter needs to be a good storyteller first. Leo quietly drinks his beer and watches her hands fluttering as she recounts tales he’s heard a hundred times; watches the way Adam leans in with his elbows on his knees as he listens.
Adam’s stories are less exuberant than Caro’s, but Leo can’t get enough of the nearly-shy half-smile he gets as he opens up.
Eventually the conversation turns – somehow – to the police station’s black walls, then devolves into a contest of the wackiest cases they’ve had to deal with, and a while later Caro starts yawning. Leo barely even notices Adam following him into his room for bedtime. It’s only when he grumbles to Adam to please move over so he has room on his side of the bed that he thinks, wait, since when does he have a side on his own bed.
Leo freezes. He resists the urge to scratch at his collarbone. Unlike some other people, he does wear a shirt to bed, which nicely conceals the hickey he got earlier. Technically, he’s not doing anything wrong, but–
“Adam, huh, I wanted to tell you. I’m seeing someone – not dating, more like… Friends with benefits, I guess you could call it. His name’s Fabi. He’s a mechanic.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“I – I had a date with him. Before I came home.”
Adam looks at him, propped up on one arm. Leo knows that frown: it’s the frown Adam had on his face when Konrad Hofer’s interrogation didn’t bring the answers he’d been looking for. Leo sighs and leans over Adam to turn off the light.
“Good night,” he says, and despite the burn on his neck and the vague tingle where his arm brushed Adam’s bare chest, he has much less trouble falling asleep than he’s had all week.
· · · · ·
The pages in Leo’s notebook fill up with lists upon lists, neatly tracking Adam’s questionings and cross-referencing them with hypotheses as to their goal. The results so far are frustrating to say the least, since Leo is not quite sure whether their conversations in bed should count as part of the interrogation or not. Pillow talk is definitely not listed as any part of any procedure, but then there is a late-night run of Flirt mit einem Serienmörder which has Leo sitting up a little straighter on the sofa. Caro groans and kicks him in the shin, but Leo doesn’t let that hinder him in his dutiful note-taking.
Leo has begun to consider unearthing past interrogation transcripts for reference, when a fresh case finally brings respite – as well as an unexpected breakthrough.
· · · · ·
There has to be a correlation between the length of Pia’s strides and the percentage of traumatized witnesses she leaves behind – and the way she is currently stomping across the office has Leo hurrying to the interrogation room, the door of which she had just slammed. Leo frowns when he spots him: the kid is no older than thirteen, hiding tears behind his snapback. Thankfully, it doesn’t take more than a glass of orange juice and a promise to show him secret files to cheer him up, and then Leo can turn his attention to the other brooding teenager in the room.
“Are you done playing babysitter,” Adam says with a frown, like he is trying to reclaim the title of meanest on the team after Pia’s display. “I want to listen to the tapes with you. You always hear stuff that I don’t,” he adds, and it sort of makes something fond squeeze in Leo’s chest. It’s enough to make him forget that he actually hates the interrogation room, all bare and cramped.
But somehow, Adam and him are still sitting in there three hours later, chairs pulled close together as they pore over details of past testimonies.
“There!” Leo exclaims, and Adam leans over his shoulder to look at the word he is pointing at. “She says they’ve never met before, but here they are using the exact same turn of phrase to describe the place – and wait… Look!” He pulls up another piece of paper. “The brother doesn’t recognize it – it can’t be a coincidence!”
Leo turns his thrilled smile to Adam, but when their eyes meet, Adam’s answering grin is close – very close. He suddenly realizes he can smell Adam’s hair product, familiar from the way it always lingers in the bathroom after Adam showers.
This close, Leo can almost see the questions swimming back to the surface of his eyes – the grey seriousness settling over his transparent blue eyes. Leo charts it all in his head for when he’ll have time to sit down with his notebook: the twitch of his eyelids, every little flutter of his lashes.
“Can I kiss you?” Adam whispers then, looking down – looking at his lips . Leo’s thoughts stutter to a stop.
Suddenly, he can only feel: Adam’s hot breath on his mouth, the way his belly twists as he angles his head, his nose almost touching Adam’s cheek. His spine tenses in a long line of anticipation fifteen years in the making, and he’s going to do it, going to kiss Adam, kiss him again after all this time –
“Wait, no!” He says, and pushes himself away from Adam so abruptly they both almost fall out of their chairs. His thoughts rush back all at once, filling all of his head until they nearly overflow. Adam’s eyes go wide and his face falls right before he covers it with the guarded expression he always wears during interrogations, like an awkward garment pulled over his startled look.
“Why?” Adam asks.
“It’s too quick–”
“Too quick?” Adam scoffs. “Fifteen years isn’t too quick!”
“And it’s stupid, too! We’re colleagues, you... If you get fired, you’ll just go someplace else – Saarbrücken is all I have. You wouldn’t understand.” Leo’s mouth tightens. “We barely even know each other – you only just got there.”
“What do you want, Leo, then, tell me and I’ll do it – I’ll take you on a fancy date, I’ll be quiet about it, I’ll even be polite to Pia if that’s what you want…”
“This isn’t about that!”
“Is it not enough that I want to kiss you and you want to kiss me?”
The question startles Leo, because he knows these phrases, carefully engineered with incriminating elements built in. Any answer Leo could give is an admission of guilt: yes or no, it would mean that he wants–
“Is that what you’ve been looking for, then,” Leo asks, quietly.
There is a silence, the sort of silence Leo would rewind to if it was recorded, size it up for signs of stress, of wordless confessions.
But Adam doesn’t give him anything to work, staring evenly at Leo like he’s the one waiting for an answer, even though the question had been Leo’s. Like he’s the interrogator in the room, Leo realizes – Adam isn’t dumb. He has been doing all of this on purpose, has meant for Leo to know about his schemes all along. Adam had brought him in the metaphorical interrogation room and shone the light on him, and Leo had come without protest.
“I thought it was,” Adam says quietly, before he gets up and storms out.
Alone with his racing heart, Leo drops his head in his hands and groans. That investigation log of his was looking more and more like a personal diary by the day.
· · · · ·
“To three months of you coming back.”
“To never running away again.”
Leo clinks his pint against Adam’s and takes a sip so that he can pretend the downturn of his lips is due to the bitterness of his beer. Clearly, Adam doesn’t buy it.
“I’m serious, Leo,” he says as he wipes his mouth, setting his glass back on the table. “I want to stay here. Really.”
Leo narrows his eyes. “Why? I’m sure there’s plenty of other cities in Germany with great criminal departments.”
“But none of them have you.”
“You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why? It’s true.” Adam’s face is relaxed, but his eyes are keen as ever, cat-like, and Leo’s insecurities squirm like a nervous mouse.
“I can’t be the only reason for you to stay in Saarbrücken,” Leo settles on, because the evening will be over before he can list all the reasons which make him a disappointing partner, in a shootout or on a date alike. “What next – I’ll tell you I hate your haircut and you’ll cut it all off?”
Adam shrugs and takes a sip. Silence stretches between them, but Leo isn’t satisfied with this ending to their conversation. “Besides, Berlin didn’t have me, either. You still went.”
“I did,” Adam agrees. “Berlin had all these great gay clubs, though. Which I needed at the time. I don’t anymore.”
Adam finally looks away from Leo and to the dance floor. It’s better this way, because all the words have dried up on Leo’s tongue. “D’you dance?” Adam asks a few moments later, and Leo still can’t speak. “Well then. Your loss.”
Adam gets up – he sways a little bit as he disappears into the crowd on the dancefloor. Leo glances down at their table, and notices then that Adam’s whiskey glass is empty. He sighs as he tries not to lose sight of the black silhouette in the crowd. Good thing he’s so damn tall, Leo thinks distantly, and then he tries to think of nothing at all as he watches the way Adam’s hips sway in time with the beat.
His loss indeed.
· · · · · ·
Later, after Adam has come back to their table, smiling and flushed, after they’ve emptied one more glass and Leo has been persuaded into to exactly one dance with Adam – later, they’re laying together in Leo’s bed, again.
Leo is just on this side of buzzed, his eyelids drooping closed, dreamless sleep in easy reach. He listens to the now-familiar noises of Adam undressing while bumping into every item of furniture in Leo’s tiny room. He’d hated it, the first time Adam had stayed over, how Adam had gotten down to his boxers without question before getting in bed. It had been how vulnerable Adam had looked, open and unapologetic like... like a lover, or something. But he knew better now. It was soothing, to listen to Adam dropping his layers.
Adam switches the light off and slips under the covers next to Leo, who closes his eyes with a contented sigh. He’s nearly fallen asleep when Adam speaks.
“Do you actually hate my hair?” He whispers in the darkness. Leo opens his eyes to find him lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
“I don’t,” he mumbles. “I like it. It’s very – you.”
Adam hums. He’s not done talking, tension prickling off his too-still body. “I stopped cutting it when I left, for two, three years, maybe. I had no idea I could even grow it out that long. As a kid I never – it always had to be buzzed short. It got so long, to the middle of my back…”
Leo’s eyes are wide open in the dark. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m good at braiding hair – I learnt it from Caro when we were little. Could’ve braided yours,” Leo says, and it’s a simple offer, light of reproach.
“I would love that. Maybe someday, if I grow it out again.”
“Hm, maybe someday,” Leo repeats, and he assumes the conversation is over, because Adam turns to lay on his side, like he always does to sleep, curled towards Leo.
“I wasn’t lying, when I said I was serious about this. My life here, I mean. With you. That’s why I came back.”
“What, so I can braid your hair?” Leo presses his face into the pillow.
Adam chuckles. “Yeah.”
“I told you, I don’t like you doing stuff for me.”
“No, no – that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to grow out my hair long enough for you to braid it, but I also want to dye it blond and have you tell me you hate it.”
“What?”
“Listen. You asked me what I’m looking for, right? I’ll tell you.” He breathes in, and Leo opens his eyes again. “It’s the treehouse.”
“The treehouse? I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m afraid it’s long gone –”
“No, I mean. You showed me the treehouse, that first time, you gave me something. D’you remember? Trust. Something safe. That’s what I was trying to find this whole time, after I left.” Adam sighs. “You said I don’t know you anymore, and maybe that’s true. But I don’t mind. I just want you to show me. I came back to Saarbrücken for the treehouse, and I just want you to climb in with me.”
Leo wishes that this was taped, because he needs to listen to it again – he needs to dissect all of the exact meanings behind Adam’s words, needs to break it all down into details small enough to fit in his charts. And then, when he has separated all the facts from the feeling, he wants to throw all professional ethics to the wind and keep the feeling, the vulnerability in Adam’s voice, in the interrogator’s answer.
They stare at each other for a moment, and then Leo says: “Okay.” Low. He raises a hesitant hand and slowly tucks a loose strand of hair behind Adam’s ear. “But I would really hate the blond hair, though.”
“Too late. I’ve bought all the supplies already,” Adam grins, and he grabs Leo’s hand where it hovers above his face. Their fingers lace – Adam’s are not icy cold for once, and Leo’s last thought before he falls asleep is that pillow talk will definitely have to be taken into account in his investigation notes, now.
· · · · ·
The next morning, to Leo’s surprise, Adam stirs awake as soon as Leo pulls his hand away.
Well, awake is a generous description, but the disoriented grunt is already a feat coming from a man who has before sacrificed both breakfast and his childhood best friend’s physical integrity for the sake of an extended Sunday lay-in.
Leo turns his phone over, checking the screen. There’s a notification for a new episode of his favourite podcast and a text from Fabi. “Nothing from the station,” is what he tells Adam. “Go back to sleep.” He already knows that Adam is going to take over the entire bed as soon as Leo leaves, lying sideways, throwing his long, gangly legs over the covers, stealing Leo’s pillow. He doesn’t mind.
Fabi’s text is a breakup text, which Leo only finds out after Adam leaves. He sits in the living room, sorting through some antique files and trying to make sense of the dates – in between the classified and the falsified material, he barely notices Adam kissing his cheek and saying something about going to get groceries with his mother. It’s only when he lifts his head from his work again, alone in the apartment, that he finally thinks to read the message.
It’s not really a breakup; they hadn’t actually been together, after all, but it feels like one, because when Leo calls, Fabi explains that he doesn’t want to be in the way . Leo sighs. He’s not really surprised. He had known this was coming, sort of, ever since Fabi had seen Adam’s stuff in the bathroom, and had raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“You’ve been acting different, since that friend of yours came back.”
Leo can’t find fault in that statement. Leo doesn’t dance, doesn’t conduct investigations on his coworkers, doesn’t let guys stay the night, but somehow with Adam – he does.
Still, he is glad that Caro comes back early from meeting friends, the way she flops dramatically onto the couch to complain about her own hopeless love life easing the heavy feeling in his chest.
He tells Adam three days later and gets one raised eyebrow and a “Do you want to talk about it?” When he doesn’t, Adam says “Alright,” and gets back to explaining some parallel between two pictures which is only obvious to him. Somewhere between the victim’s upbringing in France and its correlation to the rate of apple production in Saar, Adam’s hand comes to rest on the small of Leo’s back. Leo rolls his eyes and Adam smiles smugly – Leo has stopped shaking Adam’s hands off after realizing how many interested stares came Adam’s way in the office; and it had taken Pia asking Adam on a date (cleverly disguised as a work meeting) for Leo’s own hands to start getting possessive in return.
He’s not the jealous kind, really but – well. Maybe Leo should stop making statements about what kind of man he is.
· · · · ·
Leo should have known Adam would not drop a case so easily. What had been written in his file when he transferred? Persistent – yeah, of course it had.
Adam insisting to stay late one night for paperwork should have been enough to raise Leo’s suspicions, used as he was to lonely nights at his desk tying up administrative loose ends. But Leo figures Adam is waiting on him so they can go home together, so he tells him to make himself useful in the meantime and drops a pile of files in front of him.
It’s an understatement to say Leo doesn’t see it coming when they finish up (way earlier than Leo’s usual) and Adam pulls out more paperwork.
“What’s that?”
“Leo. Sit down. There’s evidence I want you to see.”
“What evidence? We’ve just closed that case, we don’t have anything else...”
He sits down under Adam’s level gaze.
“So,” Adam says, opening the file to the first page, which has a fancy plastic cover and looks almost as nice as Leo’s flawless reports. Almost. And then Leo looks under the plastic cover and his brow furrows.
Adam’s tone is professional, like in the monthly presentations they give to their senior officer. “Here’s a calendar with the nights I’ve stayed over in blue, and the ones we went out together in red. The corresponding map is on the next page – I’ve marked off all the places we’ve been to, along with the dates.”
Adam keeps rambling, and Leo just looks at it all dumbly. There’s some photographic evidence, which is just a bunch of selfies, including the one from when they watched the sunrise together at an early-morning crime scene and another with Caro cry-laughing at their attempt at homemade Italian for dinner. The following pages reveal a table of their shared items of clothing (mostly Leo’s t-shirts, but a couple of Adam’s sweaters, too), an estimation of the time spent arguing about the quality of various open mic bars in town, and still Adam keeps turning to the next page.
His presentation has been going on way longer than the station-standard ten efficient minutes by the time Adam finally concludes with: “I would’ve added a graph with the rate of comments from Esther and Pia about you being my boyfriend, but then it got too much to record.”
He sounds chagrined. Leo’s head spins. He opens his mouth and closes it again as Adam gathers the papers.
“You…” Leo starts, swallows, then keeps going. “You’re only supposed to use suggestion to get the suspect to confess in the Reid technique of interrogation. Or the risk of a false confession runs too high.”
Adam just shrugs. “I adapted the method to the psychological profile I had to deal with. I know you like your evidence neatly laid out,” he says, smiling a little – a sentence that has no right to sound so affectionate. He stacks all the papers together, binds the file closed again, and hands it to Leo. The plastic is smooth under Leo’s hands, and he frowns at the cover.
“The Reid technique also requires that you know precisely what confession you’re looking for.”
“Oh, I know,” Adam says, looking into Leo’s face and saying: “Leo Hölzer, will you or will you not kiss me?” Leo’s eyes widen, and Adam’s lips tighten. He doesn’t up and leave, though, which is how Leo knows he’d expected that reaction from him. “Will you at least think about it? I mean, it’s pretty incriminating stuff I’ve got right there.”
· · · · ·
Leo brings the file home, and he does think about it. It’s not like thinking about Adam is not part of his usual schedule, anyways. He goes through it again, not quite knowing if he should take notes, laugh, or just take a long, long nap.
There’s a piece of paper sticking out behind the last page, one Leo hadn’t noticed at the office. He pulls on it and it’s a reservation to a restaurant. Leo recognizes the place – they held an exhibition of some of Caro’s work a few months ago. It’s nice, cozy, the food heavenly. The reservation is in Adam’s name – table for two, the coming Saturday.
Leo marks it dutifully on his calendar, and then goes to lay down for that long-overdue nap.
· · · · ·
A few weeks later, Adam is sitting bare chested on Leo’s bathroom floor, his head tipped back into the bathtub, looking like a wet kitten while Leo rinses bleach out of his hair. He sounds like one, too, whining loudly at how cold the water is, even though Leo has explained twice that the hair follicles have to close after the treatment.
When the urge to simply drown Adam gets too strong, Leo turns the water off and hands him a towel.
“How do I look, then?” Adam asks after he’s rubbed at his hair long enough, and now that is an easy question. Leo takes one look at Adam, bony knees pulled up to his chest, the disheveled mess of his hair sticking out like a halo. He knows the purple shampoo will take care of some of the brassiness, but the light blond is definitely (tragically) here to stay.
“Terrible. I hate it,” Leo says, but his tone is light as he bends down, takes Adam’s face between his hands and kisses him right on his proud smile.
Adam makes a sort of noise like a whimper as his whole body strains towards Leo. One of his hands flies up with police-intervention-reflexes quickness to grip the back of Leo’s neck, the other one grabbing his hand and pulling insistently. Leo laughs, but he follows the motion, lowering himself onto Adam’s lap until he has one knee on either side of him.
“Leo,” Adam sighs as he kisses him again, fingers in his hair. “Leo, Leo,” he keeps saying in between kisses, and Leo might have initiated this, but he feels like he’s just about going to lose his mind there.
“You’ve got to stop saying that,” he says breathlessly against Adam’s mouth, and Adam bows their foreheads together.
“What then? Should I call you Kommissar Hölzer?”
Leo scoffs. “If this is some kind of roleplay, you’ve got to stop it,” and of course, Adam being Adam, doesn’t stop at all, his hands gathering Leo’s wrists and snaking around Leo’s waist to hold them together at the small of his back.
“You’re under arrest for stealing my hear–”
“Oh my God,” Leo says, but he doesn’t try to struggle against Adam’s hold. “Don’t even say it.”
“Please abstain from resisting arrest.”
“Fine, fine. I’m coming readily, am I not,” Leo says, and he can’t help but smile as he leans in to kiss Adam again.
· · · · ·
Adam finds the notebook at the bottom of Leo’s dresser, and he holds it up with a strange expression on his face that has got Leo tensing up in expectation of – something. But then Adam says he finds it romantic, of all things.
Leo scoffs, thrown off balance. “Are you kidding? I can’t believe you thought using police procedure to seduce me would be a good idea.”
“Well, I can’t believe it worked.”