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Hardison left the electronics store in a thoroughly good mood. The store had just gotten in the latest piece of tech that he needed, and had picked himself up the latest smart phone model as well, for no reason other than he wanted it. Plus, Eliot was cooking enchiladas for dinner at Nate’s place, and afterwards they were all going to play a little poker together. Hardison had a feeling that he was going to lose handedly, either to Sophie who would be able to instantly call anyone’s bluff, or to Parker, who would probably slide aces up her sleeve so smoothly they would never be able to catch her. He smiled to himself as he walked down the sidewalk.
He passed a pair of cops standing next to their squad car, and although he was doing nothing wrong, although there was no reason for it, his hair stood up on end. Sometimes he could just tell, based on the length of their stare, or the tightness of their jaw, the shifting of hands toward holsters when he walked by, if a cop was going to be problematic. Hardison made sure not to slow down or speed up as he made his way past them, barely sparing them a glance meanwhile watching them out of the corner of his eye. He made his way past them and started to relax, chastising himself for being paranoid.
He was only three yards away when a voice rang out in his direction, “Hey you there, stop!”
His stomach dropped, and he stopped. He thought about how yesterday he had run around all day carrying millions of dollars of stolen diamonds in his bag for the job they had been doing, and how they had passed a number of cops without incident. But yesterday he had been with the team, protected by their whiteness, innocent by association he supposed. Today, on his own, he was indisputably guilty.
“Turn around.”
Hardison turned to face them, squinting slightly in the afternoon sun. The cop on the right was huge, tall and beefy, with hard muscles underneath a layer of fat. His face was red and sweaty in the heat, the sunlight bouncing of the skin of his shaved head. As the cop took a calculated step toward him, Hardison was able to read his name tag: Officer Wallis. The other one was short and wiry, with close-cropped brown hair and shifty eyes. He had a nervous energy, where his partner exuded confidence and control, his body language portrayed having something to prove. Hardison’s instincts told him that the smaller officer, Officer Reddy, his name tag said, was the bigger threat. Nervousness and overcompensation could lead to itchy trigger fingers.
“Is there a problem, officers?” Hardison said, trying to keep his tone polite.
“Where are you coming from?” Wallis said.
Hardison tried to remember everything his Nana had told him about dealing with the police. She had had a foster son shot by the police years before Hardison had gone to live with her, and she talked about him often, drilling into Hardison’s head the rules he was to follow when dealing with police. The rules to a game he had never agreed to play. Rule number one: keep your answers fast and short.
“The electronics store around the corner.”
“We had a report of a robbery from a convenience store on that block,” Wallis said.
“Well, I wasn’t at the convenience store I was at the electronics store. Buying electronics.” Rule number two: no sass. Oops.
“Do you have your receipt?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said and reached back into his messenger bag to grab it.
Suddenly there was a gun pointed at him. “Hey, hey, hey! Get your hand out of there!” Officer Reddy shouted. Wallis followed his lead and pulled his gun as well. Hardison’s heart pounded in his throat. “Hands in the air!”
Rule number three: follow every command no matter how unjustified. Hardison put his hands in the air. God, he wished they were on a job right now. Then he would have his earbud in, the others would have heard what was going on. Nate would be telling him that Eliot was on his way and that he just needed to stall a little. But no one was coming, they were all less than three blocks away yet he was completely on his own.
He removed his messenger bag on their command and dropped it carefully on the ground between the cops and him. He turned around with his hands up again like they said. Then his arms were being twisted behind his back and he was unceremoniously shoved to the ground, his knees stinging from the impact. A second later the breath was knocked out of him and he was face down on the sidewalk. This is fucking bullshit, he thought, but followed rule number four: keep your opinions to yourself. There was a knee pressed into his back and from difficulty he was having bringing air into his lungs Hardison could tell the knee didn’t belong to the skinny guy. He squirmed a little in spite of himself.
“Don’t fucking move,” Wallis said.
“I can’t breathe, man!”
“Shut up.” But the weight on his back lifted slightly and Hardison stilled.
“Got any weapons on you?”
“No.”
“Anything sharp in your pockets?”
“No.”
Hands started running up his legs, into his pockets, pulling out his wallet and his keys.
“What’s your name?”
Hardison had a moment of hesitation where he couldn’t remember the name of the alias that was on the ID he was using. In that moment of silence Officer Wallis showed his impatience by pushing Hardison’s head hard onto the ground, his cheek scraping against the rough sidewalk. In his peripheral vision he could see a small group of people gathering around to watch, and his face burned with humiliation.
“Darryl Walters,” he remembered finally. Darryl Walters was a schoolteacher, he was born in Philadelphia, he went to college at Penn State and got a job offer in Boston right after he graduated. He taught seventh grade science. Or at least that was the persona that Hardison had set up for himself when he had created everyone’s new aliases. Parker had said that he made his background too boring, but Hardison liked Darryl Walters. He seemed like a nice, simple guy. Not the kind of guy who deserved to have run-ins with the cops for no reason.
Hardison felt handcuffs snap into place and he was yanked to his feet again. He saw that Officer Ready-to-shoot had put his gun away, and Hardison felt some of the adrenaline start to fade away. As unfair and inconvenient as this was, he was starting to think that he would be able to walk away from it. As he was shoved up against the cop car, a voice came loud and clear over the cops’ radios.
“This is unit 419, we apprehended a suspect in the convenience store robbery that matches the victim's description. White male, blond hair, black t-shirt with a red baseball cap.”
Anger broiled up in Hardison so hot and fast that it took everything in him not to explode at them. He did everything his Nana taught him about keeping it all inside, the hurt and anger from the injustice of it all. He allowed himself to glare though, and Officer Reddy at least had the decency to lower his eyes.
Wallis, however, didn’t even blink as he spoke into the radio, “Unit 419, this is unit 426, we have also apprehended a suspect, are you sure you got the right guy?”
Fifteen seconds went by before the response came on the radio, “The suspect has in their possession the $212 reported stolen, as well as a firearm that matches the description of the one used to threaten the owner.”
Wallis looked Hardison in the eye and gave a little sneer. “Ten-four,” he said into the radio.
Hardison still had to wait while they scanned his ID for any outstanding warrants and searched his bag for who-knows-what before he was let go without even a “sorry for the inconvenience.”
Some of the people who had gathered to watch gave him a sympathetic expression as he started walking away. Most though, moved quickly to get out of his way as he moved through the crowd, regarding him with wide eyes as though he was something dangerous.
By the time Hardison got to Nate’s apartment he was shaking with anger and the last of the adrenaline. Eliot was cooking and didn’t even look up when he came in, grumbling something that sounded like a greeting in his direction. Parker bounded over to him, and the usual happiness he felt at seeing her didn’t even register in him.
She stopped a few feet in front of him, “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
“And your knees. You’re bleeding. Hardison, what happened to you?”
He saw Eliot look up sharply in the kitchen.
“Nothing,” He suddenly wanted to be alone so badly, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Hardison,” she grabbed his wrist gently.
He wrenched out of her grasp, “Just leave me alone! Okay?”
She took a step back, hurt making her face crumble a bit, and she nodded. The desire to be alone overwhelmed the guilt he felt as he made his way past her. A few more steps and he was in the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Standing over the sink, he looked up at the mirror and for a second didn’t recognize himself, the expression on his face foreign even to his own eyes. He unclenched the jaw he hadn’t realized was clenched, and relaxed his eyebrows, and the illusion was gone, it was the same old him.
The scrape on his face was quite large, covering almost his entire left cheek. It wasn’t very deep however, just the top layer of skin was missing in some spots, and it wasn’t even bleeding. Both of his knees were, the right one visible through a new hole in his pants, the other one simply staining the beige material red.
A knock on the door interrupted his assessment. He sighed, he supposed privacy was a luxury he didn’t have around here, and suddenly he understood Nate’s grumpiness a lot more.
“What?” he said shortly.
Eliot opened the door, holding the first aid kit out to him. Hardison just stared at him.
“Clean, disinfect, dress,” he said. “You need me to do it for you?”
“No!” Hardison said, taking the small white box from him. “I can do it myself.”
“All right,” he said, and Hardison was hoping Eliot would leave and shut the door, but instead he stared at him.
“What?!”
“How many were there, and where can I find them?”
Hardison realized Eliot must have thought he had been mugged. He wanted Hardison to point the way to the criminal element so he could eradicate the problem. Simply, cleanly. But it wasn’t that simple when he himself was considered the criminal element. He didn’t know how to make Eliot understand that. Eliot, whose dangerous reputation always proceeded him, who was used to being judged on his past deeds. He didn’t know how to make him understand there would always be people, police officers or ordinary citizens, who saw Hardison as a threat not based on what he did, but based on what he looked like.
“It’s wasn’t like that, okay? I fell.”
“You fell?” Eliot’s tone was dubious.
“Yes. I swear, man. I fell.”
“Okay,” he said and he started to shut the door. Then he paused, “You should apologize to Parker.”
Hardison’s shoulders fell, “I know. I will.”
Eliot nodded. “Dinner’s in an hour.” And he left.
Hardison sighed. He didn’t know why he wanted to hide it from them. It felt shameful to him, even though he didn’t do anything to deserve it. Even with the team that he fit in with so well, with whom he had so much in common, it was that one thing that made him stick out. That made him “other”. It was something that, if he told them, no matter how much outrage they expressed, no matter how much they claimed they were on his side, they would never fully understand.
Part of him wanted to give Eliot the names of those cops and let him unleash hell on them. And he entertained himself for a moment thinking up all the different ways Eliot could inflict payback. But, it wouldn’t be conducive to their work if they couldn’t fly under the radar of the local cops. And taking down a pair of racist cops wasn’t going to change anything. There would always be others.
Hardison thought back to one of the first jobs they had done together when they gave the money to the hospital that treated veterans.
The doctor had told Nate incredulously, “The world doesn’t work this way.”
“So change the world,” Nate had said, full of confidence at the team’s abilities.
Hardison wondered if they would ever be able to change the world enough.