Work Text:
It is one in the morning, and Kurt Wallander is at work. He hasn’t moved in hours. His eyes are glued to a case file open on his computer screen. An almost-empty coffee mug sits beside his elbow. It’s been filled and emptied five or six times tonight already, its contents being the only thing Kurt has ingested for quite some time.
Kurt tears his eyes away from the screen for a moment and yawns. When he looks back at his file, he discovers that his eyes are refusing to focus on the words. He reaches for his coffee, drains the last of it, then slowly shuffles over to the coffee pot to pour himself a new cup.
This case is important, which is why he’s at work so late. It’s his first case since coming back to the police, the first case he’s been put on, rather than unwillingly shoved into. He has to do a good job, has to prove himself. Hence why he’s surviving on bad coffee and staying at work long past midnight, coming in (if he bothers to leave at all) by six every morning.
By the time he feels like he’s finished with the file for the night, it’s no longer night, but instead five in the morning. No point going home, he figures, getting up to put on a new pot of coffee.
With nothing else to do, Kurt sinks into his chair, thinking he can maybe catch a bit of sleep. But it’s no use. He’s too worked up from thinking about the case to sleep, or maybe just too caffeinated. Whatever the reason, his body refuses to rest, which he thinks is probably for the best. He doesn’t fancy having a nightmare in front of the night shift, and lately, it seems like nightmares are the only thing he gets when he closes his eyes. Just another reason to work late, he figures. You can’t have nightmares if you don’t sleep.
Kurt sits there, letting his thoughts wander about aimlessly, until he’s jolted back into reality by a tap on his shoulder. He startles and whips around, blinking as the action makes his head swim.
“Early start today?” Rask asks. Kurt nods.
“Nice initiative,” she tells him, then drops a stack of papers onto his desk. “We’re going to speak to witnesses after lunch today. Until then, paperwork.”
Kurt groans inwardly. He hates paperwork, especially lately. It takes up too much valuable focus, focus that could otherwise be directed towards solving this case. Not to mention the fact that his hands are shaking in a way that is definitely going to be noticeable in his handwriting.
He can’t just not do the paperwork, though. So he resigns himself to the task, pouring yet another cup of coffee, barely cognizant of the gnawing feeling of hunger in the pit of his stomach and the back of his throat.
Six hours later, Kurt has finally finished the paperwork. He would’ve finished it sooner, most likely, but his vision had kept going blurry, and no amount of coffee had been able to fix it. Plus, at some point, his thoughts had started to really wander, and he’d found himself incapable of making them stop. He’d think of Reza, finally moving up to Major Crimes next week. Then he’d think of Mona, currently in Stockholm with Gustav Munck for a charity event. Then he’d think of explosions and smoke and blood. Then he’d snap out of his thoughts and focus back on the paperwork in front of him. Then he’d think of Reza...
He is relieved when 12:30 rolls around and Rask comes up to his desk. She gives it a sharp tap, pulling Kurt out of another thought loop. “Are you ready to go?” she asks, though it’s not a question.
Kurt nods anyway, then stands, balancing himself for a moment against his desk when the world tilts slightly. He follows Rask out to the parking lot wordlessly, sinking gratefully into the passenger seat of the car.
Neither of them says a thing for several minutes. Kurt stares out the window, trying his best to keep his eyes open, ignoring the now more pronounced aching in his stomach and throat. He’s fine. He slept a few days ago, probably. He’s had plenty of coffee. He’s fine.
Rask finally breaks the silence when Kurt fails to stifle a yawn. “Are you alright? You seem a little...off.”
Kurt nods. “I’m fine,” he says, reflexively.
“Good. I need you focused and alert for this.”
Kurt nods again. This is a vital part of the case. He knows that. Without these witnesses, there’s little hope of catching their suspect. If they don’t catch their suspect, then he’ll have failed. Again. They have to catch the suspect. This is important. He can’t fuck it up.
--
“That was an incredibly important part of the investigation, and you completely fucked it up!”
Kurt winces. He knows. He hadn’t asked a single useful question. He hadn’t been able to answer the questions that the witnesses had asked him. He’d barely spoken at all, as a matter of fact. He just hadn’t been capable - words would enter his brain and then leave immediately, like water through a strainer. He hadn’t been able to focus on a single thought for long enough to formulate a sentence. And he’d been growing steadily more nauseous, so that even if he had managed to come up with something coherent to say, he wouldn’t have wanted to open his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” is the only thing he can say. “I didn’t…” he trails off, eyes drifting closed for a second before he forces them back open.
Rask drives back to the police headquarters silently. Kurt doesn’t even have to look at her to know she’s fuming. He deserves it, he knows. He’d slipped. Badly. He just hopes she won’t kick him off the case, kick him out of Major Crimes. He’s put everything he’s got, and more that he really hasn’t got, into this. He needs it.
The second they’re back in the building, Rask is pulling him into her office and closing the door. She pushes him towards a small couch in the corner. “Sit,” she says, and Kurt complies, swallowing nervously. He has a feeling he’s about to get very harshly yelled at.
So he’s understandably surprised when, instead of towering over him and chewing his head off, Rask sits down next to him and asks, in the softest voice he’s ever heard her use, “when was the last time you slept?”
He very nearly starts crying right then and there. Not just because of the sheer concern that’s laced into her voice, but also because he really does not know. Maybe he’d fallen asleep for a few moments this morning. It’s possible he slept a couple days ago. He knows he slept at some point before Mona had gone to Stockholm eight days ago.
“I don’t know,” he confesses, feeling vaguely ashamed.
“You’re exhausted,” Rask supplies. “What else?”
Kurt shrugs. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s not okay. He stubbornly wipes a tear away from under his eye. He can still be fine.
Rask sighs from beside him, and Kurt thinks for a moment that she is going to leave. He can’t decide whether or not he wants her to.
She doesn’t leave. Instead, she places a hand on his shoulder and asks, “when was the last time you ate?”
He thinks of the copious amounts of coffee he’s had over the past several days, and realizes he’s had little else. The thought makes him feel faintly sick, and he swallows harshly before saying, again, “I don’t know.”
Rask does leave then, and for a few moments Kurt sits alone on her couch, willing himself not to cry, to be fine, to get up and go back to his desk, back to work. But it’s no use. He can’t force his exhausted body to move an inch.
His eyes fly open as the door to the office opens and then closes, quietly. Rask is back, and she has things in her arms which his eyes are stubbornly refusing to focus on enough to figure out what they are. Something lumpy, he thinks. Something vaguely round, possibly.
She sits back down next to him and hands him one of the items she’s brought. He stares at it for a moment, trying futilely to think of what it might be.
“It’s a sandwich,” Rask supplies, pulling some of the paper away from it.
Kurt tries to hand it back. Some part of him recognizes the fact that he’s desperately hungry, but a larger part of him insists that he shouldn’t eat it. That he’s fine. Or, at any rate, too nauseous to eat anything.
“You need to eat something,” Rask insists. “You’re not going to feel any better until you do.”
Sensing that there’s little point in trying to argue, Kurt takes a small bite of the sandwich. It’s not very good, but the second he swallows it he’s taking another, more out of instinct than a true desire to keep eating.
Rask pulls the sandwich away from him when he’s eaten about half of it. “Slow down,” she tells him. “This is the first real food you’ve had in a while. Don’t overdo it.”
Kurt nods distractedly, finding himself thinking again of Mona, and sandwiches, and the rain, and the question when was the last time you ate? and his answer amounting again to much the same - that he wasn’t sure.
“Drink this,” Rask instructs him, pulling him back into the present. She’s holding out a bottle of water. Kurt accepts it, somewhat reluctantly, and drinks a small amount. It feels much nicer than coffee as it goes down his throat, and it doesn’t settle so heavily in his stomach. He drinks a little more.
Eventually, Rask gently pulls the bottle away from his hands and sets it aside. Her hand once again comes to rest on his shoulder, and he slowly turns his face to look at her.
“I told you not to destroy yourself,” she says. “I told you you were too young to have your world turn to shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Kurt says, because he can think of nothing else to say. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m sorry.”
A tear slides down his cheek before he can stop it, and then another follows it, and then another. He tries to turn away, to hide himself, to cling desperately to the notion that he is okay, in some shape or form. But something deep within him, something still soft and hurting and aching to be held, stops him from shutting everything out. He looks helplessly at Rask instead, and for a second, a similar helpless look ghosts across her face, like she isn’t quite sure what to do, like she’s broken too, but then it goes away and she pulls him close to her and holds on.
It should be weird. It should be really fucking weird. Rask is his boss. She’s tough and talented and in charge of him and she is holding him and he is crying. He should be embarrassed, uncomfortable, pulling away. But she’s holding onto him and saying something about this kind of thing happening to basically everyone in this job, and her shoulder is really soft, and the couch is surprisingly nice, and he finds that all he really wants to do is stay.
Rask, for her part, doesn’t pull away. She lets him cry for an indefinite amount of time - he can’t be sure how long. All he knows is that, eventually, the tears stop rolling down his face, and he feels the familiar wave of exhaustion roll back over him. God, he’s tired.
As though she’s a mind reader, Rask says, “why don’t you try to get some sleep, Kurt. There’s not much left to do today, anyway.”
That sounds good, he decides, for once not thinking of nightmares. And before he can do any further thinking on the matter, his eyes are slipping closed. He feels himself sink into the couch, face pressed into the cushion. Someone removes his jacket and his shoes. A soft blanket is draped over him. And for the first time in several days, Kurt lets himself fall asleep.