Chapter Text
Jigen's right arm ached, and that meant the weather was about to go sour.
Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.
Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.
Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.
"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.
"Don't worry about it," he said before the man could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, he'd run off into the crowd. Jigen huddled up in his corner, lanky limbs folded around himself to brace against the cold, and didn't think about the guy again.
---
Several hours later, Jigen had another target to be paranoid about. The big, broad-shouldered man in the long coat had been around the plaza a few times before before. Jigen had first called out to him in Japanese, hoping a little taste of home might make him more charitable - sure, there were Japanese-Parisians, but this guy definitely had the tourist look about him. The gamble had paid off in dividends - every night this week the man had come by, offering him an 'extra' sandwich from the office that Jigen knew damn well had been purchased at the cafe around the corner.
"I hear there's gonna be a cold snap tonight," the man said, standing with his hands in his pockets while Jigen worked his way through a ham and cheese.
"Huh. Good to know."
"You got a place to be?"
"Yeah."
"...that place got a heater?"
"I'll be fine."
The man took a long drag of his cigarette and stared out into the streetlights as they lit up the dimming courtyard. He didn't look like he believed Jigen, or had overlooked that the answer to his question hadn't technically been 'yes'. There were shelters to go to, but they were loud and stank and people tried to jack your stuff. Even worse, they had other humans in them and Jigen didn't feel like he could deal with a mass of other humans right now. He could barely deal with himself on a good day.
"Look…"
Jigen braced himself for the man to recommend some government or charity service, as if Jigen hadn't fucking thought of that. He wasn't even supposed to be in this country anymore and his passport had long since vanished. If he had to be on the street somewhere, at least the food was better here than in America. Fewer guns, too.
Instead, the man's next words came out in a long single-breath rush. "Do you want to spend the night at my place?"
"Eh?"
The man turned his big, round eyes on Jigen.
"I've seen you out here before. I don't know your story but I don't want to just walk out here and find you frozen to death. And I got some frozen dinners in the fridge, and a couch."
This felt like a trap. The guy was big, bigger than Jigen, and if he was the type that murdered hobos and put them in his basement for amusement Jigen wouldn't be able to stop him.
...Jigen also wasn't entirely sure he cared. He rose slowly, unsteadily to his feet and gathered up the rucksack that formed the bulk of his possessions. When he grunted his assent the man actually looked surprised. Maybe he realizes what a weird request it was too.
"Don't actually know what your name is, though."
"Zenigata Koichi." There was a beat as he waited for Jigen to reply in kind.
Jigen toyed with the idea of giving a pseudonym or just denying him the name at all, but again, who really cared? The guy might put arsenic in his coffee later and then it wouldn't matter anyway. He admitted, after some delay, to being Jigen Daisuke.
"You're...American, yes? Is English easier for you?"
"I'm fine with whatever."
"I'm best with Japanese, but English is useful. More people are likely to know it if there's nowhere else you overlap, and I have to be abroad a lot."
"Huh."
Zenigata kept taking peeks at him as they walked down the dimming streets, as if he was expecting something. Jigen kept his head down, brim of his hat hiding his eyes. At least if the guy slit his throat in the night he'd be able to sleep comfortably.
--
The hotel room was one of those residential ones, the kind that was basically an apartment with its own little kitchen and such. It also looked more like the scene of a break-in and subsequent explosion, with discarded clothing on every available piece of furniture and papers scattered from kitchen counter to coffee table.
There was, as promised, a couch, and Zenigata quickly moved to scoot a few piles of laundry off it, mumbling an apology for the mess.He talked his way through a tour as if the entire room couldn't be seen from a single point.
"Coffeemaker's there, and bathroom's back there if you want a shower. My bedroom's through that door, I'll just stuff this in here, you can put your stuff in the closet--"
"Yeah, yeah, sure."
After some leftover Chinese and a shower (because yeah, Jigen knew he stank) and some mouthwash quietly swiped from the bathroom drawer, Jigen found a set of spare clothes laid out for him. All of them were too big, but he at least accepted the loan of a shirt that fit on him like a child wearing his father's clothes.
The entire time Zenigata kept talking, and Jigen offered little but grunts in reply. It was hard to remember how to hold a conversation, as if he'd been moving through molasses and now someone was asking him to sprint. None of it related to anything - Zenigata talked about the weather, about Paris compared to other cities he'd visited, about his thoughts on America and the way they did things, a few opinions on local politics that Jigen had no reason to care about because he wasn't even a legal voter here. Or a legal anything here. But Zenigata didn't need to know that.
"Remind me what you do for work again?" he grunted, as he watched the man clean up more papers from the sofa.
"Ah...inspector. I'm with ICPO." He looked almost embarrassed about it.
"Wait, you're a cop?"
Zenigata held up his hands. "Don't--look, this isn't like some extended sting operation, okay? If you had to do a few shady things to survive, it's not my business. I got way bigger fish to deal with."
Jigen's hand brushed his right elbow. "Charitable," he said under his breath, head down. Jigen's crimes were a bit heavier than shoplifting and public loitering, but Zenigata didn't need to know that. "I'm gonna sleep now."
"Okay. Let me know if you need anything!" He waved with the papers in his hand and backed out of the conversation, into the bedroom. Jigen curled up on the couch and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself to sleep.
Sleep and with no dreams, please, he thought, like he was putting in an order at a restaurant, and then pulled the blanket up over his head.
Jigen didn't mind nightmares, you at least felt grateful to be awake once you came out of those. The dreams were so much worse because he woke up feeling unbearably, painfully, empty. The feeling that something was missing - lost, stolen, cut out with a knife - lingered after rousing, sometimes for hours. He didn't always remember what the dreams were but sometimes they felt more real than the world around him. Certainly they were always more beautiful.
This one...he'd been in a car, driving over a bridge somewhere in San Francisco, and the man had leaned over to light his cigarette. and smiled so beautifully that he'd pulled his hat down to hide the way his eyes misted up.
He lay still for a while, wondering if he'd woken his host up, until the sun rose enough to illuminate a note left on the coffee table.
Sorry. Work called me in early.
There were arrows directing him to the location of food, as if the fridge and coffeemaker were hard to find, and a spare room key taped to the paper. Jigen, again, considered whether he should just rob the place and get out, and what kind of idiot left a complete stranger alone in his hotel room. Idiot, or lunatic, or malevolent entity.
Still, robbing the guy just felt mean. And it was below freezing outside. Jigen lay on the couch for a while, idly watching tv and sipping coffee.
The dreams weren't too bad for the next few days. Barely a dull ache, sometimes not even there at all. Zenigata was always chatty when he came home but never about anything relevant. He seemed to want to just fill the air with chatter, any kind at all, to drown out...silence, maybe. Enough letting the man run his mouth revealed that he had an ex-wife, and that his work was frustrating, but he always swerved away from discussion of either topic before they got into territory too dangerous. For his part, Jigen said nothing about his past beyond when he started living on the streets of Paris. No reason to ruin a good thing before its time, and eventually Zenigata would have to wise up and kick him out.
Eventually.