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Their apartment wasn’t nice.
There was no kinder way to say it. It just wasn’t. The walls of each room had long faded away from their original colors, peeling at the edges to reveal the muddled greys and browns behind them. The windows were placed in a possibly malicious act of architectural treason that had them directly facing the much taller building opposite to it, causing sunlight to be barred from entry even on the brightest of days. No two pieces of furniture matched or came close to some sort of pattern, the dishwasher broke twice a month, the lights stuttered with every flip of the switch and often continued to blink once on. In Lawrence’s humble opinion, the whole situation coordinated perfectly with whatever the fuck he and Adam’s lives were these days. Desperate messes.
Self-pity aside, it wasn’t nice. It still wasn’t worse than John Kramer’s workshop.
Dr. Lawrence Gordon was exactly what the title implied — a doctor. Nothing more, nothing less.
Well, a bit more.
And, well, a bit less.
But occupation-wise, he was solely a doctor, and he was firmly not built for the type of environment that John and however many others the man had picked up like stray cats were accustomed to. He was not one for noise, or at least not noise produced by tools that weren’t his. He was not one for arguing that came from the mouths of other people. And he was absolutely, positively not one for listening to incessant and unnecessary heckling of his work.
“The stitches on his mouth need to be tighter.”
“The key is sticking out of his eyelid.”
As if he wasn’t the one with an actual surgical education.
He didn’t like not being listened to, especially after how long he’d spent — and continued to spend, thank you — being the number one authority at the hospital. He didn’t like having to fight people down when they woke up mid-operation because somebody didn’t inject them with the proper dosage, despite his increasingly frequent reminders that the procedure would take much longer than their unprofessional guesstimate. Really, he didn’t like the stark lack of professionality that occupied the atmosphere in general. And in that same vein, he didn’t like looking...disheveled. It made him uncomfortable.
All of the above had proved to be inherent features of the Jigsaw trade. And yes, Lawrence certainly enjoyed most portions of the extreme odd-job he’d picked up, but god if the drawbacks weren’t maddening.
So their apartment wasn’t nice, but it didn’t have power saws, and it didn’t have backseat surgeons, and it usually didn’t have people flailing and screaming while they were supposed to be unconscious unless Adam was having a particularly bad night. By that standard, it was at least nicer, and therefore a relatively soft landing spot after his long early morning hours of painstakingly breaking the Hippocratic Oath.
The most vital piece of his home’s puzzle was Adam. This was both surprising and deeply troubling to realize, as Adam was also the most difficult piece to fit into place.
It wasn’t that Adam was, as a person, difficult. Or, he was a very naturally difficult person that had Lawrence mentally ripping his hair out on a not-infrequent basis, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Adam was neither an aspect of his hard earned perfect life illusion nor a devoted member of the torture-as-rehab delusion. He was instead the lone island floating at the middle point, or in other words, the guy Lawrence had to go home and lie to about where the blood on his clothes had come from.
See, he couldn’t just tell him. For one thing, the obvious — Adam was a professional snitch, whether he wanted to admit to that title or not. Lawrence was an underground criminal of catastrophic proportions, whether he wanted to admit to that title or not. The two did not exactly mix. And besides that, something told Lawrence that Adam wouldn’t be quite as willing to live under his same roof if granted with the knowledge that he’d become a willing participant in the games that had both figuratively and literally torn their lives apart limb from limb. Lawrence’s foot had been chopped clean off at the ankle and laid rotting in the same place he’d lost it in; Adam’s arm, after spending one too many days in that grimey bathroom with an open bullet wound that he just had to touch, was long lost to a clinical waste bin.
(If it hadn’t been for his “mystery savior”, the infection almost certainly would’ve been the last domino tipped before knocking his life to the floor. Lawrence didn’t personally subscribe to the definition of salvation as a cold body unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road, but he supposed Amanda had her own way about things. To give credit where credit was due, she did more than him, which is to say in the most uppity of ways that she actually did something.)
An arm and a leg. It was almost poetic. Adam just found it enraging.
He couldn’t just tell him, and that was precisely why. Where there was a semblance of meaning in the madness for Lawrence there was only a murder attempt and a three-part series of abandonment for Adam that he still hadn’t entirely forgiven those involved for. And he understood that, he really, really did. But it just made things so hard.
Lawrence Gordon was an experienced liar. That didn’t make him a happy one. Or, for that matter, a good one.
The most stark and most frequent example of what, exactly, was so hard about life with the truth stuffed down his throat was coming home with his neck practically translucent from how damn obvious the lies were. A man could only make up so many late night hospital shifts before it started to stir up suspicion, a fact that he was intimately familiar with. His work with Jigsaw had begun several months prior and become a near weekly excursion in the past few, and Adam was plenty smart enough that he’d notice something was off eventually. To tell the truth, the only reason he hadn’t cracked the code quite yet likely lied in that aforementioned desperation they both carried. He treated any personal connection, any semblance of trust, like a lifeline.
Cane clutched in hand, fingernails encrusted with blood, and clothes ruffled far past what he was content with, Lawrence forced his key into the lock of their door and pointedly ignored his triple life’s glaring lack of sustainability.
The lights were still on, which didn’t come as a surprise. Lawrence had learned fairly early on in their relationship — friendship, roommateship, whatever name typically gets assigned to nameless things — that his companion was the type to either square away approximately three hours of sleep per day or do the exact opposite and spend a total of three hours awake. Each shift at the workshop had him crossing his fingers behind his back that today would be one of the latter, but by some divine anti-miracle, the pieces never fell into place that way. The pieces never just fell into place with Adam.
He continued into the apartment, absentmindedly straightening his jacket as he walked before giving in and removing it outright. Maybe, if he went quickly, he’d be able to lock himself in the bathroom to sort out his unkempt state before Adam even noticed he was home. That could work. It had never worked before, no, but maybe the universe would cut him a bit of slack today. The procedure John delegated to him that night had been fatiguing — six hours stooped over on the floor, painstakingly linking a group of five together by the crooks of their arms and embedding explosives in their abdomens. It was almost humiliating how crude the work he’d been given was meant to be, but he had the expertise required to make it at least semi-presentable for the officers that would undoubtedly be scraping their intestines off the walls come morning. Which had only made it more exhausting. Really, you try to do something well, and all you get for it is eyebags.
“Lawrence?”
And no slack.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he called back. The voice — Adam’s voice — hadn’t come from too far off, not that it could with the size of their apartment, but far enough that he still had a small chance to sneak off before facing him. “I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m going to get changed.”
“No, wait, come here for a second. Like, one second.”
“I really need to get out of these clothes, Adam.”
“Go ahead, I don’t care, just come here.”
He took a moment to consider his response. It was a long moment, admittedly. Actually, it was quite a few moments. Possibly more than a few. It was around three minutes.
“Lawrence? Lawrence. Lawrence. Hello. Lawrence. Larry. Larry. Lawrence.”
“I’m contagious,” he blurted out. “I have to shower.”
“You’re contagious from a hip surgery.”
He grimaced. Maybe he should start keeping a record book for his excuses. “Yes.”
“Bullshit. Larry, I don’t care if you have, fuckin’, gingivitis, just get in here.”
“Gingivitis isn’t — ” He heaved a sigh, biting back several logical fallacies in favor of begrudgingly accepting the path he was locked onto. That path being, ironically, a series of illogical denials. “Alright. I’m coming.”
Mentally preparing a specially curated list of probable explanations for his current state, Lawrence padded across the house towards the source of his friend-roommate-whatever's voice, bringing him to their amalgamation kitchen-slash-parlor. He paused wearily in the doorway and peaked past the table, where Adam was seated on the couch on the far side of the room — on the couch, as in perched on the backrest, facing the wall while he fiddled with some object out of the other man’s sight.
By way of greeting, Lawrence stated, “You know you’re the only person who calls me Larry now.”
Adam didn’t look up. “So?”
“It doesn’t hold as much power as you seem to believe.”
“It got you to come in here.”
“That’s — ” Lawrence shook his head. “No. No, those things weren’t correlated.”
“Correlated,” he scoffed. “You’re such a fucking guy.”
Lawrence paused. Then, with great doubt, “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I didn’t really think it was.”
“Uh huh.” Adam craned his neck to look over at him, raising an eyebrow as he took in his appearance. “You kinda look like shit.”
“I told you I was going to shower.”
“I’m just making an observation. Did you get mugged or something?”
“I didn’t get mugged,” he said incredulously. “There were...complications at work.” Like a glaring lack of materials, and a glaring lack of preparation, and two — two! — people waking up mid-procedure due to a glaring lack of proper sedation. Mark was the worst. “You know how things get around there. It’s…”
“Hectic?”
“Hectic,” he agreed. He tapped his cane once against the floor. Not quite impatient, not quite patient. “Did you need something?”
“Right, yeah.” Adam twisted around to fully face him. “Need your hands.”
“For?”
He lifted up the object that he’d been toying with, bringing it into Lawrence’s line of sight — his camera. “This thing needs film,” he said. “I was gonna do it myself, but you’re here now and I’d rather not have to, like — you’ve seen how it looks. The balancing and the teeth and everything. Much easier if I work with three hands instead of one.”
He had seen how that looked. It was really more impressive than anything else. But, “Alright.”
“Okay, cool.” Adam set the camera down on the headrest, holding it steady with his knee, and reached onto the seat of the couch to come back up with a thin roll of film. “Here we go. C’mere.”
Lawrence paced across the room until he was standing in front of him. He hesitated before the camera, leaving his hands hovering in the air above it. “Um.”
“You just have to hold it,” Adam clarified. “I’ll do everything else.” A pause, then through a splitting grin, “It’s not brain surgery.”
“Very clever,” Lawrence said flatly.
“That was good. Come on, that was good.”
“There’s been better.”
“You should be laughing like a maniac right now. You should — You should be in stitches.”
He lifted the camera in front of his face, faux-inspecting it as if he had a single clue what he was looking for or was looking for anything at all. “What am I supposed to do again?”
Adam tossed the film aside in favor of snatching it from his hands. “Asshole.” That made Lawrence grin. “Asshole.”
“I thought you said that you needed me,” he goaded.
“I don’t need you, I prefer you.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Is there a — ” Adam balked. “Yeah, man, big difference — Look, watch, I’m gonna do it myself.” Before Lawrence could interject, he had already rearranged himself so he could hold the camera between his knees. He groped around for the carelessly dropped roll of film, and apparently only then realized that he had not actually been ready to put on an appearance of preparedness, as it was after just a few moments of this search growing more and more flustered that he tipped his eyes up to reveal what was possibly the most distraught expression ever mustered by mortal man. He was pretty good at whipping those up.
“Do you want me to hold it?” Lawrence asked. And he was being genuine, not smug in the slightest, thank you. He wasn’t an asshole.
“Obviously I want you to hold it. What the hell.”
He plucked the camera up from between Adam’s knees hardly a second before the other man dove over the side of the couch to rummage for the film, which signified either a stark lack of consideration for his personal belongings or a higher level of trust than was at all warranted. Both were equally likely. He’d seen Adam slam that camera down so hard it was a miracle it didn’t shatter and he’d been on the receiving end of enough of his faith to charge a crumbling church.
(The guy trusted far too easily, if Lawrence was honest, especially when it came to him. But maybe that was best for all parties involved.)
“Got it,” Adam announced. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and leaned over the arm of the couch to look at Lawrence, the film cartridge dangling from his fingers. “Okay, I just need you to — uh, get over here, for starters.”
“You could give me a second,” Lawrence griped with a distinct absence of any real bite, already shuffling over to come face to face with him. “I’m just holding it, right?”
“Just holding it, bud. Don’t get scared.” Adam reached over and pried the back cover open with his thumb. “What’re you so nervous for, anyway? I know you’ve used a camera before. You had to have done this at some point.”
“I’ve used disposable cameras. Not these...keeping, types.”
“Keeping types.”
“Permanent fixtures. I don’t know.”
“Fixtures.” He shook his head as he pressed the cartridge into place. “That’s still not an excuse. You can reload disposables.”
Lawrence furrowed his brow. “Why would I do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you do that?”
“They’re disposable.”
Adam paused in his task to stare up at him. A long moment passed before he said, in the simplest of terms, “You’re so fucking weird.”
Lawrence elected not to comment on that.
Instead, he held the camera steady, and he kept his eyes fixed on Adam’s hand as it guided the film across the back of the camera and settled precariously near his own. And that would be fine, really, they regularly placed themselves in far closer quarters than that, except that in this instance there was a deep maroon embedded under Lawrence’s nails that would most definitely not go unnoticed with their proximity to Adam’s current focus. Which was disconcerting. And, in hindsight, preventable.
Obviously he’d worn gloves during the night’s procedure. He wasn’t a fucking animal. But he’d removed them without thinking before exiting the workshop, and whenever that workshop had blood around there was blood abound. It was a little bit ridiculous. It was also a lot-a-bit Mark’s fault for choosing to handle living human bodies like pigs in a butcher shop even when they were coated in just as much gore. He’d be appalled by the lack of sanitary measures if those whose insides were getting exposed to each other weren’t dying anyway. Though it still made matters far, far more inconvenient.
Things would go a lot smoother in his life — namely, on this particular night, when he’d paid for his exhaustion with a more than amateur slip-up — if anyone other than him bothered to clean up after themselves. But, be as it may, Adam did not make any outward note signifying that this mistake was the rock that would make the waters of suspicion finally rise.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t make any note.
“Are you sure you didn’t get mugged?”
Lawrence bit back a very conflicted sigh. It may have been one of relief or it may have been one of exasperation. Hell if it knew. “I’m positive, Adam.”
“Your nails look like — ”
“I told you, we ran into a lot of issues tonight.”
“ — like fucking Freddy Krueger, man. Fresh out of a kill Freddy Krueger.”
That didn’t even make sense.
“I don’t look like…Freddy Krueger.”
“I didn’t say you do.” Adam tapped against Lawrence’s fingertips. “I said your nails do.” He lifted up the other man’s bare ring finger, appearing to examine it thoroughly. “It’s honestly a spitting image. You could be his hand double.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You should be. Highest of honors.” His eyes moved up from Lawrence’s hands to his face. “Seriously, did you maul someone on the way home? Because I’m not gonna let you nap in my room if you mauled someone.”
He was joking, which was nice. Lawrence would have to savor that for the day he eventually meant it.
It was also nice when he could speak in half-truths instead of outright lies. “I didn’t maul anyone.”
“If you say so. Still sleeping with an eye open.”
“That sounds very comfortable.”
“It won’t be. It’s gonna suck and it’s gonna be all your fault that I don’t get any proper rest,” Adam said, letting go of the film to twist a knob on the camera. “Or it’ll rock, for some reason, and I just won’t tell you. I don’t know.” He flipped the back cover shut with a clack. “Anyway, I’m done.”
Lawrence frowned. “That’s all it is?”
“That’s all it is. Actually, wait, one more thing — ” He seized the camera from his hands and moved it up towards his eye to peek through the lens. “I should test it out first. Stay still.”
“Wh — ” Lawrence rapidly shook his head, nearly making a grab for the camera before he thought better of it. “Why do you have to test it? I watched you do it. It’s fine.”
“It gets messed up in there sometimes, that’s all. Thing’s old.” Adam peered up at him over the top of the camera. “You look fine, if that’s what you’re all edgy about.”
“I’m not edgy.”
“You’re pretty edgy, man.”
“I’m not — ”
“I’m not edgy. You already said that.”
Lawrence sighed. Frankly, it was a bit of a moot point to try bullshitting him on this type of thing. He very unfortunately could read him far too well when it came to what was in his own personal realm of the conceivable. “You just told me I look like shit. I’m not in any state to be...immortalized.”
“Immor — No, okay, I’ve seen you worse. I’ve taken pictures of you way worse.”
“That’s.” He hopelessly turned his head up to the ceiling, like something would come crashing on through to help him out. “You understand how that’s not a comfort, right?”
“I’m just saying that you’re — that it’s good enough for me, that’s all,” Adam said. “I’m the only one who’s gonna see it, except maybe you, so.”
That was a bit of a running theme between them. I’m the only one who’s gonna see.
He didn’t want to think on that too long.
So he lowered his hands, and he made a halfhearted attempt at straightening his shirt, and he stood still.
“There we go. Thank you.” Adam brought the lens back up to his eye and clicked the shutter, making the other man squint against the bright flash. Really, this photo was becoming more promising by the second. “See, not so hard.” He caught sight of Lawrence’s grimace and shot him with a flat look. “Don’t worry. If you can tell your hair’s out of place I’ll make sure to shred the evidence.”
“I’m not that dramatic.”
“Sure you’re not,” Adam said easily. “You know, I think pretty much every time you say you’re not something it’s because you’re actually exactly that.”
“I don’t — ” Lawrence stopped himself before he could prove Adam right. Even so, it was too late; that damn grin was already stretching across his face. “Alright.”
“Alright,” Adam mimicked, and Lawrence’s voice was certainly not that wobbly, but he couldn’t say that now.
“I’m going to go wash up,” he said instead.
“You can’t even defend yourself on that one, huh?”
“I could,” he countered. “I’m choosing not to.”
“Totally.” Adam set the camera down and reached over to take Lawrence’s tie in hand, momentarily moving as if he was going to fix it before tugging it loose in a sharp pull. “I should’ve taken your picture like this instead. That thing’s fucking revolting.”
“It was a gift.” Lawrence paused, the gears in his brain running slightly off course before righting themselves. “From you.”
“Yeah, your housewarming gift. For moving into my house. Ugliest thing I could find. It was a joke.”
He blinked at the new information. “It was?” His hand moved up to the tie, once again uncomfortably close to Adam’s. Or it could have been uncomfortable. Or it was supposed to be uncomfortable. “You sounded awfully genuine.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m a better bullshitter than you.”
Maybe he was.
“Maybe you are.”
Someday, or possibly that day, or possibly five years from then there would be a moment where all the pieces slotted together just so in Adam’s mind to allow him to solve the puzzle of what, exactly, Lawrence had filled up the after hours of his life with. The blood under his nails, the disarray, the late nights and early dawns. Truly, it wouldn’t be such an inevitability if he stopped allowing Adam to bear witness to his exits and entrances. Lawrence could easily afford his own apartment, his own house even, without any discomfort. It would be much more convenient. It would be much safer.
Hesitantly, he brought Adam’s hand up and pressed a chaste kiss to his knuckles. Because right then, in that moment, he could. If he kept walking the line, he could.
It no longer seemed like Lawrence Gordon was one for safety. Not for either of them.