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YOU - When you came back to Dora, wearing the uniform for the first time, she smothered you in so many kisses that it could have killed you. And you would have been called to the crime scene, in said New Uniform, looking excruciatingly handsome while you investigated the cause of death of yourself.
The RCM became your life. It swallowed you whole and you fermented inside its belly, learning the ins and outs of the old silk mill. The 41st insignia may as well have been tattooed on you, because you didn’t think you were going anywhere else. John McCoy started around the same time as you, and you two were fucking rockstars. Mack Torson tore shit up with you. Ptolemaios Pryce was aiming for captain, and he saw potential in you, and that potential was going to be awarded if he ever made it to the top of his ladder.
And fuck, you did have potential - you put your nose to the fucking grind stone. You slapped cuffs on more criminals than any other officer, and you rose through the ranks faster than anyone could say ‘congratulations pig’. Beat cops hated you, but respect grew in niche crannies.
Somehow, the beer tasted better in the presence of the 41st. With John McCoy slapping your back, nodding to a pair of tits across the bar. The man was married (regrettably he said), but it didn’t stop him from sliding away into the presence of the young woman who eyed his RCM badge with doe eyes. That part didn’t matter to you, because at the end of the day, you always made it home to Dora. She was proud of you. And when you got home, that’s what mattered.
Dora.
She betrayed you. Sent you to the guillotine of guilt and self-pity. McCoy invited you out to drinks, Torson came with when he heard the news, and you let your fucking baby eyes bawl themselves out enough to fill several pint glasses with your pathetic tears. McCoy never invited you to drinks again. He was never much of an emotions guy. Nor were the rest of them.
But it didn’t matter because you were a bloodhound for ripe cases. Cracking them open and sucking the good detective juice right out from the core. No one had numbers like you did. But your numbers paused for a while when your saliva started to taste like toilet water vodka cranberries in the mornings, dried vomit beside the mattress on the floor.
And then in the following month, you drove your partner to insanity and he quit the force, retiring 27 years early. The next year, he had a heart attack and died.
This is where Jean Vicquemare came in.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - And this is where I began, in little static hums of a radio in the back of your mind, waiting for Jean. You could hear his conversations on the other side of the Precinct. They weren’t clear, it was always snippets, but he never knew.
“… partnered with Du Bois… heard he was a good cop…”
“… know what I’m doing…”
“… where do I find…?”
And Jean fell hard for you. Even when he began to chip through the exterior and took a look at the rotten core that everyone else had made their peace with. But for a while, the rot was covered with the sweet sweet scent of wicked detective work.
He watched you crack people open with a vigour reserved for intimate relations, watched you guzzle down a two six of vodka like a bottle of water at the beginning of a shift, watched you do cool as shit tricks with your lighter when you were chain smoking on the back of your horse.
And for whatever fucking reason, whenever you looked at him - you saw it. The RCM. The Revachol Citizens Militia. Peace incarnate. Or at least, an attempt of it. You questioned every bit of Jean’s authority, but he never relented on you. Never let you get by easy. Over the years, you both wore each other down to the marrow of your bones. He was a good one, uncorrupt and honest. This is why you were oh so hard on him.
'After life, death; after death, life again. After the world, the pale; after the pale, the world again.’ That was Jean. And even further in life, ‘Justice, Union, Prudence, and Force.’ He embodied that too. Where ever Jean was, you had developed a sense for it since day one of seeing his pock-marked mug. When Jean went down after a grisly fight, you felt it- but after death, life again. He rose. He always picked himself back up if you weren’t there to offer your hand.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - Jean Vicquemare sits near the stables on a bench, having a smoke. His cloak is tightly drawn around his shoulders, rain drizzling in a way that softens his hair.
YOU - But the vivid imagery, it started here. Jean in the stables. You were having a coffee in the break room, hungover from last night’s pathetic lonely bar crawl. But you could see him perfectly. You had just had an argument about switching to motor carriages.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - A horse whinnies nearby, and Jean looks over his shoulder, a slight smile on his face. He always liked their horses, and if you wanted to find him in the morning, that was usually a good place to start.
“Jean? Do you mind if I join you?”
Jean raises his head, noticing Judit standing at the entrance of the stable. She is completely dry.
“No, go ahead. It’s raining though.”
“You don’t seem to care.”
“No, I don’t.”
Judit sits with enough space between them on the bench that Jean is thankful for. Judit’s somewhat new to the force, but she and Jean had picked up enough of a comradely to strike up a quick friendship. Just a friendship. Jean does not appreciate rumours circulating the Precinct.
“You and Harry…”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” Judit lights up, and inhales a deep drag of her cigarette.
YOU - And you can almost smell it, as if you were there. Astras, both of them. You can feel the rain drizzle on your face. Can feel Jean’s tension in his shoulders. You want to suddenly chew it away.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - “Well whatever is bothering you,” Judit blows smoke into the air, shivering suddenly. “I hope you can make your peace with it. It is not worth it to go to bed so angry.”
“I’m not angry.” Jean hisses, and Judit looks at him with a raised eyebrow. Jean curses in on himself.
“Okay.” She says it so matter of a fact that Jean sighs, tapping his cigarette with more reserve than initially started.
“Did you come out here to mother hen me?” Jean laughs under his breath, his tone a little sharp.
YOU - And just like that, the sight fades out and you’re left in the break room with cold, pissy coffee. And no Jean. No solution to anything.
Except to not go to bed angry.
So you try it that night. You lay down in bed, close your eyes, trying to ignore the itch. The anger that swells. But that itch, it keeps extending. Your feel it behind your eyelids.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - Jean is bent over a desk, paperwork in every direction. It’s your paperwork, the stuff you didn’t bother to finish because paperwork ‘cramps your style’. He looks tired, and he’s cursing something under his breath.
YOU - But it doesn’t matter, because in the morning when he sees you, he’s thankful for your existence, for your distraction from whatever ails him. You never ask, because you don’t want to open that ugly can of worms, and Jean the way he is right now is exactly the way you want him.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - He doesn’t want to be this way. Not forever.
YOU - You steal a glance at him in the debriefing room, newly titled Captain Pryce going over the cases for Jamrock this morning.
ESPRIT DE CORPS - Jean expects something from you.
YOU - Captain Pryce’s voice barks through your hazy mind, commanding your attention. He asks if you’re daydreaming like some lovestruck teenage girl.
You look up, noticing the pissy look on Pryce’s face. “Yeah, I’m actually thinking about how I’m gonna finish my assignment, come back to the Precinct, jerk off, and then finish up Mack’s and- whoever that ginger guy is- finish up their case too. Then jerk off again. And call it a day.”
ESPRIT DE CORPSS - Jean doesn’t look at you, but his shoulders slump. He would have liked Judit as a partner. But something in him doesn’t bring forth the ask for change. You know in your gut that he never would abandon you like that. There is no other partner for you.
The RCM will burn the two of you to the ground. And for this, one day, you will be grateful.
