Work Text:
The rain smells different these days.
The smell of rain is not something Jean ever thought he thought about. Nevertheless, the idea that it’s different now is burrowed deep in his brain like a splinter.
He doesn’t remember what it used to smell like.
"Before, it smelled like earth," Kim says when Jean asks him. The rain patters heavily against their living room window, drowned out by the radio’s play-by-play of a Tiptop race.
“I think so, at least,” Kim adds.
His hair is more silver than black now, but he still wears the same orange bomber jacket, sewn and patched so many times that Jean wonders if any of the original material is still there.
"Like dirt, you mean?"
Kim turns down the radio, lips pursing as he thinks. "No, I wouldn’t say it’s quite the same thing. But did you know there’s a word for that? For the smell of rain on dirt?"
Jean waits for him to elaborate. “Well?” he asks after a moment. “What is it?”
Kim’s eyes snap back into focus. “What’s what?”
“The word?"
"Oh." Kim frowns, twin indents appearing between his brows. He removes his glasses and massages them until they’re smooth. "I don't remember."
“It’s okay,” Jean says. He reaches over and squeezes Kim's hand.
Forgetting has become a common occurrence lately. There is pale in the rain, in the food, in the air they breathe.
---
Jean asks Harry the same question the next day.
“The rain?” Harry chews on his lip and leans back in his chair, thinking. “It smelled fresh, I guess? I don’t know. I don’t think I had a word for it.”
“You’re telling me that the same Harry who named every voice in his head doesn’t have a word for the smell of rain?”
“Petrichor,” Harry says suddenly, gaze fixed on a distant point in front of him. “That’s the word Kim was thinking of. The smell of rain when it hits the earth.”
Jean laughs uneasily. “How do you know? You weren’t even there for that conversation.”
Harry shrugs. “I just know.”
---
With one arm, Jean shakes his umbrella on the stairs outside the precinct. With his other arm, he cradles a plastic bag full of sandwiches, trying not to get it wet.
“Hey, fuck you,” Mack says from behind him, sounding good-natured in spite of the swear.
“What did I do?” Jean didn’t even realize Mack was there.
Mac gestures down at his red t-shirt, splattered with raindrops. “You got me wet.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Mack laughs and pats Jean on the shoulder with a gigantic hand. “It’s all good. Not like I’ll remember in a few minutes.”
Mack heads into the precinct, whistling. Jean pauses by the entryway to fold up his umbrella, taking a deep breath as he does so. The strange smell of the rain fills his lungs and trails behind him as he heads inside.
---
Fewer and fewer officers show up to work each day.
Jean isn’t sure why he and Kim remember to wake up on time and get in the Kineema. Perhaps the job is so ingrained in them that they cannot possibly forget it. For Jean, at least, it would be like forgetting the existence of his own head.
Still, the temptation to succumb to the daze and the forgetting, to stay under the covers and hold and be held, is almost overwhelming. Jean wonders if they’ll give in to it soon enough.
For now, even as the world crumbles under their feet, there are things to do.
The porch collapse has not cut down on crime. Panic has a way of making people desperate. Currently, Jean is neck-deep in a homicide case that has been twisting his mind into knots. The heavy pale-fog in his brain makes it worse, along with a nagging internal voice that says none of this will matter in a few months.
But he can’t let it go. He’s the patron fucking saint of lost causes.
---
Kim stretches his arms over his head and yawns. “One of these days, I’m going to retire. I'll spend my days with Pryce sunbathing in Messina."
They eat their sandwiches at their desks, the rain falling in thick sheets outside. Despite the eerie quiet of the station these days, there's something cozy about being there, as if they’re safe and separated from the rest of the world.
“Sure you will." Jean balls up the oily parchment paper his sandwich was wrapped in. A pickled banana pepper slides onto his notebook.
Kim’s mouth quirks up. “You don’t believe me?"
Jean eats the banana pepper before remembering all the horrible places his notebook has been. Then again, he once saw Harry lick a strip of flypaper without dropping dead the next day, so what’s one pepper?
“All I know,” Jean says, “is that you’ve been saying you’re going to retire for years now, but you’re still here.”
"Don't worry.” Kim smiles in a way that sends a jolt of heat down Jean’s spine, even after twenty years. “When I leave, I'll bring you with me."
Jean laughs. "No, I think what Harry said is right. We'll work here ‘til we die."
---
“Harry, what do you think about this?”
Jean slides a manilla folder to the desk beside him. Harry shuffles through the files quietly, lip tucked behind his teeth.
“Has anyone talked to the aunt yet?” Harry asks a few minutes later, brushing his hair out of his eyes.
“The aunt?” Jean asks. “Not since that first day, but she’s harmless.”
“Are you sure about that?” Harry smiles mischievously.
Jean rolls his eyes. “Okay, shitkid, I'll bite. Tell me all about the amazing deductions you’ve made after five minutes of looking over my files."
"Hey, you were the one who asked for help." Harry steeples his fingers. "So, think about how the crime scene looked when you first got there. More accurately, think about the things that were there that weren't supposed to be.”
“Weren’t supposed to be?” Jean looks up at the ceiling. “Well, there was a cat there, but I don’t think that means the case has anything to do with a fucking cat.”
Harry sighs. “Come on, Jean, really think about it. What were you not expecting to see there?”
Jean's mind stutters like a stalled engine. "I don't know. Fucking pale. I can’t think straight anymore.”
Harry waits patiently.
“There was the murder weapon… Fingerprints on the banister... The blood stains, obviously. All of those were pretty typical, though. What am I—"
“Jean?" Kim interrupts, coming around the corner with two mugs of tea. "Who are you talking to?”
Jean blinks. “Um.” He stares at the empty desk beside him. “No one.”
---
“What do you think ‘nothing’ looks like?”
Kim rolls over the question in his mind before responding. “I picture a large, empty white room. It’s so big that you can’t quite tell where it starts and ends.” He turns to Jean, the streetlights above their balcony reflecting off his glasses. “What about you?”
Jean didn’t think he had an answer, but an image comes to him immediately: “A black pit, so deep that you can’t see the bottom. Like a pupil in a gigantic eyeball.”
“Hmm.” Kim leans against the railing.
“Which of us do you think is right?”
“Neither.” Kim smiles and lights a cigarette, a burst of orange in the dark. “I don’t think any of us are built to comprehend a concept like ‘nothing,’ maybe with the exception of Harry.”
“Huh. Maybe.” Jean eyes Kim’s cigarette longingly.
“Go on.” Kim extends the cigarette toward him.
“No, I can’t.” Jean jams his hands in his pockets. “Not everyone is a paragon of self control.”
Kim arches an eyebrow. You know it doesn’t matter, right? He doesn’t say it out loud, but the message is clear.
Jean shrugs again. “It’s the principle.”
“Okay.” Kim understands that, surely. He’s a man of principle.
They stand quietly for a few minutes before Kim asks, “Have we... had this conversation before?”
“What conversation?”
“All this business about what nothing looks like.” Kim exhales through his nose. “I’m not sure. It just seems familiar.”
“I don’t think we have.” Jean goes quiet for a moment. “But my memory’s gone to shit.”
Kim drops his barely-smoked cigarette and crushes it under his shoe. “Mine, too.”
---
Captain McCoy leaves work on a Wednesday evening and never comes back.
On Friday, Sundance Fischer volunteers to go to the captain's house to check on him. Sundance returns to the station three hours later in a daze.
“I kept walking forward, but I ended up back here,” he says once they’ve coaxed him onto the couch and given him a glass of water. “It doesn’t make sense. I walked in a straight fucking line.”
The remaining officers of the 41st gather around Sundance, but not too close, as if they’re afraid of catching something.
“Maybe somebody else should try,” Chad Tillbrook says, trying to sound tough despite the fact he’s visibly trembling. “I can go. I’ll take someone with me.”
“I’ll come along," their newest junior officer chimes in. Jean can't remember his name. Unlike Chad, the kid shows no signs of fear.
“No,” Kim says firmly. All heads turn to him. “I’ll concern myself with Captain McCoy. You’ll all go home to your families. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jean suddenly realizes that Kim is now the highest-ranking officer in the precinct, making him the de facto captain in McCoy’s absence.
“Maybe we should have someone else check on him,” Jean whispers to Kim as the rest of the officers file out of the room.
Kim’s hands are clenched tightly behind his back. “If I make them go home tonight, there’s a chance they’ll be back tomorrow. If I let them look for McCoy, we may never see them again.”
Jean doesn’t respond. Kim is right, after all. Once they’re alone in the room apart from Sundance, who is now snoring, Jean slings an arm around Kim’s waist.
“How’s that beach retirement sounding now?”
Kim can feel Jean tremble, of course, can see the nervous clench of his jaw, but he plays along: “I’ll be leaving any day now. Pack your bags.”
Everything is normal. Everything is all right.
---
“You asked who I was talking to earlier.”
Kim looks up from his sewing, the end of an orange thread poking out from between his lips. The zipper of his bomber jacket has broken off again. “I did,” he mumbles around the thread.
Jean locks eyes with Kim. It’s better for him to know now that Jean has gone mad. “It was Harry. I was talking to Harry. And this wasn’t the first time.”
Kim says nothing, just continues to stare at him with the thread sticking out of his mouth.
“You don’t believe me,” Jean says flatly. He sighs. “I don’t blame you.”
Kim sets the sewing materials on the couch beside him. “I believe you,” he says, then waves vaguely toward the window. “Memories like that were bound to come up eventually.”
“It wasn’t a memory.”
“Jean—”
“We had a discussion , Kim. He looked through the files on the Winston case. He told me to talk to Jeremy’s aunt.”
Kim squints into the distance. “His aunt?”
“Yeah! That was my reaction, too.”
"Well, we can certainly look into it.”
“Right, right.” Jean swallows. “So… you think it was Harry, then?”
“Do I think Harry came back from the dead to give you advice on a case? No, I don’t.” Kim pulls out a cigarette from his pants pocket and lights it, smoke billowing around his head. He must be more disconcerted than Jean thought—Kim rarely smokes indoors. “Perhaps you were experiencing a memory of Harry while thinking about the case, and the combination gave you a breakthrough.”
Disappointment, bitter and cold, slides down Jean’s throat and pools in his stomach. “Yeah… That’s probably all it was.”
Kim smiles wistfully. “As much as I would love to see Harry again, perhaps it’s better that he’s not haunting Revachol.”
Jean can't quite meet Kim's gaze. “I guess he deserves that much.”
Kim chuckles, smoke flowing from his nose. “But can you imagine? His first day as a ghost, he’d start a union for supranatural creatures."
---
Emilia Winston left her house five days before Jean and Kim come to question her. Fortunately, Jeremy Winston’s cousins have no sense of filial loyalty, confessing that the potentially murderous aunt is holed up in an abandoned apartment building in Grand Couron.
“You know we’re fucked when even the rich people’s apartments have gone to shit,” Jean says as the Kineema idles outside the building.
The apartment building is tall and square, with more broken than intact windows. Clothing and household items litter the ground. Tire tracks carve into the grass on either side of the entryway.
“Someone was in a hurry,” Jean says dryly. “Why? There's nowhere to go."
The last airship from Revachol departed more than a year ago. Any isola that has not fallen into the pale has no interest in accepting refugees from a porch collapse.
Kim shrugs. “It looks abandoned, but let’s be careful nonetheless. There’s no telling if anyone is inside.”
They get out of the Kineema and enter the apartment lobby. With its chandelier and velvet chairs, the room must have been a sight to behold at one time. Now, the lobby is covered in broken glass and a layer of dust that seems too thick for how long the building has been vacant. On the elevator doors, someone has spray painted “IN THE END, WE WILL ALL BE PALE.” Underneath that, crudely drawn in permanent marker, is a pair of breasts and the scrawled word “titties.”
“She’ll be in Apartment #12, most likely,” Jean says, glancing down at his notes. “She had a friend who lived here at one point. Must have given her the key.”
Kim heads toward where the lobby branches off into two hallways. He examines a placard on the wall, then points to the right. “This way.”
The hallway is dark and smells of rot and mold. Again, Jean finds himself wondering how long the residents have been gone. The pale has been approaching for as long as any of them have been alive, but no one really noticed it, or at least gave a shit about it, until recently. This building looks as if it were abandoned years ago.
They approach the door to Apartment #12. Kim twists the doorknob slowly and finds it unlocked. They don’t bother knocking, bursting into the apartment with guns drawn.
“RCM!” Jean shouts.
It takes him a second to realize that the towering shapes in the kitchen are not people, but piles of clothing and trash. Jean takes another step into the room and gags as the scent of rotting food smacks him in the face.
“Fuck,” Kim mutters, lowering his gun and pinching his nose. “Maybe someone tipped her off.”
They tug their shirts over their noses and investigate the apartment. Aside from an opened box of crackers on the kitchen counter, there is no indication that anything but mice and flies live here.
“That was fucking useless,” Jean says, kicking an empty soup can across the floor. “I shouldn’t have trusted those kids. Emilia was probably never here at all.”
Kim hums in agreement, flipping open his notebook to jot something down.
“Fuck it,” Jean says, heading back toward the front door. “I guess there’s nothing else to do but—”
He freezes. He hadn’t noticed them when they came in, but there are letters carved into the back of the wood.
“What does it say?” Kim asks, squinting at the door. “I can’t read it in this light.”
“It’s… It’s…”
Jean kneels down and rubs his thumb against the ragged initials: “JV.” Below it, “KK.” Below that, “RCM.”
They’ve been here before.
Kim crouches beside him. Jean points wordlessly at the carvings.
“Yes. I can see it now.” Kim’s throat bobs as he swallows. “Well… This is very… Hmm.”
“How—” Jean stops. Putting it into words makes it feel more real.
“Why would we have done this?” Kim asks, talking more to himself than to Jean. “It’s not like us to tamper with a scene.” He straightens up suddenly. “Jean, how long ago did we get the information from Winston’s cousins?”
Jean stands up on unsteady legs, bracing himself against the doorframe. “It was yesterday.”
Kim shakes his head. “No, we were in the office all day yesterday. It must have been the day before.”
“Couldn’t have been. I had the day off.”
They stare at each other. Jean sees his fear reflected in Kim’s eyes.
“I knew I was forgetting things, but this is… I don’t even have a word for this. Does this mean we’ll be back?”
Kim nods. “Probably.”
“Maybe even tomorrow.”
“Perhaps.”
“And we won’t even know it.”
Kim looks back down at his notebook. “Unless we try to stop ourselves. I—”
“What?”
“I… I don’t know how I didn’t see this earlier.” Kim wordlessly turns the notebook toward Jean. In Kim’s messy handwriting are the words “APARTMENT 12—STOP COMING BACK.” The date scrawled above it is impossible, nearly a month ago. Jeremy Winston was still alive a month ago.
Right?
Kim closes the notebook.
“How many times do you think we’ve done this?” Jean asks.
“I don’t know,” Kim says, taking off his glasses and polishing them on the corner of his shirt. “Three times? A dozen? Does it make any difference?”
---
That night, or perhaps another night, Jean kisses Kim, whose head is buried in a book, and heads to bed. At the door of the bedroom, Jean stops and blinks as if this will stop the hallucination he’s surely experiencing.
The bed isn’t empty. Harry is lying there, eyes open and focused on Jean. His hair is spread out against the pillow, and Jean swears he can see the depression in the mattress where Harry’s weight most certainly isn't resting.
All Jean can think of to say is, “Harry. You’re dead.”
Harry sits up and runs each hand over the opposite arm, like a newborn examining their toes. “I guess I am.”
“But you’re here.”
Tentatively, Jean sits next to Harry and reaches out, hand shaking, to touch Harry’s shoulder. His fingers grip Harry’s coat, dig into the fabric and press into the flesh of his shoulder. Harry feels real, and Jean is almost certain he can smell the cheap cologne Harry used to wear on special occasions.
“Fuck,” Jean says.
Harry smiles crookedly at him.
“Harry…” Jean’s voice breaks, and it fills him with a sick self-loathing. “I know it’s been five years, but we miss you. Kim and I miss you. I— god, I don’t even know if you’re real. Why am I talking to you? You’re just a memory.”
“Hey, now. Calm down. It’s okay.” Harry tips Jean’s chin up so they’re eye to eye. “I miss you, too. Both of you.”
Jean can’t keep the hysteria out of his laugh. “There are so many things I imagined saying to you if I ever saw you again,” he says. “But fuck me, I can’t remember a single one.”
“It’s okay,” Harry says again. “Come here.”
Harry extends an arm and pulls Jean close. Jean leans into Harry and closes his eyes.
“Kim should be here, too,” Jean whispers. “Will you stay here while I get him?”
Harry doesn’t respond.
When Jean opens his eyes, Harry is gone.
---
A week later, the Burnt Out Quarter no longer exists.
(Has it only been a week since Jean found Harry in his bed?)
“What do you mean it doesn’t exist?” Jean growls at Junior Officer Lucas Schneider.
Schneider flinches. “Sorry, sir, but it’s just what I’ve heard people saying today. That it’s just gone. I haven’t been near there myself in ages, but I thought you and Captain Kitsuragi would want to know.”
“Son of a bitch.” Jean presses his face into his hands and inhales.
“Are you all right?”
Jean’s head snaps back up. “I’m fine.”
“It’s okay, sir.” Schneider smooths his wispy mustache with two fingers. “We’re all a little on edge now.”
“I said I’m fine.” Jean drums a pen on his desk, averting his eyes. “So, who exactly are the ‘people’ who told you about this?”
Schneider squirms, looking small in his RCM uniform. “Well, you know, I’ve got friends who hang around there sometimes.”
“Gang members, you mean? Skulls, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days?”
“Lieutenant Vicquemare,” the kid says, “with all due respect, it doesn’t mean anything anymore, you know? They just want to be with someone while all this shit is falling apart. They’re not lucky like we are.”
Lucky?
Jean scrubs a hand over his beard. “All right, Schneider. Thanks for telling me.”
Jean finds Kim in what used to be Captain McCoy’s office. He supposes it’s Kim’s office now, but Kim has made no efforts to move out any of McCoy’s things, nor has he filled the office with his own.
The afternoon sunlight behind Kim makes him look ethereal. For a moment, Jean can’t believe that the two of them exist on the same plane, let alone share a bed.
“It’s a shame this didn’t happen sooner,” Jean says, lingering at the door.
Kim looks up from a stack of papers. “What?”
“Well, not losing McCoy, but you as captain. You look right here. Fucking magnificent, if I’m being honest." Jean clears his throat. "It’s well deserved. I hope you know that.”
“I do.” Kim pauses for a moment, eyeing Jean appraisingly. “Anything on your mind, Jean?”
Jean steps into the office and shuts the door behind him. “The Burnt Out Quarter was swallowed.”
“What? The entire…” Kim trails off.
“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” Jean says. “Do you want to find out what nothing really looks like?”
Kim’s mouth narrows into a line. “Do you ?”
In spite of the pattering of his heart, Jean shrugs. “I’m trying to figure out whether or not I do. I shouldn’t want to, but I can’t let go of the idea.”
He paces around the room, coming to a stop by Kim’s side. Kim sets down the paper he’s holding and looks up at Jean patiently.
“You know,” Jean says, veins humming with adoration and nervous energy, “a private office like this would have come in handy when we first started dating.”
Kim’s eyebrows peek over the rim of his glasses. He clears his throat. “Hmm. Yes, it would have.”
“Want to break it in before we go see nothing?”
---
Nearly surrounded by river, the Burnt Out Quarter is difficult to get to, not that most people would want to. The Great Fire of '14 laid claim to this region. It’s a place of ruin, a home to no one but the desperate. Various politicians have made half-hearted promises of rejuvenating the quarter, but it always ends up being too expensive. Too worthless.
They drive to the outskirts and park near the charred ruins of a supermarket.
“Looks fine to me,” Jean says. “Well, not fine, but it’s there . What do you think?”
Kim peers out the window. “Unless ‘nothing’ actually looks like old, burned buildings, I’d have to agree.”
“Should we check it out anyway?”
Kim shrugs. “I suppose we should.”
There is too much debris on the road for an MC to traverse it, so they get out of the Kineema and begin walking.
Corpses of shops and houses line either side of the twisting road. It smells like rain here, the new rain, thicker and more pungent the farther in they walk.
Jean has only been here twice before, but he doesn’t remember it being so quiet. There is no birdsong, no wind. Despite the silence, it feels like they’re being watched. Jean takes one of Kim’s hands in his own.
Kim looks at him in surprise. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Kim’s hand curls around Jean’s.
They walk.
“Have you seen Harry again recently?” Kim asks. “Remembered him, that is?”
Jean shakes his head. “I don’t know why, but he stopped coming around.”
“I’m a bit jealous you got to see him. Is that horrible of me?”
“No. I wish you had.”
“There have been times I’d see someone’s outfit, or the back of their head, and think, ‘Is it him?’ I don’t think it ever was, though.” Kim chuckles. “I’d like to think he would stop to talk to me.”
The mosaic road is cracked and battered. Jean steps on a loose sliver of tile and crushes it to powder under his shoe.
“How far do you want to go?” Kim asks.
Jean squints down the road and points. “Let’s go to that mailbox. If we don’t see any pale by then, I’ll assume Schneider’s lying and you can dock his pay for the next two weeks.”
Kim snorts. “Oh, I can, can I?”
They walk. The mailbox gets closer.
A headache explodes behind Jean’s eyes. He yelps in a way that would embarrass him if he were not busy collapsing to his knees in pain. The pain disappears then, just as suddenly as it came. In its place, words and sounds fill Jean’s head as if his brainstem has become a radio antenna:
...emerged like paleolithic megafauna… so you've turned into some kind of... nihilistic rock-and-roll world ender… anomaly… exclusive interview with legendary TipTop racer Jacob Irw… in your delirium you came up with an entroponetic explanation for why you're such an insane drunk… an understaffed station where there's too much work… today’s greatest anodic hits… I have to disagree with you, Mr. Vicquemare… was a valiant effort… anomaly...
Gasping, Jean opens his eyes. Kim is kneeling beside him, face twisted in either pain or alarm.
“Kim,” Jean choked out, grasping Kim’s shoulder. “Kim, please.”
...don’t repel the ladies, get TripleMint toothpaste… nine thousand people subjected to the mural’s message… rare case of civil activity…a product of the age of atomic power... anomaly...
“I’m okay,” Kim snarls through gritted teeth. “I’ve… felt this before. Pale… latitude compressor.”
“What? Who the fuck… has one of those out here?"
...anomaly… the Old Cinema is sinking underneath Villalobos… Contact Mike is a reprise of the most inspiring basic sporting principle of open competition… the houses here do not understand what has happened to them… contestant number twelve takes the stage...
“I don’t think there is one,” Kim says. “I think it’s just the pale. We’re too... close.”
Jean manages to stand up. He holds out a hand and helps Kim to his feet.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Kim nods, looking sick.
They head down the street and come to an intersection.
“Fuck,” Jean mutters.
He doesn’t remember which way they came from. Everything here looks the same. Jean makes a guess and they turn right.
The pale chatter ebbs and flows as they walk, sometimes silent and sometimes an overwhelming barrage of noise. Kim slowly regathers his strength, no longer needing to lean on Jean to walk.
Jean finds that if he clenches his teeth just right, the tidal wave of voices stops. His teeth ache from the pressure.
There! Jean isn’t sure, but he thinks he recognizes the building up ahead as the supermarket. They quicken their pace.
They turn the corner.
Jean looks up and sees
nothing
It's neither a large white room nor a bottomless pit.
Jean can't describe it, even when it's right in front of him. He can’t even describe himself . He knows that his heart thunders in his chest, knows of the quick, sharp movements of his lungs, but it doesn’t seem real. The physical, it's all happening to someone else right now. Jean is
(in)
nothing?
"Jean. Jean!"
Jean comes back to himself a block down the road, Kim dragging him by the wrist.
"What the fuck—" Jean stops to catch his breath. He begins to turn around to look at what's behind them, but Kim grasps his head on either side and looks him in the eyes.
"Don't."
"But—" Jean tries to move his head.
"Jean. Don't."
Don’t you understand? Jean wants to scream. It’s horrifying, but I want it.
He has never wanted anything more. He wants to lick it off his teeth like candy. He wants to inject it into his blood, give himself a fucking embolism.
He wants to be destroyed by it. He wants to be alive in it. He wants to be it.
“Jean.”
Kim’s eyes are like magnets, drawing Jean in toward him, returning him to his body. Thoughts about the pale drift away. Jean sags into Kim, allows Kim to wrap him in his arms.
"Jean?" Kim's breath is warm on Jean's neck. “We should go home.”
"It won't be there soon," Jean says. “It’ll be gone. Like all of this.”
"I know."
"So why go back? What’s the point?”
"Because I want to, Jean. I want to make dinner and listen to the radio. Then, I want to lie in bed with you and kiss you while I still can. Isn’t that reason enough?”
---
They stop going to work on a cold day in what might be December. The domed precinct building has disappeared, as have Grand Couron and Villalobos. The streets are quiet. Everyone is either holed up in their homes or gone.
The electricity is out, so Kim makes coffee on the gas stove. They sip it while huddled on the couch under a mountain of blankets.
In spite of the caffeine, Jean falls asleep, legs intertwined with Kim’s. His dreams are strange and foggy, bleeding into one another like watercolor paints. He hears a conversation that sounds familiar somehow, but he can’t understand the words.
When he wakes up, Kim has a small, sad smile on his face. “I talked to him.”
Jean rubs sleep out of his eyes. “Harry?”
Kim nods. “Jean, I’m sorry. I told you he was just a memory. I don’t think he was.”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad you saw him.”
---
“Are you scared?”
Jean looks out the window. The sky is white with wispy clouds.
“A little,” he admits. “I don’t… I don’t want to be done . But something about the pale is good, too, or at least it feels good. It makes you want to be there. It’s… I don’t know.” Jean sighs. If he ever had the words to describe it, he no longer does.
Kim reaches for Jean’s hand under the blankets and gives it a squeeze.
---
“Remember when we still had the death penalty,” Jean says, “and the guy could get whatever he wanted for dinner the night before?”
Kim lifts an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I feel like we should be eating that meal now. What would you pick?”
Kim laughs softly. “I would have kebab from that shitty little restaurant we went to with Harry that one time.”
“Didn’t that give you food poisoning?”
“Yes, but it was worth it.” Kim grins. “You?”
“This isn’t fancy or anything, but I’d pick this chicken my mother used to make. I don’t know what she did to it—it was just fucking chicken—but I think about it all the time.”
---
One morning, they simply know. The nothingness is pressed close to their windows, licking at the glass. Memories float around them as if they could simply be plucked from the air and relived.
They stand at the door to their balcony, watching it float in a sea of nothing.
“Well,” Kim says, “There’s no time like the present.”
Jean reaches toward the door handle, hand hovering just above it.
“I love you,” he says, turning toward Kim. “I don’t say it enough, but god, I love you so much. I don’t care that we’re here right now; I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Not with Harry, not with you. None of it.”
Kim laughs a little laugh that Jean wishes he could bottle up and take with them wherever they’re going.
“I love you, too. It has been an adventure.” Kim kisses Jean gently, then takes his hand. “Ready to see Harry again?”
"Yeah," Jean says. "Yeah, I'm ready."
He opens the door.
They step outside into the pale.