Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Transferring to the 41st and working as Harry’s partner in an official capacity had been, all things considered, a surprisingly painless experience. Both the 41st and 57th Precinct’s captains saw that Kim could do more good at the 41st than at the 57th and allowed him to transfer with minimal fuss, as well as granting Kim permission to bring the Kineema with him in order to replace the 41st’s fallen soldier. Kim knew most of the 41st to some degree already, at least to the point at which they agreed that Harry was better off as his partner and they didn’t bother asking too many questions. And, not least of all, he and Harry worked together as well in Jamrock as they did in Martinaise. It wasn’t a fluke after all; they were startlingly well suited to one another, and whether they could blame it on the trauma they’d gone through together or on the fact that Kim was all Harry had known upon his reawakening, they were capable of accomplishing some truly inspired police work together.

There was just one thing that Kim couldn’t bring himself to ignore. Every time they went on the field together, Kim found himself staring daggers at Harry’s back, jaw clenching and teeth grating with every step he took, particularly when they had a habit of stomping through the mud and muck, swamps that were once lawns, gratuitous rock gardens that were little more than death traps filled with little pointy rocks and all other manner of debris. Today is a particularly bad day, the rain falling down around them in horrible sheets, and at last, Kim breaks.

“Khm. Detective. A word, if you will?”

“Yes?” Harry studies his face, mighty brows bristling. “Something wrong?”

“You could say that. We need to discuss your wardrobe.”

“What, again?” Harry looks down at himself, dismayed and clearly ready to argue. “Come on, Kim, you can take the man out of the disco, but you can’t take the disco out of the man. This is downright tame. You’re the one–”

“It’s not that,” Kim interrupts, tapping his foot impatiently against the pavement. “Your clothes are fine. Or, rather, there’s nothing wrong with your style. It’s the state of them I take issue with.”

For all that Harry is capable of fantastic leaps of logic and a knack for what Kim would reluctantly describe as mind-reading, he can be remarkably clueless about some things. He stares at Kim, uncomprehending, and Kim can see that mind of his churning away as he looks down at his shirt for any stray food stains.

“Look at the hems of your pants.”

Harry finally twists to get a good look at them, the previously-sturdy, dense yellow fabric now torn up underneath his boots, stained and speckled with mud, desperate threads frayed and hanging off of them.

“If you insist on changing your footwear every other day, you can’t just buy all of your clothing to fit your highest heels,” Kim continues. “You’ve got a decent wardrobe built up. You need to treat your things with the respect they deserve. ”

“Okay,” Harry says, sheepish. “I see your point. But this is the wardrobe I’ve got, and I can’t exactly go out and buy a whole new one. You’re just gonna have to live with your partner being a ragamuffin.”

Kim deliberately does not reveal that he’s somewhat charmed by Harry’s use of ragamuffin. “Oh, I always knew you were a ragamuffin. Properly fitted clothes won’t change that. But…” He hesitates, but only for a moment. Being able to sew wasn’t something that was looked kindly upon by his peers, no matter how useful it was, but this is Harry. He’s happy to go gallivanting about in mesh shirts and silken robes. “I could always hem them for you. If you like.”

“You’d do that for me?”

Kim smiles at him. It’s a small, private smile he’s used to not being seen and, in fact, he has relied on it in the past when he wished to laugh at someone without their knowing. Harry always seems to catch it, though, grinning wider even when Kim is having a laugh at his expense. Kim’s never certain how he feels about that. “Honestly, detective, you’d be doing me a favour by not making me stare at them anymore. Bring them over tomorrow, and wear your shoes with the shortest heel. With a change of clothes too, or else you’re walking home in your underwear.”

--

Harry shows up with a Frittte bag filled with tare, a small stack of tape records he’d liberated off of a curb, a truly horrific hat he bought for fifty centim off of some street vendor who had long since given up hope of getting any proper money for it, and absolutely no change of clothing.

“I asked you for one thing,” Kim complains.

Harry tries to look apologetic. He does a very poor job of this. “Sorry. I forgot. But hey, look at these! They’re perfectly good records! We can go on a sound journey while you do the whole sewing thing. It’ll be fun. You know, boogie-woogie.”

Kim begrudgingly takes the tapes from Harry and glances through them. They look like they’re from a few different independent artists, the branding professional enough that they got signed on by someone who thought they’d make them some money, but the names unknown enough that Kim doubts that they found much success. It looks like the work of people who fancied themselves artistes. “I don’t think it’s boogie-woogie,” he says dryly. “But fine. We can hear what they’re about. Just wipe them down first.”

After Harry wipes them down and sets them on Kim’s coffee table, Kim gets to work, tutting remorsefully over the state of the frayed hems and measuring and pinning the trousers to an acceptable length. He tugs on them a couple of times to make sure that they’re even and takes a few steps, squinting at his handiwork. “Okay. Walk. Now turn around.” He makes a quiet, thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, and bids Harry to stand still for just a little longer while he adjusts his work.

“It looked fine to me,” Harry says.

“It wasn’t. It is now. All right, take them off. Since you don’t have a change of clothes, I’ll just do it now.”

Without a trace of embarrassment - not that Kim expected anything else - Harry strips down to his briefs and hands over his trousers. Kim goes to sit at his sewing machine, realizing for a moment that this is something he generally hides from people. It is seen as being less than masculine, somehow, instead of being a skill one should rightfully be proud of, and Kim is more aware of that fact than he’d like to be; at this stage of his life, he’s very comfortable in his masculinity, but sometimes old insecurities come back to haunt him.

Telling Harry he sometimes adjusts his clothing to fit him better is one thing. To allow Harry to see his set-up, a table reserved even in his tiny apartment exclusively for this sort of handiwork, the old and well-loved sewing machine he’s carted around with him since his teens, the shabby little set of drawers that are filled with neatly arranged fabrics, needles and thread, expensive buttons, a sturdy zipper that had once caught his eye, is not something he’s been eager to show anyone in the past. He’s only ever sewn for himself, save for some gifts he had sewn for old boyfriends, and neglected to let them know that they were made instead of bought.

But then he looks at Harry boogie-woogieing over to his cassette player in his underwear and relaxes. Stupid, really. Kim works at his sewing machine while Harry goes through the records, playing them one by one as they act like the middle-aged men they are and spend most of their time criticizing them. It’s more fun than if they were good records. Criticizing things is one of Kim’s favourite pastimes, a fact that Harry had tried to point out once before the thought was extinguished from reality with a pointed arch of his brow.

“No wonder these got thrown out!” Harry exclaims from where he’s dragged a kitchen chair over to Kim’s desk to watch him work. “They're awful! Where's the soul? The fire? The pizzazz?"

"Severely lacking in boogie-woogie," Kim says gravely. "They must have liked them at some point, to have collected them in the first place.”

“True.” Harry strokes his muttonchops. “So why get rid of them?”

“Bad break-up?” Kim guesses, tossing a strip of fabric into a small trashcan he keeps beside his sewing desk.

“Maybe. Or maybe they had an artistic awakening and moved on to more inspired shores.”

“Or someone’s mother threatened to throw out their things if they didn’t move out, and this was the first casualty.”

Harry laughs at that, a bright, booming sound. He only ever seems to laugh from his gut. Kim rarely laughs at all, but his lips quirk in appreciation as he finishes the final stitch and shakes the pants out in front of him, admiring the fine, tiny stitches and the satisfyingly straight lines. He tosses them over to Harry. “Here. Try them on.”

Harry slips them on and admires them for a while, propping his foot up onto the arm of the couch so he can take a better look at it, and whistles. What had once been ragged and torn is now clean, straight line, sunshine-yellow instead of streaked with greys and browns, and much more suited to what Kim thinks Harry ought to look like. “Damn, Kim. How’d you get so cool?”

“I wouldn’t call the ability to sew a cool hobby, detective. Merely a practical one.”

“You make that sound cool too.” He grins. “Thanks! So, uh. What about the rest of my pants?”

“I can do those too. So long as you choose what shoes you want to wear with them, and promise to stick to it.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

Kim shakes his head. He really doesn’t. “No. I don’t mind this sort of work. It’s quite satisfying – and I’ve already finished tailoring all of my own clothing. We’ll take it one piece at a time.”

After that, it becomes a weekly ritual. Harry brings an item of clothing, and Kim works on it. The first week, Harry kindly brings some Mesque take-out for them to eat once Kim’s done. Two weeks after that, he brings some ingredients so he can make dinner while Kim works. It’s nothing fancy, just a couple of glorified sandwiches and some greens that had seen better days, but Kim appreciates it; it’s been many years since someone’s cooked for him and the domesticity of it all is oddly charming, listening to Harry hum and whistle from his tiny kitchenette over the clatter of the pan while he busies himself with his work. It feels cozy, comfortable. Kim has always said he can only work in silence, but it turns out that was out of necessity rather than out of any real desire for quiet, and it's a comforting thing, having someone regale him with all manners of stories while his hands and brain are too busy to do anything more than listen.

Once they get through all of Harry’s trousers, at Kim’s gentle suggestion, they work through the rest of his expansive wardrobe. There are shirts that hang a little too long to be flattering, clothing he purchased right after his bender that needs to be taken in now that the beer gut and the bloating have given way to a nice, friendly, soft layer of fat, old formal jackets that Harry hasn’t worn in years that have extra fabric sewn into them to be taken out, little adjustments here and there that just make things fit. It's the sort of luxury typically out of reach for any but the wealthiest of Revacholiers and Harry doesn't seem to notice how unusual it is to adjust every item of clothing, and Kim doesn't intend to tell him. There is no item of clothing insignificant enough that it can’t benefit from a few adjustments here and there, after all, and why not go through a little extra effort for it? They get through weeks of take-out and bad records and rental movies droning on in the background, and by the end of it, Harry’s a new man.

Well, he’s the same man. But he’s the same man with what may as well be a new wardrobe, one that actually fits him and flatters his figure, tailor-made with the dedication of a man who now has all of Harry’s measurements devoted to memory. Kim doesn’t catch him muttering to himself as much about his weak, flabby body anymore, bending to whatever that awful little voice in his head is constantly telling him. Instead, he stands a little taller, walks a little more confidently, pauses to look at his reflection in mirrors and store windows, actually liking what greets him. Kim has always liked the look of him, frankly, but it’s nice to see Harry see what Kim sees. It’s not dissimilar to the awakening Kim himself had had in his youth, when he stopped dressing like he wanted desperately for everyone to ignore his very existence and began to wear things he felt good in, things that demanded their attention. It’s when he stopped thinking everyone who looked at him was judging him and began to think that maybe they just liked what they saw.

Even if he didn’t enjoy the work and the company - and he does enjoy both of those things - all of the hours he’s spent over the sewing machine have been well worth it.

Chapter Text

It should not, then, be a surprise that in a workplace full of detectives, the others start to notice a difference as well. It is, of course, the infinitely patient and bewilderingly kind Judit that notices first, looking Harry over as he strides into the Precinct, remarking, “That jacket looks nice on you, Harry. Have you been buying a lot of new clothes lately? Or… maybe you lost some weight?”

“Not a new wardrobe!” Oh no, Kim thinks to himself. He stares daggers at Harry, willing him to hear the telepathic message of, it’s really none of their business. “An improved wardrobe!” Harry continues. He even has the audacity to do a little spin. “Kim’s been helping me fix up some of my old clothes! I think I'm looking pretty sexy, if I do say so myself."

“Old is right,” Jean mutters. “I recognize that thing from when I first joined the RCM. You said it was your lucky jacket.”

“Oh.” Harry blinks. “Is it?”

“No. You just said that because it’s the only jacket you didn’t get hungover in. And then you got incredibly drunk, threw up on it, said it was now a cursed jacket and tried to give it to me. I’m surprised you still own it. It must have stunk.” Jean is unkind but, as Kim knows, not incorrect; it had stunk to high heaven before they put it and another load of clothing into the wash.

“Jean,” Judit admonishes. “Be nice.” She turns to Kim, smiling apologetically at him. “I think it’s wonderful, what you’re doing for Harry. You did a really good job. I didn’t know you could sew.”

“Harry is overselling my work,” Kim says quickly, giving up on the pretense that he was still working on some paperwork. “I just made a few adjustments. It’s cheaper than going out and buying something new. That’s all.”

“Kitsuragi sews?” Comes a bleating voice from the back belonging to none other than Mack Torson, letting out a loud bark of laughter. “Shit, I never would have guessed!”

“Probably picked it up ‘cause Mullen outgrew all his clothes,” McLaine says, sauntering over to rest an elbow on Harry’s shoulder. “Had to get Mommy to fix you up again, eh?”

“Maybe if you’re good, he’ll even give you an after school snack. Or a kiss on the cheek.”

“Or a kiss somewhere else.”

Harry takes it in good grace, shrugging and rolling his eyes, as used to the toxic machismo of their world as Kim is. The only difference between the Harry Kim knows and the Harry Kim never got a chance to know is that he participates in a lot less of it now, though Kim isn't sure if that's because of the amnesia or because of how much of his bravado was fuelled primarily by his rampant substance abuse. Kim looks over to where Judit has purposefully buried her nose in her files, unwilling to get roped into such nonsense.

Jean has no such restraint, looking as though he’s about to rip their heads off, but Kim beats him to it. The sound of his stack of papers clicking against the desk as he rights them is somehow louder than a slam of a hand against his desk as he says, primly, “Detective McLaine, your fraught relationship with your mother is none of our business. If you have enough time to fantasize about the warmth of a mother’s love, you have enough time to hand in those reports, yes? I believe we’re missing paperwork for both… I believe it was The Case Of The Freaky Violin? And – ah, yes, The Case Of The Pulverized Penis. Inspired, truly.”

“Geez, Kitsuragi,” McLaine says. “We were only joking.”

Kim smiles. “So am I. About the mommy issues. To be clear, I wasn’t joking about the reports. I do need those.”

“You heard the man,” Jean barks. “Get off your asses and get some goddamn work done around here for once in your life.” He turns to Kim, then, something of an apologetic grimace on his expressive face. “Sure you don’t regret coming to the 41st, Kisturagi?”

Kim shakes his head. “Do you really think that the 57th was any different?”

“Boys will be boys,” Judit mutters darkly, in the tones of someone who’s heard that too many times before.

Harry helpfully chimes in with, “I think you’ll find that according to feminist praxis, that saying absolves–”

Kim rises to his feet and pats Harry on the shoulder. Not unkindly, he says, “Shut up, detective.”

Harry considers this. He looks at Judit, who nods and smiles at him. “Kim’s right.”

After that, life at the 41st Precinct returns to normal, everyone too busy with their respective cases and veritably mountains of paperwork to pay each other or their hobbies in their off-time much mind. In fact, Kim’s sewing ability doesn’t come up again for several weeks. After a long day of dealing with an incredible backlog of paperwork due to an ex-cop who hadn’t managed to fill in a single form correctly, Kim heads to the Precinct gym to stretch his legs out and work out some of his excess energy. Most of his colleagues know to leave him alone when he’s on the treadmill, his gaze set on some invisible horizon while he loses himself in the sensation of his feet smacking rhythmically against the worn rubber of the treadmill’s deck.

He’s just about to reach that blissful peak of nothingness he’s generally able to achieve when he’s cruelly interrupted by McLaine’s voice behind him. “Uh, Lieutenant Kitsuragi?”

He’s only ever Lieutenant Kitsuragi when someone needs something from him. He looks over, frowning. “What do you want?”

“You got a minute?”

He demonstrably does not have a minute. But he feels an obligation to hear him out anyway, so he slows the treadmill down to a walking speed so he can have a proper conversation, a little out of breath from the exercise. “I suppose I do.”

“We wanted to ask you for a favour – actually, Mack wanted to ask you for a favour, but he was too pussy to come up and ask you himself.”

“Shut up, Chester,” Mack says, coming up behind him and smacking him across the head. “I was getting around to it. I know better than to bother a man while he’s working out. That shit's sacred."

“Well, you already have. Come on. Out with it.”

“I saw what you did for Mullen. With his clothes. I don’t really give a shit about clothes most days, but, uh… see, my sister’s getting hitched.”

Old-fashioned, Kim thinks to himself. Weddings aren’t terribly common these days. But he keeps that thought to himself and nods.

“She wants me to walk her down the aisle. And she wants me to do it in our old man’s suit. It doesn’t fit worth shit, though, and the tailor she told me to go to costs big bucks.”

“And I need Mack to actually pay rent on time,” McLaine chimes in.

“So you want me to help tailor your suit,” Kim says slowly, looking Mack over. He’s a big man, tall and broad and thick around the middle. “If the suit’s too small for you, there’s a limit to how much I can do, you realize. It’s up to how much excess fabric the original tailor sewed in.”

“That, uh… that’s not a problem. My old man was a goddamn giant,” Mack mutters darkly. “It’s too big for me, if you can believe it. Listen, I just need it to fit me for the day. Safety pin it, or something.”

There’s something uneasy in Mack’s bearing. It’s been there the whole time. It’s not just about asking his superior for a favour over something he’d previously mocked him for, Kim realizes, his sharp detective’s intuition beginning to fire. There’s something in the way he says old man, like the words are being yanked from his throat, an uneasiness to how he shifts his weight around. A goddamn giant, he said. A part of why Kim had never considered having children in any capacity is because he doesn't like them, but also because he's of the opinion that there are more bad parents than good ones in the world; he can count the people he knows with wholly positive relationships to their parents on one hand. And a man like Torson, loud and crude and steeped in the sort of sweaty insecurity of a man who needs everyone to know he's a man's man, is not conjured out of thin air. Men like Torson are not born, they're made.

If his guess is right, Torson was made by his father. And now he’s been asked to slip on an old monster’s skin. Which he’ll do out of love for his sister, but it’s clear that the mere thought of it has put a sense of unease in him, something that even his easy bravado can't hide.

“Okay,” Kim says. “I can do that. But you’ll owe me.”

“Fine. What?”

“No more fat jokes. It’s unbecoming for a police officer to be making those comments. And there’s a stack of paperwork with your name on it. I’m sick of cleaning up after Powell’s mistakes. Have we got a deal?”

Mack groans. “Fine. Deal.”

“Good. And one more thing – your sister has bridesmaids, right?”

“Yeah. What, you want me to set you up with one of them? Kitsuragi, you dog!”

The mere thought of it is funny, but Kim manages not to laugh and simply shakes his head. “No, no, nothing like that. I was thinking about their dresses. See if you can get me some of the fabric they’re using. I can line the suit with it. That way, you’ll match. And if I’m going to go through the trouble of fixing it for you, I don’t intend for you to throw it out after. You may as well make it your own.”

“Yeah?” Mack appears to think it over. Chester nudges at him with his shoulder, offering him a lop-sided grin. “Yeah, all right. That sounds good. Thanks.”

Kim waves him off. “The paperwork will be on your desk tomorrow morning. See to it that it gets done.”

Kim has no intention of letting the dream team of Torso and McLaine into his home, so he winds up taking Torson’s measurements in the changing room the next day, when Torso comes in with a truly massive suit in one hand and a bolt of shiny blue fabric in the other. It’s a bigger job to line the suit than Kim had expected, but he goes at it with a sense of determination, happy to have Torson’s suit be the guinea pig for future projects instead of ruining any of his own clothing. And true to their word, once he delivers the suit safely to Torson’s care, completed reports begin to stack up on his desk, and there’s nary a peep from them about Mullen’s beer gut again. Kim gives them another six months before the jokes start up anew, but the brief reprieve is nice, and though the jokes never seemed to hammer at Harry's self-esteem, he certainly seems happier to shoot the shit with them over their morning coffee now that he's not being constantly berated for his appearance.

Better yet is when Torson heads into the station shortly afterwards, face ruddy with pleasure and with pride, a framed picture clutched in a meaty hand. He stops by Kim’s desk and slams it down in front of him, beaming. “Hey, El-Tee, take a look! Tell me this isn’t the hottest bridal party you’ve ever seen.”

Kim looks at it. Torson is beaming, suit flapping open in the breeze to expose its royal blue interior, and his sister - who looks remarkably like him, Kim notes - is beaming too, surrounded by friends and family. The idea of weddings has always been a strange, far-off thing for Kim, as is the idea of having enough close friends to fill an entire party, but they look happy, untethered by ghosts of the past, a lightness to them that are absent from all too many family occasions. He nods and hands it back to him. “She looks very happy. Congratulations,” he says sincerely.

Torson and McLaine are deeply obnoxious for the rest of the day, boasting about how they both landed dates from the wedding (though as Kim puts the dots together, he realizes that they both got a date from the same woman), but when Kim passes by his desk every day after that and sees the photo proudly displayed there, he decides that a little obnoxiousness is a worthy sacrifice.

Chapter Text

Occasionally Kim likes to come into the Precinct a little earlier than everyone else. He, like most cops, is plagued with sleeping problems and in lieu of staring mulishly at the ceiling, it feels better to go to work, sip at his coffee in the soft morning light piercing through the windows of the old silk mill and enjoy minutes of blessed silence. In this case, he’s greeted by Judit already standing by the burbling coffee machine.

“Oh, Lieutenant! Good morning. Coffee?”

“Please.”

They stand in largely comfortable silence, which is not unusual for them; neither Kim nor Judit are particularly spirited conversationalists, and both of them understand the value of silence. This time, however, there’s something uneasy about Judit’s bearing as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, mouth twitching as though there’s something she’d like to say but doesn’t quite know how.

Eventually, Kim takes pity on her. “Is there something on your mind, Judit?”

“That obvious?” Her lips quirk. “There is, actually. I wanted to ask you for a favour, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.”

Kim nods at her, gesturing for her to continue.

“I noticed how you helped Harry with his wardrobe, and then Torson with his suit.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, still looking uncomfortable. Kim has never known Judit to ask for help if she could possibly go without. They’re similar in that respect -- too proud, and too disinclined to inconvenience anyone for personal gain.

“And you want some help as well,” Kim says, sparing her. It’s an odd request from her. She’s one of the few officers here who opts to wear her official uniform most of the time and outside of work, she seems too busy to care much about what she throws on. Clothing for her is a means to an end, not a joy to luxuriate in.

“Yes, that’s right. But not for myself. For Henri.”

“Your son?” Kim raises a brow, surprised. Judit very rarely mentions her children at work. Harry had pointed it out once in one of his well-meaning political rants, wondering aloud if she rarely mentioned them because as a working woman, she unjustly felt as though it was unprofessional to speak of them, or if she would be treated differently because of it. She had simply said, flatly, I already have my hands full with them outside of work. I don’t need to talk about them here too, and that had been that.

“Yes, my youngest. Usually I have him wear Nicolas’ hand-me-downs, but he’s not growing as quickly as Nicky did. Nothing quite fits him.” She sighs, rubbing at her forehead. “Usually I wouldn’t ask, but buying him new clothes just for him to outgrow them after his next growth spurt… it would be a waste.”

A waste of money, she means. Their salary is a paltry thing, and from what Kim knows about her home life - which is precious little - half of her family’s second income gets spent on booze.

“You’ll need… what, some basic hemming done?”

Somehow, even Judit’s nod manages to look apologetic. Kim does not like kids as a general rule and unlike Harry’s wardrobe or Torson’s suit, helping with children’s clothes neither poses enough of a challenge for it to be a satisfying project, nor does he think he’ll find particular pleasure in the outcome. But he likes Judit and knows how little she likes to ask for help. “I’d be happy to help.”

She gives him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

Which is how he winds up at her doorstep after work at the end of the week, rapping his knuckles against the door. He hasn’t bothered to change out of his work clothing, but Judit has, looking tired in soft, worn clothing. Her home is a narrow two-story home, identical to every other one on the block, the insides of which could be flatteringly referred to as lived-in and filled with the sort of clutter that builds up not from daily living but from a lack of time to actually put anything away.

“Lieutenant, hello! Thank you for coming. Boys! Come here, please!”

Kim finds himself face to face with two young boys, about 9 and 12 years old. It feels eerily as though there are tiny Judits staring back at him; both have their mother’s long face and prominent nose, and both stare rather distrustingly at him. Judit settles her hands on their shoulders. “This is Henri, and this is Nicolas. Say hello to Lieutenant Kitsuragi.”

They both mumble some approximation of hello, staring at the floor, which is fine by Kim. She leads him into the squishy living room, where a small stack of clothing - all plain and well-loved - is waiting for them. “Lieutenant Kitsuragi is going to fix these for you, all right? Do what he says and behave.” She looks at Kim over the top of their heads. “I need to get dinner on. You’ll stay, won’t you?”

“There’s no need.”

“It’s the least I can do. It’s nothing special, but…”

“I’m a cop too, remember?” Kim says. He doesn’t actually want to stay, not when he feels awkward as he does around children, but he doesn’t feel it would be kind to refuse at this point. And it would be nice to have a homemade meal. “I thought we all lived off of take-out. If you insist, then I’d be happy to stay.”

Judit disappears into the adjoining kitchen while Kim works his way through the small stack of clothes, Henri obediently putting them on when bid to while Nicolas sits on the back of the couch, watching them. Eventually Nicolas gets comfortable enough to start peppering Kim with questions, which he patiently answers. What high school did you go to? Did you like it there? How long have you been a cop? Mama didn’t used to be a cop. Have you ever shot someone? Do you know Uncle Jean? Is Uncle Jean coming tonight? And when Henri begins to wriggle too much after repeated chastisement, Kim says, exasperated, “If you keep on wiggling like that, I’m going to poke you with this needle, and I won’t be sorry at all,” to which he hears a loud snort of laughter from the kitchen.

Just as Kim finishes pinning the last pair of pants, dinner’s ready. It’s a relatively simple affair: large, flat meatballs bulked out with rice and grated vegetables, mashed potatoes (made from a dry mix; Kim can see the box sitting out on the counter), cabbage and onion that have been fried until wilted, and a large jar of pickled vegetables sitting in the middle of the table that Judit informs him were made by her mother-in-law.

Watching Judit in her natural habitat, it strikes Kim that it makes perfect sense why Judit is so patient, but also why Judit is so tired. After a long day at work, Kim wants nothing more than to return to the peaceful quiet of his apartment, to enjoy his dinner along with a particularly interesting radio programme, to read a book, to complete his daily crossword from the comfort of his bed. It’s a bit of a lonely existence, but one he’s grown accustomed to and one he’s grown to like. He has no responsibility to anyone but himself the moment he sheds his RCM uniform. That’s not so with Judit; he watches with fascination as she handles the boys with an exhausted sort of grace. They’re shoveling food down at alarming speeds, but talk just as much. They want to tell her about their day at school, about the odd things the teacher said that day, about the petty gossip that only young children really care about, about the school projects they don’t want to do and the gym classes that they hate. To Kim, who had never had anyone to talk about after his school days, it feels like a strange, foreign thing; do they really need to talk this much? He certainly hadn't when he was their age.

Nonetheless, they seem happy, well-cared for, content with Judit’s frugal economy of words as she nods and smiles indulgently at them, speaking only enough to spur them onto the next topic. At one point she meets Kim’s eyes, her own eyes crinkling at the corners as though apologizing for the noise. And the food is good – nostalgic, really; despite what many of his peers say about Revacholian cuisine, whether good or ill (“I’m sure you’re used to more exotic flavours than this, Kim”), this simple, hearty fare is precisely what he grew up on. Once the meal is done and the dishes have retired to the sink for an overnight soak - by which Judit means that she’s too tired to wash them tonight, but enjoys making an excuse for it - Judit corrals her boys into their bedrooms while Kim gathers up his things to leave.

Just as he’s tucking the clothing into his bag to leave, Judit reappears, smoothing down flyaways with one hand. “Sorry about that, Lieutenant. They can be a bit of a handful. Would you like to stay for a glass of wine?”

A glass of wine does sound nice. But Kim has been in this position before and didn’t enjoy what usually came after. He had mostly female friends in his youth, and while he had been very popular with them, he had been far less popular with their boyfriends. “Your husband will be home soon, right? It won’t be… a problem for me to be alone here with you?”

Judit laughs. It’s not a terribly happy sound. “Len won’t be home for hours. Even if he does, he’ll be too sauced to care. Besides, I am a grown woman. He doesn’t get to decide who I spend my time with.” She pours herself a hefty glass, then lifts the second glass, tilting it towards Kim in implicit offer.

“All right. One glass.” He takes a seat across from her, accepting the glass with a nod. He may be an infrequent drinker, but he enjoys partaking from time to time.

They chat idly for a while – gossip about office politics, about what her kids are learning in school, about a particularly rough case she had worked with Jean last week, about the novel Judit’s halfway into that Kim had also read a year or two ago before Judit finally asks a question Kim had been expecting for weeks now: “So, how did you learn to sew?”

It’s not that it’s a question he doesn’t want to answer. It’s not a secret either, or at least no moreso than another hundred ordinary things about himself. People don’t ask him, and he doesn’t volunteer the information. He swirls the wine in his glass, contemplating the sparse, watery legs dripping down the side, presses his tongue to the back of his palate where he can taste the bright pucker of it, too sharp to be a decent wine, though he doesn’t really give a shit about that sort of thing. “I mostly wore hand-me-downs as a kid,” he says frankly. “And I was sick of nothing fitting right. So when I got my first job in high school, I saved up for a sewing machine. It seemed more sensible than saving for an entirely new wardrobe.”

It’s part of why he agreed to help Judit. Because he likes Judit, yes, but also because he knows what it’s like to grow up in clothes two sizes too large for you. Most of the kids he knew growing up wore hand-me-downs, so it wasn’t as though anyone picked on Kim for that specific reason, but Kim had already been small for his age and his clothing hadn’t improved matters. He had spent hours coveting the used sewing machine in the pawn shop window, praying that nobody else would buy it, and hours more in the library to read how to use it. He had such longing for the clothing he saw in stores, for something of his own, for something that didn't make him feel embarrassed just to leave the house, shrinking underneath others' stares. To spare her child the same indignity seemed to be the right thing to do.

“Oh! I didn’t know you had older brothers, Lieutenant. You never mentioned it.”

“That’s because I don’t. I grew up in… I believe they’re calling it the East Revachol Congregate Care Centre these days. They've decided that the term orphanage is gauche." He's not sure why. From what little he knows of it - he had never bothered going back, of course - it's just the same old shit with a different name. "Regardless, most of my clothing growing up had gone through three or four kids before they got to me.”

“Oh!” Judit’s hand flies towards her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a long time ago. And I don’t consider it to be a worse upbringing than many Revacholiers had with both parents intact. In fact, it may well have been better."

Grimacing, Judit nods, conceding the point. “Still, it’s very impressive to teach yourself how to sew like that. I was never able to get the hang of it. And it must have made you quite popular, to help out with everyone else’s clothing as well.”

Kim’s not sure whether it’s the wine or the easy conversation, but he can’t help the loud snort that escapes him. “Popular? No, no. You should have heard the other boys when they saw me lugging it home. It was… you must understand that as a hobby, it was considered – strange.” That’s sugarcoating it. They had hurled the sort of insults at him that sank deep underneath his skin at that tender age, the sort of words that Kim can now wear as both badge and shield, and bloodied his nose. Pointing out that wearing properly fitting clothing was in fact very heterosexual because no woman would fall for a poorly-dressed man had not been the clever retort he thought it was, and had only made things worse.

“Oh, of course. Sometimes I forget what it was like to be that age.” Judit leans forwards, almost conspiratorially, immediately catching onto the details he'd left out. “When I was young, we had this statue outside of our school – this big, ugly pre-Revolutionary relic of some awful old soldier on a horse. I always wished the bombs had destroyed it too. And one day, these boys at school drag me out there and say, Judit, look! It’s you! And I say to them, yes, yes. I know. I look like a man. And they say no, don’t flatter yourself! You don’t look like the man. You look like the horse!”

Kim’s brows creep steadily closer to his hairline which, considering the state of his hairline these days, is quite an impressive feat indeed. “God,” he blurts out. “I hate kids.”

“Me too!” Judit practically shouts back before the absurdity of it all catches up with them, and they watch each other’s shoulders shake with silent laughter before they let themselves laugh in earnest, Judit laughing harder than Kim’s ever seen before. She wipes a mirthful tear from her eye. “I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I do!”

“They’re awful.”

“Cruel.”

He tilts his head back, recalling the days crammed into a juvenile delinquent centre, stuck lecturing a bunch of juveniles who really didn’t care about the dangers of drugs and crime. “And they smell terrible.”

“Terrible!” Judit laughs again, setting her glass down. “I like mine, of course. And they’re mostly fine when they’re little. But when they grow up a bit… Well, I’m not looking forward to that age. Especially not when they start bringing their friends home.”

Kim nods sympathetically. Judit seems naturally nurturing, yes, but she doesn’t seem like the sort whose life goal revolved around motherhood. “Why did you have kids, then, if you don’t particularly like them?”

“Why did I get married?” She shrugs with a wry little smile. “It just seemed to be the thing you were supposed to do. Get married. Have children. Realize it was a mistake to quit your job to raise children and join the RCM. Len didn’t like that much either, but I do.”

“Do you?” Kim is curious, all at once, how Judit really feels about her work in the RCM. It is an unusual occupation for someone like her – it’s not just that she’s a woman, though that is part of it, but that she joined well after she already had children. Most of the mothers in the RCM joined well before that was a part of their lives, and for good reason; that sort of grueling work is best pursued when you’re young and without responsibilities to the rest of your family.

“I really do. It’s difficult, yes, but it’s very rewarding. I feel like I’m doing something important.”

Kim smiles at her. “I know what you mean.”

“And don’t get me wrong – I don’t regret having children. I love my sons. But it’s nice to have some time away too. That said, it is nice to have another adult around the C-Wing – before you joined us, sometimes it felt like I was doing the same thing at work as I was at home.”

“Most of the C-Wing is older than you, you know.”

Judit just raises a brow at him, to which he relents. “All right, all right – it is nice to have some adult backup,” he says, glancing down at his watch. The 41st precinct is not unlike the 57th – it cultivates an atmosphere that apologists say is like a locker room, the sort of boys club that encourages immaturity at best and bigotry at worst. There’s a reason why both at the 57th and at the 41st, Kim finds himself more drawn to those who don’t fit the mold in some way – people like Harry, people like Judit. But even Harry and Jean act like schoolchildren yanking each other’s pigtails most days. Generously, he could say it keeps him young, to look at the world through Harry’s wide-eyed enthusiasm, but many days, it just makes him feel old. “It’s getting late, though. I should get going.”

Judit nods, gathering up the clothing Kim will be taking home and sliding it into his bag for him as she opens the door for him. “Yes, all right. Thank you again for this."

He looks out at dark street before him. The Minots live on one of the many streets that Revachol's governance has forgotten about, with only one of the streetlights function as a flickering light in the midst of inky blackness. It's dangerous for more than just Jamrock's infamously high crime rate; without any light to guide their way, it would be far too easy for someone take a nasty spill. Unbidden, images spring into his mind, of other discontent young fathers for which all of the love in Revachol could not safely guide them, gnawing frantically at a pack of fragrant gum before a fatal flaw. Under an overpass, in Martinaise, ill-advised short-cuts through public parks and monuments, stomping through slick piles of leaves that could have been easily dispensed of, but weren't. Even without the fall, they were a cause of endless worry and concern for their partners and children. More than once, he's looked into a woman's eyes after attending to a call of public mischief and seen years of exhaustion welling within them.

He pauses just before he leaves, though, looking back at Judit, being left alone with her boys in this quiet house. She’s been more open this evening than she ever has before, but Kim’s a detective; he’s known that she’s unhappy in her marriage for a very long time. It’s none of his business, and he tries to stay out of others’ personal affairs as a general rule. But Judit is, if not a friend, then someone he could see becoming a friend, as strange as the idea is. “Please, stop me now if I’m overstepping. But if the time ever comes that you feel that your husband’s additional salary is no longer serving you, or that he's no longer helping with the boys and you'd like some help -- you can count on me for assistance."

Judit stops as though deciding how she feels about the offer, then shakes her head. "You are a detective," she says, a grim laugh on her breath. "You know, Jean's offered the same thing. I'm quite all right, though. I can handle things on my own. Fixing up Henri's clothing is a big load off my mind as it is. But if you really want to help..."

"Yes?"

"You could come for dinner again. I enjoyed tonight -- the company was nice. And the boys liked you by the end of the night."

"The company was nice," Kim says. It's not a lie. Kim isn't one for meaningless platitudes, and while he would never tell someone he disliked their company without a damn good reason, he knows how to worm himself out of unwanted social occasions. "All right. It's a date."

He makes sure to walk home carefully that night. Things are changed at the Precinct after that, though not in bad way; Judit is easier with her conversation and delighted by having some clothes that actually fit Henri properly, and Jean starts to chime in during their conversations, asking after the brats and gruffly telling Kim that they're good kids, evidently pleased to have someone else looking out for them. Judit never has him and Jean over on the same night, but being a bit antisocial by nature (though he would argue against that particular label), that's fine by him. Judit was right, at the end of the day. A nice, normal adult friendship is something that he didn't realize how sorely he was lacking, and as rarely as they meet for dinner, it's reassuring just to know that it's there.