Work Text:
Harry's head was a tangled knot when he first arrived back at his apartment. Between the withdrawal, the gunshot wound, his memory loss, and his medical leave, his days became an unruly pile of recovery. His sleep schedule turned ass-backward. He cleaned out his cupboard of canned goods. They were eaten cold with a fork in bed. He smoked copious cigarettes whenever the cravings hit like a lorry. Kim was the only bright spot of his day. He’d arrive nightly with a fresh pack of astras, a bag of simple groceries, a few informative books on loan from the library, and would check Harry’s wound. It was the only thing Harry wouldn’t sleep through.
But Kim never stayed long. He had to sleep too, and his schedule wasn’t flipped on its head like Harry’s. Kim also had work, which was only a heavier load now that he planned on transferring to the 41st. Eventually, Kim would rub his thighs, push off the couch, and say good night in his pleasant cadence. Harry would watch him go through the window overlooking the street and realize not only that he was lonely, but he had to find something else to distract himself for the rest of his conscious hours.
Back to the tangled mass weighing down Harry’s fragile little head. He didn’t know what urges were appropriate. They all seemed the same to him. Electrochemistry wasn’t particularly helpful in sussing out the appropriate from the inappropriate. It seemed a fix for alcohol had the same appeal and level of importance as a fix for sex. Somehow Harry recognized one of those predispositions he had to avoid but the other…maybe he didn’t? He wasn’t nearly coherent enough or physically healed enough to tackle these issues or to even consider the…ahem…mechanics of them. He only knew that alcohol and drugs were the enemies, and that sentiment of avoidance kept him painfully attentive. However, distraction was still on the table and without Kim, there was only so much to do.
So he threw himself into the dauntless task of going through his music library. Knowing immediately even after losing his memories that he loved Disco, he possessed a giant disorganized glut of tapes. He found them everywhere; in the cabinets, the bathroom, the tare bin, the couch (and under it), his bed, his dresser, his closet, and in the player itself. He found empty tape boxes thrown around, so he slowly matched and filled them. All told the bookshelf that contained all his tapes held about three hundred; not too shabby a collection for a disco-obsessed copparoni.
Then he got down to listening to them all, because what the fuck else does a person do in the middle of the night when their mobility is limited and they have no friends and no memories. They lie on the floor in their ruinous alien apartment and listen to albums. If smell was the numero uno best keeper of memories, sound was the runner-up. If he shut his eyes and listened, he could remember the shapes of the past dancing beyond his eyelids. He could drift here. It was all too familiar, but in the good way, the warm and welcoming way, and he needed some of that in his downtime.
He found he had a hefty stack of Guillaume le Million, and as second nature as the Expression could be cut into Harry’s mouth, his music had its own neuron paths in Harry’s head.
The songs made him happy. They made him cry. They tucked him into a sweet musical rollercoaster and set him off through the swoops and follies. He arrived at the end, blasted, but like the man, the Phoenix, he rose. He flew and sored. It filled his heart with something beautiful; lovemaking.
The slow gentle gyration of the hips against skin and running closed-lipped kisses up the spine were sensations spun back into his memories. He remembered the sway of lovers dancing and the tumble of those similarities with sex: the difference between a cigarette sucked down greedily during work and a cigarette savored with another wrapped up in bed sheets smelling of release. There were soft pet names hidden under the pillows, cooing, breathy, and warm.
He’d put on an album and let his curious fingers explore while his mind unraveled, chasing hungry shadows like a dog running after cars, never to be caught.
Slowly. Slowly. With the guiding hand of Guillaume le Million. He put his blunt fingers into the tangle in his head and he began to pull a thread. It was a very specific one, corded with orange and pine-scented aftershave. A thread made of sarcasm and wits and kind eyes. He carefully teased that thread out. Looping around all the others, he wove this strand free.
By the time Harry was back to work, Kim had transferred to the 41st. But they weren’t partners. It was perhaps too hopeful to assume the powers that be, Captain Pryce, would stick a new transfer with an amnesiac. Harry got dropped back in with Jean, which had them both immediately chafing against an unspoken history, while Kim was a free agent until he could get his bearings. Said bearings would be determined at a six-month performance review. Harry wasn’t out of the doghouse either. His six-month performance review would determine whether he would continue to be a police officer of the RCM. The world continued to be less than ideal in all the ways that mattered.
Kim and Harry rarely had a moment alone together with the hustle and bustle, the Jamrock shuffle. Detective work shot the entire department in opposing directions each day, like a game of billiards.
Thankfully Kim was predictable. He arrived at work at 7:25am. He used those five minutes to put his lunch away and drink his first cup of coffee.
The office kitchenette was a utilitarian space made of steel cabinets, linoleum, and a lead-lined fridge. It had a set of windows facing the bullpen and a set of windows facing East, which in the morning caught the sunrise in winter but the full flush of sun in summer. Kim absorbed it at 7:27am with his eyes closed nursing a cup of milky coffee. He was as still and as focused as a potted plant converting sunlight into energy. A tiny candy-colored radio was bolted to the wall. Years ago it kept walking off and Harry had a tickle of a memory that he was the one that eventually drilled the damn thing down. This thought was only supported knowing that the first preset was the Revachol vintage disco station. The off button was broken. That little radio played forever at all hours of the day even into the deep dark night.
To catch Kim, Harry arrived at work at 7:20am every day. It was probably the only thing that dragged him out of bed. He walked to work, which was an activity supported by Nix’s shitty physical therapy advice, but he did it quickly. Jogging was off the table for the time being.
At the precinct, Harry would slink into the kitchenette, pour himself a cup of coffee, and get as close as humanly possible to Kim without touching him. They’d talk too. If Harry got Kim going on a topic, he could successfully keep Kim in the kitchenette for fifteen minutes after 7:30. The key was distracting him from the wall clock.
Harry developed a list of topics that could draw him away from the light of the windows and open his eyes. The list was short. One was TipTop results. Harry would tune into the races religiously whether on the road or at home, depending on schedule. Another topic was current caseloads, which Kim could justify talking about after the start of the work day because it was work. This was the last resort to attract Kim’s attention. Finally, and this was always the gamble, he could ask for information on a part of Revachol that Harry had recently forgotten.
One of the longest conversations Harry caught Kim in began with a question about gelato; what it was, how it worked . Then it became a question of whether it was superior to other frozen desserts; followed by the best places in Revachol West to get it. Eventually, everyone in C-Wing contributed to what had blown into an office debate. The next day there were seven different kinds of gelato in the kitchen fridge and one ice cream cake. Not a bad result for Harry floundering through flirting with one singular stoic binoclard.
The light poppy thump of Disco played perpetually in the background.
However, most of the time, Kim talked to Harry for approximately five minutes, then checked the clock, and excused himself with the smallest sigh. He’d get whisked outside almost immediately in pursuit of a fresh new crime. Catching him after hours for conversation was difficult if not impossible. If Kim was chained to his desk, he was less accepting of small talk and more purpose-driven focus with his nightly cigarette.
Morning was better. Kim was happier then.
On one particular day, it was raining. The kitchenette was thick with humidity and dark. No reason to run lights during the day and waste the money. The window casement was propped open with a sad creaking box fan pushing hot air and gray light. Days like this made Kim hard to capture like the rain watered his work ethic. Harry tried his best. He poured his coffee, loaded the black hole in his mug with sugar and milk, and leaned next to Kim on the counter. The micron-sized space between them generated condensation in the hot air.
“Morning Kim, how’d you sleep?”
“Good, Detective. And you?”
“Could be worse.” Harry shrugged. He had prepared a real doozy of a question to load his trap, and he was preparing to launch it. “Question for you!” He finger gunned.
Kim looked at Harry over the rim of his mug. Attention acquired!
“What is the best way to—” The question quickly evaporated because suddenly what was on the radio sharpened out of the normal background noise to full front and center.
He froze listening intently, feeling the heat rise up his neck. Kim didn’t appear to pick up on it. The song was still background noise for him, as commonplace as the sound of the downpour. He was waiting patiently for Harry to ask his question.
“Yes, detective?” Kim asked. He was now a little concerned.
Harry had been motionless for too long, howling echoed into his skull. He licked his lip. Physical sensation was good. It shocked him out of it.
“Do you know this song?”
Kim took a second to shift into listening to the radio.
“Rings a bell.”
“What bell?” Harry perked up his ears more.
“It’s a saying… as in this song ‘is familiar to me, but I can’t place it.'”
“It’s Guillaume le Million.” Harry floated almost in a daze.
“Oh, is it?”
Kim wasn’t red in the face embarrassed having a slow grinding sex song about desire playing in the kitchenette at work, but Harry sure as shit was.
Harry had gotten re-acquainted with his hand to this song a few weeks back. The song was folding too many memories together at once and muddling too many complicated realities. Harry shifted nervously.
“Do all songs do this?” Harry already knew the answer. He went through 300 albums over the last month. Not all songs did this.
“Do what?” Kim asked innocuously. If he noticed what was happening to Harry, his hot blush or his sweaty palms, he didn’t show it. Harry swallowed and glanced at the clock. How long was this song anyway? An eternity?!
“Maybe it's the humidity,” Harry concluded on his own.
Practically steaming with arrant arousal, Harry extended the index finger clenching his bicep like a life preserver and touched Kim’s shoulder. It was entirely out of his control. It was…impulsive and desperate. He needed a shred of intimacy beyond sharing a cup of coffee in a beat-up industrial break room. The touch itself was lighter than a summer’s breeze. Only the hair on the back of his finger folded against Kim’s jacket, but that was enough for Harry to trap the air in his lungs and begin to suffocate.
Kim hummed. By all appearances, he was completely unaware. “Yes, the humidity. Remember to drink water. It’s going to be a hot one.”
He drained the rest of his mug and gave it a quick rinse in the sink.
“Good, catching up,” Kim nodded as if a broken question and Harry’s steaming ears were the same as a lively conversation, “but we’re on the clock.” Harry caught a small smile before Kim turned away to return to his desk.
The minute hand had just settled on 7:31.
The song ended. Harry heaved a sigh of relief the size of Corpus Mundi. He had forgotten to breathe. His hands were shivering. There was something tantalizing about what just happened.
The day passed as most days on the RCM did, in a rage, a blur, and a catastrophe. He was home, exhausted and aching in the bullet scars, in almost no time at all. Where he found himself after the blink was in front of his music library, fingering the boxes. He pulled out the album that had the track he heard on the radio and put it on. Slowly, he dissolved into a wet tissue of a man and that did not mean wet from tears either. He had melted into his couch with a soft-sighing, satisfied daze.
Was he taking advantage of something? Of Kim? Of Guillaume le Million? Of the entire music publishing industry? He reconsidered. Not the industry. His mind offered that the music industry milked the talent and sanity out of too many musicians and should not be trusted. The proof was that Guillaume le Million died at age twenty-seven, too young and too party-crazy! While a sliver of Harry wished he had the gumption to party to death, the rest of him was scraping by, a beast hell-bent on its own survival.
He zoned out. The silver lining of living past his expiration date as a party-hardy, groove machine was that he lived broken and shored-up enough to meet Kim. Wasn’t that luck? But what was he going to do about it? Nothing. He was going to do nothing about it.
“Really? Nothing. You’re going to just lie there, thorny as a rose, blushed pink like a spring day, eager for a handhold on something warm, and let the love of your life walkthrough you forever?”
Harry blinked and blinked again, rapidly, in a panic. He rubbed his eyes but the fantasy figure remained. A man made of light stood with his hands on his narrow hips in Harry’s small living room. The androgyny of this figure oozed. His voice sounded thick like honey but his body was delicate like a model’s. His hair was voluminous, full of luster and body. It bounced and jiggled like gelatin on a sweet. Flecks of light painted the walls, and Harry had the notion to be scared.
Or horny.
Scared and horny.
The man smiled larger so the light beamed brighter.
“Harry, baby, I can’t let you do that. I’m the lieutenant of love, and I’m here to…” He finger-snapped: a cacophony ringed into Harry’s ears. “Help you out!”
When he spoke, the light fluctuated, which gave Harry the impression the light was emanating from his leering, curl of an expression. He actually was a little jealous . Was that really how the smirk was supposed to look? Like a star. A mini sun shining lecherous thoughts into the psyche.
“That’s mighty kind of you, but I got it. I’m good.” Harry tried meekly.
“Son, baby… handsome …you don’t. You’re a big strong man-o-war. I can see that.” The strange slow drag of his impossible eyes made Harry shiver. “You got the looks, the desire, the passion, the mojo but you don’t have the skills, you dig? You lost them somewhere in the trenches of life, and baby, I’m going to teach them back to you like bottle-feeding a little baby bird-o…baby.” He winked and the walls shook. Harry grabbed a lamp before it rattled off the side table.
“Okay, sure, daddy-o. I’m picking up what you’re putting down.” Harry nodded rapidly. He wanted to get rid of this apparition. It was obviously some kind of insidious pyrholidon flashback and it made his groin hurt. “Who are you exactly?”
“Who?” He scoffed, affronted. “Baby, I’m thee groove. The one and only. The Phoenix.”
“You’re Guillaume le Million?”
“Bingo.” He smiled and the room pulsed like a quasar.
“Right, right, okay…right. Mr. le Million, love your work.” Harry wondered if perhaps he accidentally broke his sober streak without realizing it. Maybe something he ate had fermented, but nothing came to mind. He swallowed. “So what’s the plan again?”
“Swoon Kim.”
“Nononono,” Harry shook his head furiously, “I’m not doing shit to Kim.”
“Not right now you aren’t,” his voice purred, “Besides, baby boy, I don’t think that’s the arrangement you want. That delectable petite pastry is only dark chocolate on the inside, and that’s what’s funkalicious about Kim-o. That’s the attraction. You hear me?” His eyebrows wiggled suggestively.
Harry blinked. “I do…?”
Guillaume was less than impressed. The lights cut out as his lips shut over his sparkling smile. “See what I mean? No game. We gotta do something about it. Nothing worse than a snuffed-out candle. Let that love shine, darling. Nothing to be ashamed about, only be ashamed that you want to hide it.”
“That’s the same reasoning I used the time I got C-Wing involved in sensitivity training.” He had flirted with an uninterested party a little too hard. It backfired.
Now the disco star was pissed.
“Look buster, you better listen to me! Love isn’t something you can just toss aside like it’s worthless. It's the most powerful thing in the world! The BIG OLD ATOM BOMB OF FEELING. It’s already in you, and it's going to kill you if you don’t do something about it! Now TAKE MY ADVICE, BABY. We are going to inject the romance emotion into Kim for you, you big burning hunk of love. Now you fucking get me or do you need to be neutered? Because, sweet cheeks, no one wants that. Be a waste of finely aged wine.” He had calmed down. The lights were back on, brighter than ever. The air had become saturated with glitter.
Harry quivered but had the wherewithal to grip his balls to make sure they were still present. They were. He sighed relief, but the figment was still boring into him, tunneling into his heart of hearts like a drill. The Phoenix was waiting for Harry’s answer.
“What do you want me to do?”
“That’s it, Harry baby. Take the tape to work. Keep it on you. You’ll know when to…” Guillaume was finally fading out. He was disappearing slowly and steadily into the dimming light. “...put me on…”
Finally, it was only Harry alone in his empty living room. From the clock on the stove, Harry realized he had dozed off. A few hours had passed. The tape player was still rotating but the reel had run out. He rolled up carefully off the couch, snuck over to the player, and gently removed the tape like it was an unpinned grenade. He didn’t exhale until it was back in its cardboard jacket and waiting in Harry’s jacket pocket for the morning.
For the next few weeks, the tape became Harry’s worry stone. If he was feeling anxious, he would trace the box’s edges with his hands. It comforted him because it was doing little else. After all, how often was he alone with Kim in the vicinity of an available tape player? Never. Even the kitchenette radio couldn’t play tapes. Harry eventually buckled and quietly installed his Harmon Wowshi W02 on the edge of his desk, right against the cubicle wall to grant it some shadow or camouflage. Unfortunately, it still stuck out like a brightly colored anchor. He was immediately sure the whole station was on to him and his desperate need to play a suggestive album in a semi-public space.
To hide his reasoning further, he began to listen to the radio the nights he stayed late to churn through paperwork. He’d fiddle around with the stations until Jean would pop his head up above the dividers and snap to pick a station or turn it off. The whole endeavor felt more and more absurd. It seemed hopeless. Kim and Harry were two ships passing in the goddamn pale.
But eventually, a shooting star must have passed.
“It’s time,” Guillaume’s voice floated over the hum of the ceiling fans.
Harry picked up his exhausted head and scanned over the dividers. Outside the factory windows was the nighttime glow of the city. Most of the cubicles were dark, all except for one. Kim’s desk had the green lamp on. Harry could see his dark hair bobbing over his paperwork.
“You can do it. You’ve been waiting for this.” The voice purred thick like syrup.
Harry slipped out the album from his jacket, popped the player’s plastic casing, and loaded the tape.
“What am I supposed to do while it plays?” he muttered to the humidity. He was already sweating but now the dampness clenched between his thighs crawled into his awareness like a swamp creature.
“Wait, baby. You’re fishing. I’m the lure. Just wait.”
Harry pressed play and to keep from fiddling madly, lit a cigarette. The weak smoke trail drifted up in curls as the music began to spin.
“Turn it up.” Guillaume hummed. Harry felt the drag of his golden fingers at the back of his neck. Sweat sprouted in their wake. “Really let the bass pound.”
The sounds of sex-spun music curled out of the radio speaker like a finger beckoning a bachelor to bed. The silk mill’s walls were never meant to encounter this sensual perversion, so the bricks forced it back into the room, reverberating the throbbing cords louder. Guillaume’s canned voice thrummed out like a car engine or a caged leopard. The lyrics spoke about forbidden seduction in the back alleys on Boogie Street intermixed with moans only allowed on the radio or in the bedroom.
The entire bridge suggested the tantalizing squeak of box springs and the shrill ‘ooooohhs’ of contralto backup singers.
Harry tried to keep his breathing level, but the words on his latest report had melted into gibberish. This album was trash for focusing. His blush had spread to his fucking nipples, now pebbled and sensitive even in this fucking heat. He clicked up his small whining desk fan to compensate. Stale air gusted over his sticky open collar.
He tried not to peek over his shoulder in Kim’s direction.
Stay focused. This isn’t weird. Harry was just listening to his favorite album at work while he was mostly alone. It’s fine.
The chorus hit again like a punch, and Harry liquidated more. His legs fell apart. Any breeze up his inner thigh would be very welcome at this point. It was wild to think polyester was the fabric of choice for Disco when all it did was collect sweat. The 30s was a desperately moist time between the cocaine, the dancing, and the wanton abandon.
“Detective. Could you turn that down? While I’m sure you can work with music, I find it distracting.”
“Kim!” Harry’s hand shot out to the volume knob and dropped it to a murmur. He then smiled, which popped his jaw over his polio wound. “I-I didn’t know anyone else was working late.”
You didn’t? Kim thought as he casually checked Harry’s view of his desk. It was a split second.
“Don’t mess this up, Harry baby.” Glitter puffed into his cubicle. “You caught the fish. Time to reel it in. Gently, darling.”
“Uhhh yeah…ahem…just listening to my pal Guillaume le Million here, didn’t think it would bother anyone.”
Kim blinked behind his glasses. The magnification made the gesture dramatic. “It wouldn’t if you thought you were the only one here.”
Harry frowned, caught in a lie. “Good point.”
“Thanks for turning it down. I won’t be much longer. Then you can blast whatever you want to your heart’s content.” He turned away.
“ASK HIM OUT!” Bellowed the beautiful figment of the femme-infused man that materialized from the air.
“Aahaaaa—Kim!” Harry was already up, but he had to tuck his hand behind him or risk grabbing Kim’s shoulder like a wayward police cap caught in the wind.
“Yes, detective.” Kim stopped.
“You want to get out of here? Go to a bar?”
“You’re sober.” The certainty of this statement made Harry’s struggles with alcohol straighten into an unbreakable wall. Kim wasn’t about to hand him an out to drink by using softer language such as ‘I thought you were trying to be sober.’ To Kim, Harry was sober, the end. This was reality. He would be sober until he swallowed his next sip of alcohol, if ever. Fingers crossed.
“Well, yeah,” He rubbed the back of his neck and his hands felt slick, “but you could drink.”
Kim paused to put his hands behind his back. “—I don’t drink.”
“Since when!?”
“Hmm,” Kim thought, “since ‘42.”
Nine years! NINE YEARS! The man had one cigarette a day and didn’t drink. It was fucking intimidating! Harry floundered. He could feel Guillaume’s weight of attention burning down on him. The fish was slipping away. Outside of a casual nightcap at a bar, Harry had no idea what people did after work. Kim took pity on him nervously dancing in place.
“How about a Sundown? There is one within walking distance. I’ve only ever seen it from the Kineema.”
A Sundown was a nighttime coffee bar popular in the Iilmaraan isola. They had slowly become more common in Revachol West in the last decade because of the sudden shift in tariff price on the quintessential flavored syrup brand used in Iilmaraa. The one Harry passed daily was a narrow cafe on a square with mostly outdoor seating and a tiny patisserie with a glass-fronted case indoors. They were open until very late, thus Sundowns , and were a favored spot to caffeine-up for a trip home after partying.
“I know that place. Enid’s.”
The edges of his lips turned up. “Ever been?”
Harry couldn’t remember but now he was looking forward to it. Kim agreed they would go after he wrapped up his last report. To prepare, Harry popped off to the bathroom. He splashed a handful of water on his face and tried to psyche himself up in the mirror. His internal voices were no help.
Guillaume laced his willowy arm around Harry’s bulky shoulders. It had no weight and the man only appeared in the mirror. His hair was teased high into a vertical pompadour.
“That’s how it’s done! What a surprise he said yes…in…” Guillaume’s shining eyes dragged over Harry’s disheveled form, “the state you’re in. Such a shame, you can’t go home and change. Give yourself a sharper shave… Shower.”
“It’s that bad, huh?”
“Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry. I can work with it. For some men, it's a turn-on.” But Guillaume’s bright smile seemed less than genuine. He wouldn’t date Harry the way he looked right now.
Harry gritted his teeth and doused his face again. The mirage didn’t dissipate but had stepped away from the mirror to get the full picture of Harry’s sorry state.
“Bend one of your legs, baby.”
Harry cantilevered his hips.
“Stick out your ass more.”
Harry arched his back.
“Purrrfect, darling. That’s the ticket. You’re a quick study.”
“What am I supposed to do with this information?” Harry tried to twist enough to see his own backside, but it was impossible
Guillaume tittered into his golden hand, collected Harry into his open arms, and pushed him out the door. “Walk! I’ll see you there!”
Harry had to swing by to collect the tap in the music player. He couldn’t go anywhere without his worry stone now.
Enid's wasn't crowded yet. It was in the precious lull between partying shifts. There was one fresh-out-of-the-gate waitress who just put on her apron as Kim and Harry sat at the precious table inside facing the street. There was a slightly coughing hack of an AC unit somewhere in the back. The suction from the front drew a curl of fresh air through. The waitress brought over the usual order. A plate of rainbow-colored, thin cookies and two shot glasses, each with their own porcelain saucer, filled with dark liquid and a single ice cube.
Harry picked up one and immediately shot it while Kim watched, horrified. His hand was slightly outstretched as if milliseconds away from stopping him.
It was the strongest, thickest, bitterest coffee, Harry ever had the misfortune to slurp down in a single gulp. He hacked once in shock and then tried to curtail it by coughing miserably into his fist. The waitress giggled from the back.
“Waiting for the ice cube to melt helps.” Kim hid his laugh, “The biscuits too. And sipping. The sipping helps the most.”
“I need 20ccs of sugar in that stat.” Harry's voice rasped. “Seeing a shot glass just makes me react, you know? Oughta warn people.”
Kim waved the waitress back and suggested Harry try one with syrup instead of straight. This was more palpable. The syrup tasted of almonds and dates. It was better as the ice cube melted, diluting the coffee. It was surprisingly easy to get a conversation going outside of work, mostly because Harry wasn’t contained within a five-minute window.
At some point, Kim narrowed his eyes at Harry, “I expected you to get jittery.”
Harry had drunk five of those tiny coffees and stress-eaten at least two plates of cookies by himself. He looked at his hands as if expecting them to be doubled. “Hmm, I don’t think coffee does anything for me.”
“Probably for the best that one thing on Elysium doesn’t.” Kim's smile was cloaked, but it pulled at his cheek.
While they had been talking, Enid’s had filled up. The waitress was weaving through tables taking orders with her tray held high. A young man was now staffing the desert cooler. This was the first night’s rush, and a small busking band parked themselves on the patio’s far corner. A young singer began to warble a Revachol marching ballad. A drummer and guitarist filled in the melody.
“Oho!” Guillaume faded in with a flash. The room’s lighting dimmed to intimate sparkles. “That man knows some Le Million!”
“How do you know?” Harry murmured into the lip of his glass. Kim was thankfully distracted by the performance.
“Honey…in that shirt, he better.”
The singer was wearing a gossamer blouse, of sorts, a clear indicator of having disco allegiances.
“He does requests, daddy-o.”
Harry eyed the singer and then Kim, and then the singer, and then Kim. He couldn’t just…walk out there and request a song. Kim would know who requested it, not to mention every other patron of this Sundown. Harry would have to crawl under the table and die. Instead, he chewed his fingernails and tried to keep from sweating, which was a hopeless endeavor.
Eventually, the band took a break, and the singer bounced into the shop to get a glass of water over the sound of the crowd’s applause. Harry swung into action with the pretension of going to the bathroom. He inserted himself next to the singer, slid him a twenty like buying drugs for the night, and catching Kim’s curious eye, bumped out his ass as casually as he could. It was not casual. Kim definitely continued to sip coffee while lingering on the line of leg from the floor to his hips.
Apparently, Harry’s request was one of the singer’s favorites , which meant Harry’s gaydar was expertly sensitive, or maybe the singer’s flouncy shirt was just that good. Harry moved off to pee and the Guillaume fan-come-singer returned to his set with an extra twenty reál in his skin-tight pocket.
Kim suspected some foul play. His eyebrow was quizzical when Harry came back.
“It’s going to rain,” he said instead, sweeping aside his concern. The humidity had risen. Harry sensed it in his armpits and on his hairline. The air crackled with the threat of heat lightning.
“Just one more song,” Harry chewed his lip and willed the band to start. Kim drew the waitress over with the wave of his hand. A hot wind tore through the plaza whipping sheets of newspaper across the pavers. “Just one more song…” Harry pleaded more to whatever entities that controlled this shit than Kim. He didn’t want the night to end, but a downpour could last days.
The singer winked across the assembled crowd at Harry, who felt it like a loving punch to the gut. The guitar strummed a familiar opening chord. The sound crawled across Harry’s lap, warm and inviting. He leaned heavily on the tabletop to fortify himself and get as close as possible to Kim, who wrinkled his eyebrows. The vocals lifted the song up and there were a few hoots of agreement with the crowd. Harry’s hand itched to reach under the table and stroke the inside of Kim’s bent knee. He gripped the table instead to steel his wandering hands.
What a song for a lightning storm. A bolt crossed the sky horizontally just as they reached the chorus. A gust blew so hard, it dragged a table umbrella a meter. There was intermittent laughter and shouts of fear. Suddenly, everyone was scrambling to wrap everything up. The musicians didn’t seem to mind. The singer rocked his hips and performed a flawless spin, crooning like a lovesick swan. Harry sighed from the weight of his saturated emotions, and barely registered Kim paid the bill.
“Come on, Harry. We’ll need to run for it.” Kim tapped at the table.
“Aw, but they aren’t done yet,” he pouted but stood anyway.
“They will be soon.”
Another bold clap of lightning fissured across the sky, and yes, as Harry made it down to the edge of the patio the musicians were packing it in. He slapped the man’s hand into a brief handshake. He tried. It was a noble effort. Before making it to the street corner out of the plaza the downpour hit like a wall.
Harry was laughing as he ran...well…fast walked. Harry was still recovering. He grabbed a newspaper and it was a sodden mess over his soaked head. Kim used Harry as a shield for the worst of it. It was purely hopeless. The street was flooding in spots. Revachol sewer drains were bubbling upwards to meet the sky. The old La Delta estuary was taking back the town once again. Harry remembered the summer rains. In a spurt of memory, it came roaring back in the sounds of thunder. There was never a bad moment trapped in a rainstorm, at least not for him.
He looked up, and he was home! They had arrived at his apartment building without him knowing which direction they were turning. Likely some feat of Kim’s to guide them back here without Harry realizing it. They were in the courtyard’s gateway. Beyond the overhang, rain fell like a sheet, crashing as loud as white noise. Kim was ringing out his white shirt and folding his dripping hair back. He took off his wet glasses and could not find a single dry square of cloth to wipe them. He shook them out to scatter the drops. Harry, laughing and absurdly giddy, threw his arms around the man’s narrow shoulders and plunked his head down on the rounded joint.
“Do you have good memories of the summer rain, Kim?”
Kim’s eyes were dark and close at this angle. He was still shedding water from his hairline to his shirt collar. His lip twitched.
“Nostalgia. It’s too brief though.”
Harry nuzzled for a second and snapped his head up. “You’re wet!”
“Yes, detective, so are you.”
Harry did the brilliant thing of taking his set of thumbs and drying Kim’s thin mustache like how one would smudge pastel. When he was done and observing his handiwork, he realized this was not something a person casually did to another man. His eyes flitted up to Kim’s whose only tell was that his eyebrows had risen up his forehead.
“Allow me,” He said following a hmph, and performed the same action on Harry’s facial hair. The sweep of the thumbs over his upper lip came first and then Kim’s palms were on his cheeks flowing back toward his ears. They moved around the back of his neck, and Harry was guided with leather fingers to bend until a new wetness. Two pairs of lips met. Air passed between them like a fresh gust bringing new rain. The lightning that crashed this time wasn’t in the sky.
Harry pulled back, thinking it was an accident. That he had fallen over and used the cushion of Kim’s bottom lip to save himself from a cracked skull. He didn’t even have the wherewithal to blush, simply a strong pull to take Kim upstairs. Kim was more than accepting of their interwoven hands of Harry tugging Kim up, and up, and up. The sound of rain was more hollow up here. The patter of fast steps on a shingled roof over workers’ apartments.
“Who would’ve thought you had the moves, Harry baby doll. You’re too old to rock.”
“You’re never too old to rock.” Harry retorted.
Kim snorted at him.
“Of course, you can be. Hips give out. You’re lucky the bullet didn’t strike higher.”
“But– Kim. I can still rock right?” Harry asked at the door, pitifully pointing a finger at his own dimpled chin.
Kim paused. “I’d like to find out.”
“Oh this guy…” Guillaume was bright on the wall beside them. He was a little like a third wheel now, and Harry wanted him to get lost. The worst situation would be to become cock blocked by the illustrious king of Disco, who was dead and totally not a made-up fantasme in Harry’s head. “He’s going to take care of you, baby boy.”
He sweetly caressed Harry’s scruffy cheek and Harry bit down to focus on getting the door opened.
“Put my album on to loooosen all your joints up,” Guillaume faded out. Harry heaved heavily for breath. The door swung open and he was already fingering the edge of Gullaume’s record. He didn’t want to mess this up, so he was already at the tape playing bringing the reel out even before the door closed.
Kim’s hand stopped him.
“Harry,” he said very purposefully while slowly placing the tape back in the box, “Please don’t take this the wrong way…”
“Yes, Kim?” Harry would beg for any insight into Kim, even if it hurt him.
“I don’t like Guillaume le Million.”
“Dump him.” Bit Guillaume’s voice from the either.