Work Text:
The door was stupid, Janus thought not for the first time. Without fail, the thought had crossed his mind every single week in the brief moments he stood in front of it. It did not matter that the door had gone through multiple paint changes since the first time he’d knocked on it. It was always stupid and ugly.
Currently, the door was painted a bright yellow with little white flowers hand painted all over it. He noticed that some of the lower flowers were much messier (though he could almost read the enthusiasm that contributed to their creation in their petals). Each flower had a stupid little smiley face drawn on it.
Janus knew the design would change within the month and it would be just as stupid. The only thing that ever stayed the same about the door was the mid rail. The strip in the middle of the door was always painted baby blue. When Janus had first come here there were two handprints on it, relatively fresh. Now there were three, two old and chipping and one only about a year old.
Janus leaned on his cane and waited in front of the door, though he didn’t have to wait long. He was expected after all. The door swung open only a few moments after he’d knocked, just long enough to get from the house’s kitchen to the front door.
“Hello Detective,” the man who answered the door said even though he often didn’t use Janus’s title anymore. Patton usually just used his first name. However, these first interactions every week were a well-worn pattern now. Janus may as well have been watching a recording of the first few times they’d interacted over and over every week. “Please come in.”
Janus obeyed the request, removing his hat as he stepped through the stupid decorated door.
“Would you like some tea?” Patton asked, heading back towards the kitchen without a glance back. He trusted Janus to know his way by now.
“Sure,” Janus agreed, though it honestly didn’t feel like a choice anymore. It was part of the script. It would be wrong to refuse.
Janus followed him into the kitchen and took a seat at the table without invitation. Patton puttered about his kitchen grabbing sugar and cream for the tea.
Patton’s kitchen table was quite large, but always felt cramped. Patton liked to do all of his daily tasks at the kitchen table from paperwork to crafts to reading. Yet, instead of putting the objects used for each activity away when he was done with them, he simply switched seats and started up his next task there. The result was that the 8-person table had barely enough room for a plate and cup in front of two of its chairs. (If Janus was lucky that week.)
The tablecloth was as chaotic as the mess atop it. Janus was almost glad he’d never seen the multicolored ugly thing in its entirety. He knew there were (at least) three sets of novelty salt and pepper shakers hidden among the balls of yarn and stacks of papers. There was a dinosaur set, a set that looked like science flasks, and a pair of flowering cacti. Considering two people lived in this house, it seemed a bit excessive.
The only decoration choice Janus felt he could approve of was the arrangement of daises and sweet peas in a vase. The flowers were always fresh from Patton’s shop, and even though he had no eye for color in any other aspect of design, he did know how to design a good bouquet.
Patton was back with the tea so quickly that Janus was sure it had already been steeping by the time he’d knocked. Janus could smell the familiar blueberry scent before the tea was even poured.
“Is there any news?” Patton asked as he poured the tea, though Janus knew he knew the answer already.
It was part of their script, but it was never any easier to answer. “No,” Janus said. “Not this week. I’m sorry.”
Patton did not respond. He never did. How was someone supposed to respond to that? Instead, he finished pouring both cups of tea in silence.
Janus cleared his throat as Patton settled down in his seat. He’d found Patton had a hundred solutions ready to dispel almost any awkward silence or social misstep. This awkward silence, this heavy silence, however, was always Janus’s responsibility to break. “How’s Roman?”
The topic brought a small smile to Patton’s lips. “He’s good,” he replied. “I’ll have to pick him up from school in an hour and a half.”
Janus knew. This meeting was the same time every week. He wondered if they’d change the time of it when Roman eventually left elementary school for middle school and his dismissal time changed. It would be strange. They’d been meeting at this time long before Roman.
“He wants to take ballet,” Patton continued.
“That’s new,” Janus said. Janus had picked the kid up from school last Friday and there hadn’t been any mention of that. (And with Roman there would have been a mention of it.) “Are you going to let him?”
Patton shrugged. “Probably, but I’ll only buy him a couple of lessons. Knowing him, he’ll lose interest within the week.”
“Roman can be a bit flighty,” Janus said, a fond smile on his face.
“Eh, I think most kids are like that,” Patton replied. There was a moment of silence as the man took a sip of his tea.
Janus… did not understand how he did this. He did not understand the decorated door or the elementary school worksheet left on the table. He couldn’t comprehend the new child sized shoes when there were old ones in the attic.
Janus had been the one to bring Roman to Patton, desperate and knowing only one person who was a parent. He’d hated himself for asking at the time. He could never have anticipated how Patton had opened up to the child.
How had the man cleaned out his old office to make room for a child’s bedroom when another childhood bedroom’s door remined shut tight next door? Janus didn’t think he’d ever know even though he’d witnessed it himself.
Janus did not know how Patton kept living. He did not know how he’d managed to be a dad again (and a very good one at that).
Janus had met him as the detective assigned to the missing persons case for the man’s first child. It had broken Patton in a thousand ways Janus couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Janus had watched it happen, had seen the moment he was informed his child was missing. He’d watched all the moments after that too.
Yet, somehow, despite being shattered, he was still here.
Janus had always admired that about him. It was what drew him back every week without fail to drink the same hot tea even as the case he was here for grew impossibly colder every time.
At one point there had been updates every time they’d met (never good ones). Then there had been an update every month. Then every few months. Now it felt like Janus had been telling him there were no updates for an eternity. The time he would continue to do so stretched into eternity before him.
Yet, Janus knew he would keep coming here even though he was technically off the case now. Everyone was technically off the case now.
“Well,” Janus said. “If Roman decides to stick with ballet, let me know. I’ll buy him the right shoes.”
Patton smiled at him warmly. “Thanks.”
If there was even a chance that Janus might one day have an update for Patton on the whereabouts of Logan Heart, it would all be worth it.