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Harry, you’re starting to figure out, is like a dog. A big dog that doesn’t realize how big it is, that thinks it can fit on your lap nice and neat. A friendly dog, yes, but all dogs have teeth, and Harry’s bite may not come as frequently as his bark, but it’s just as sharp.
He’s never bared his teeth at you, though, not since that first day.
It’s been months, now, of trying to domesticate the animal inside of him. To tame it. He’s off the alcohol, off the drugs too, but he smokes like a chimney and he still runs everywhere. You don’t mind as much as you used to, since he waits at street corners, bouncing on his toes, for you to catch up.
“Harry,” You say, quietly so as not to startle him. He’s deep in his thoughts, wrapped in a towel and sitting on your shared bed, looking at nothing. “Harry.”
“Mm?”
You know better than to ask him a question until his eyes are focused on you, so you wait patiently until his head turns and his eyes sharpen. “Yeah?” He asks you, and you remember something you thought about, once, after the Hanged Man case. Harry prides himself on being unpredictable. On saying strange, offputting things - it’s a coping mechanism, you think. He does it to keep people at arm’s length, so he doesn't have to get attached again. The problem is, though, is that Harry is such a deeply empathetic man that he gets attached at the drop of a hat.
On the other hand, you yourself try to be as predictable as possible. For a man like you, being unpredictable, saying whatever comes to mind whenever you want, has never been safe. The only time you can ever really let loose is in the Kineema.
And with Harry.
“Where do you go?” You find yourself asking, without even realizing the words are coming out of your mouth. His thick brows furrow, but he smiles at the same time. “When you’re thinking.”
“Oh,” He says, and his eyes dart away from your face. “I, uh, I don’t really go anywhere. I’m just- listening.”
That’s right. You remember him mentioning something about that, way back in the spring, when you first met. About hearing himself in his head. He’s talked about it a few more times, but he’s never told you much about it. Harry’s an open book, about almost everything, but this is something he’s remarkably shy about. No, not shy- he’s just worried you’ll think he’s actually lost it.
Admittedly, you would be, if you hadn’t seen those voices in action. Those strange moments of insight he has, flashes of intuition that make him able to see into people, through people. He knows when a suspect is lying or a witness is being coy, and sometimes, he has those flashes of insight towards you.
“What are they saying?” You ask, eager to unlock this, Harry’s final secret. At least, it feels that way to you.
He shifts, uncomfortably, and says nothing.
For a moment, you hesitate, and then say, “You don’t have to tell me, Harry.”
The words burst out of him like fire. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Kim, I do! It’s just- It’s-” He struggles to grasp the word, and in that split second you can see what that little girl meant when she’d said he had party eyes. The ghosts of them are there, in the wide wild darting. “It’s private,” He finally settles on, even though it’s clear that hadn’t been the word he’d wanted to use.
Quickly, you reassure him. “That’s okay. You’re allowed to have things that are private.”
He looks at you like he doesn’t believe you for a moment, but accepts it anyway, nods and turns his attention back to the wall. “They like you.” He says, after a moment, and you nod, a smile coming to your mouth unbidden. “I’m glad,” you say, and mean it.
Then you hesitate again, your lips pursing without conscious effort. “Did they… Tell you, to bring me the razor?”
Harry looks at you, puzzled. You can see the moment the light goes on in his head. “Oh! Um. Well, yeah… And no. It’s sort of-” He makes a see-saw motion with his hand. “None of them were encouraging me to- to do it, really, and- well, yeah. Yeah, they told me to bring it to you.” He pauses, shakes his head. “And get drunk, but that’s pretty par for the course. I actually think it was trying to be helpful.”
Your eyebrow raises of its own volition. “By telling you to get drunk?”
“Short term happiness is still happiness, Kim. Are you any less happy driving the Kineema, even knowing it has to end?”
This brings you up short, and suddenly a lot of Harry’s actions back in Martinaise make a lot more sense. “Huh. I guess not.” You say, sitting beside him on the bed. He leans into you the way a sunflower turns towards the sun, and you fight down a smile. He always does that, whenever you enter a room he’s in. He turns, as if by some sort of unknown force, towards you, even if he’s not aware of your presence.
You know, deep down, that you won’t be able to hold onto him forever. There’s a part of him that’s too wild to get a grip on, the part of him you see so rarely, but you know it’s there. Whatever part that caused him to take your gun and push it up under his own chin with wild eyes and a smile that was more a snarl than anything. Whatever part that you see when he gets startled, something that comes awake behind his eyes. Whichever one of those voices of his that encourages him to drink, to smoke, to get his hands on as many drugs as he can- short term happiness, you think, and shake your head slightly. No, he won’t be yours forever.
He smells like the soap you share, his hair sticking to the side of your neck when he leans into you, but you don’t mind. Sometimes it feels like you never want to let him go - like you want to keep him tucked away from everything. He’d never tolerate that, though. He’s not a man who deals well with a cage. All you can do is try to keep up, and hope.
Hope isn’t something that comes naturally to you, but you’re trying. That’s all you can do, isn’t it?