Work Text:
It’s been a couple of months since Will skipped town, but it still feels weird not sitting next to him at morning debrief. The new kid assigned to Diego is okay. Diego doesn’t really have anything against him except that his arrival was precipitated by the crazy circumstances of Will’s departure.
“One more thing...”
A groan travels around the room. The rookie shoots Diego a sidelong look. Despite himself, Diego cracks a smile. Leibowitz is too fresh faced out of the academy to realise ‘one more thing...’ is never followed by something awesome like ‘you’re all getting a raise’.
“One more thing...”the Sarge repeats, his voice louder to carry over the collective bellyaching, “...that new department policy came into effect. I need updated medical clearances from all of you on my desk by the end of the month or you’ll be benched.”
Diego shuffles to the front with the others and grabs the business card the Sarge shoves his way: United Neurology Clinic. An appointment time is scribbled on the back.
“Man,” Kingston whines as he takes a card too. “I had a physical last month.”
“And now you’re having another one,” the Sarge deadpans. “If you wanna bitch take it up with the union rep. Now get to work, all of you.”
As they file out of the room, Bates gives Diego the stink eye and sidles up to the still disgruntled Kingston. “This is such bullshit,” he pretends to whisper, plenty loud enough for everyone to overhear. “Gorski goes off the deep end and now we all gotta have our heads checked?”
There’s a moment of tension among the men. A moment long enough for Diego to make a thousand different decisions. Instead, he goes with his gut: leading with his shoulder, Diego body checks Bates hard into the wall.
“What the fuck?” Bates spits.
He has the nerve to sound surprised. Like his assholery is Diego’s fault.
Diego rolls his eyes. He’s up in Bates’s face with what feels like an almost unstoppable forward momentum. It wouldn’t take anything to punch him clean in his disrespectful mouth. The inevitable disciplinary hearing that would lead to doesn’t even register.
“Knock it off, you assholes,” the Sergeant shouts down the hall.
“Yeah, Morales,” Bates parrots at him in an insufferable sing-song voice, “knock it off.”
He straightens his shirt and squares his shoulders. He shoves his way past Diego with Kingston close behind him. Diego keeps his cool and lets them pass.
They’re two steps out of Diego’s reach when Bates spins on his heel and sneers, “Let it go, Morales. Gorski went halfway around the world to get his dick wet. He was never gonna suck your cock, so stop crying like a little bitch because he dumped you.”
Someone grabs Diego by the arm before he can lunge after Bates as he walks away. Diego whips around. He’s surprised to find it’s the new kid holding him back.
“Speaking of dicks,” Leibowitz says, “that one’s not worth it.”
He’s right. Diego exhales a steady breath and unclenches his fists, trying to shake all the bullshit off. He glances back at Leibowitz, standing there in the now mostly empty hallway, pretending to look anywhere except in Diego’s direction.
Diego knows what everyone thinks. Hell, even baby faced little Leibowitz has probably heard the rumours by now. The whole station thinks when Will got his ass suspended, instead of coming back to face the music like a man, he ran away to hook up with his internet girlfriend.
Never mind that Will isn’t like that.
Never mind that Will would never willingly leave the force.
The Captain saw a plane ticket to Iceland, a swanky rental car in Reykjavik and Diego’s own fucking testimony that Will was sweet on some Riley chick, and it was like boom: case closed.
Never mind that if push came to shove Will would have put his life on the line for any one of these douchebags. Even Gorski Sr. swallowed the party line: Will is an adult. He can disappear if he wants to.
No one except Diego will admit that Will would never want to. Not like this.
He pulls himself together.
“Come on,” he says gruffly to Leibowitz, “Let’s go protect and serve.”
Later, Leibowitz drops him off at the neurology clinic. “You want me to stick around?”
“Nah,” Diego tells him. “Not unless you have a real hard on for spending the next five hours of your life in a waiting room. I’ll catch you back at the station.”
“Sure thing.”
The lobby is so fancy Diego is half convinced he’s in the wrong place. This much glass and chrome is way above anyone’s pay grade at the station. He can’t believe their shitty union health insurance would send someone here for treatment. But when he gives his name, he’s ushered through to see a doctor almost immediately.
As slick as the building is, the physical isn’t all that different from what he would go through at the free clinic. A nurse takes his height and weight. He pisses in a cup. Diego sits on the edge of an examination table in a paper gown while the doctor checks his reflexes.
“So,” the doctor says, shining a light in Diego’s eyes, “would you say your job is stressful?”
“Not really,” he answers honestly.
“Bullets flying everywhere and you’re not stressed out?” she retorts sceptically.
Diego laughs. “It’s not like they make it out to be on TV. It’s a lot of paperwork and sitting around. All the rest? You get used to it.”
“Mmhmm,” she answers noncommittally, and makes a mark on his chart. “And your personal life? Do you feel like being a cop makes things more stressful off the clock?”
Diego shrugs. “My mom worries, but she’d worry no matter what I do.”
The doctor wraps a blood pressure cuff around his arm. It starts to tighten.
“What about your partner going missing?”
It takes him by surprise.
“Excuse me?”
The pressure in the cuff releases and it starts to deflate. Diego’s heart is pounding. He can’t imagine how off the charts that reading is going to be.
“Your partner,” the doctor repeats either oblivious to or ignoring Diego’s tone. “That can’t be something you get used to easily.”
“I mean...” Diego stumbles defensively. “Yeah, it’s stressful that Will’s missing but it’s not affecting my work if that’s what you’re asking me.”
The doctor puts down the chart and smiles at him reassuringly. “That’s not what I’m asking you, Diego. I’m not checking up on you for your boss. Whatever you say in here is completely confidential. Losing someone like that is a huge stressor in your life. It can affect your health. Are you talking to anyone about what happened?”
Diego shakes his head. “There’s nothing to talk about. Gorski ran off to be with a girl. He wasn’t cut out for the force. Everyone knows it. He only joined to make his dad happy.”
It’s not at all what Diego believes but he isn’t sure right now if this is a covert psych evaluation or what. The last thing he wants on his record is a note saying he’s paranoid under pressure.
The doctor’s expression sours a little. It’s as if she doesn’t believe what he’s saying anymore than Diego does. “I’ve looked at Will’s service record. Aside from the weeks leading up to his disappearance, it was exemplary. Do you really think he’d throw all that away for a woman he’d never met in person?”
“You didn’t hear him talk about her. He thought they had a real connection, something special. Sometimes guys think with their...” Diego gestures to his crotch. “...and they do stupid shit they really shouldn’t do.”
“And you think Will is that kind of guy?”
“He’s a guy. We’re all that kind of guy.”
“You’re telling me that if some good-looking woman asked you to drop everything and hop on a plane, you would?”
Diego stares at the doctor’s pen hovering over her clipboard again. “You’re really not gonna tell the Captain what I say?”
Her eyes light up. She leans in conspiratorially and promises, “I pinky swear.”
Diego leans in too, the paper gown crinkling around him.
“If she was that hot? Hell yeah.”
The doctor huffs a noise of disgust and steps back. Her voice is suddenly brisk and no-nonsense as she takes Diego’s wrist, and says, “Here’s what I think. I think that even if Officer Gorski was head over heels in love, he’s too responsible to leave like that. I think he’d tell someone where he was going or what he was up to. Someone like... his partner?”
She looks at Diego expectantly. Her fingers are pressed against his pulse point.
“I swear I don’t know anything.”
She glances at her wristwatch and frowns. “It’s not illegal to leave the country without telling anyone, Diego. It’s not illegal to quit a job that suspended you without pay. Will is not going to be in trouble for talking to you while everyone thinks he’s missing. But if you know where he is and the department spends more money looking for him...”
“The department’s not looking for him,” Diego snaps. This is starting to feel less like an evaluation and more like an interrogation. “Will’s missing person’s file is closed. He left the country willingly. I don’t know anything the department doesn’t know.”
She holds his wrist a moment longer, checking her watch a couple more times before she lets go. Maybe Diego is paranoid because if he didn’t know any better, he’d swear she was tracking his pulse to gauge if he was lying.
“Okay then, I think that’s all I need,” the doctor says abruptly. “The nurse will take you through for the MRI and someone will call you with the results. Thank you for coming in today, Officer Morales.”
It’s claustrophobic inside the MRI. The machinery clunks in stereo around Diego’s head. He can’t stop thinking about what Will had told him right before he got suspended. About people being lobotomised against their will.
Diego is finally left alone in an empty room to get dressed. His phone buzzes as soon as he switches it on. It’s a text from Leibowitz warning him that Bates is on his way to the clinic for his appointment. Diego doesn’t want to run into Bates again anymore than Leibowitz apparently wants him to. He starts getting dressed in double quick time. As he hurries, Diego fumbles his wristwatch and drops it into the open duffle bag.
“Damn it.”
He rifles around in the bag blindly. As he shifts stuff around trying to find it, he notices the inside pocket of his duffle bag is zipped shut. It shouldn’t mean anything except that Diego knows the zipper sticks so he always leaves it open. He hesitates and glances quickly over his shoulder, but it’s not like there’s anyone there spying on him.
He tugs on the zipper. Sure enough, it won’t budge. He jiggles it a bit, and then a bit more, and finally yanks on the thing hard enough to force it open. The pocket is empty, exactly as Diego left it. He runs his fingers around inside it but there’s nothing hiding in the corners or sewn into the seams. He laughs hollowly at himself, trying to dispel the sudden edgy feeling that’s clawing at his nerves. He can’t shake it though; nothing about this appointment has felt right.
In one decisive movement, he upends the bag. His shit scatters all over the floor. He turns the bag inside out and checks the remaining pockets but there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be. One by one, he picks up his things and tosses them back in.
As far as he can tell nothing seems to be missing. Even the cash in his wallet is still there.
Diego shakes his head. He needs to get a grip before someone signs him up for a psych eval for real. The whole thing is weird for sure, but he knows how the world works. Just because the clinic is up market as fuck doesn’t mean the folks who work here are getting paid their fair share. It was probably just some minimum wage schmuck looking for something that wouldn’t be missed. Odds are they freaked out when they saw Diego’s badge in there.
He throws the duffle bag over his shoulder and picks up his phone again. He texts Leibowitz to let him know he’s on his way.
Diego passes Bates in the lobby after all, but they both keep their distance. If there’s any justice in the world, Diego thinks, the wannabe thief would pocket Bates’s credit card and clean him out while the doctor has a finger up his ass.
The clinic calls on Diego’s day off. He answers the phone sitting on the couch in his underwear, drinking the last of the milk out of the carton. The test results are fine. He doesn’t need to come in for a follow up. Really, he should feel relieved they found nothing that hints brain surgery might be in his future. Instead, the call leaves him unsettled.
He runs through all the weird shit that went down yesterday in his head. He glances suspiciously at the duffle bag slumped by the door and has to remind himself he literally turned it inside out. Everything came up clean.
Everything that is except...
Diego weighs his cell phone in his hand. He tries to talk himself out of it but the more he tries to convince himself he’s just being paranoid, the more he has to know. He starts to take his phone apart, laying the parts on the coffee table in an orderly line, fingers crossed that he can get it back together when he’s done. Nothing, nothing, there’s nothing there; he’s starting feel like a dumbass for going through with this when all of a sudden...
“Son of a bitch.”
His phone is bugged.
Diego’s kneejerk reaction is to smash it. Luckily, the part of his brain that thinks instead of acting on instinct stops him. Destroying his phone would let whoever’s listening in on his calls know that he knows they’re spying on him. Carefully, he puts the phone back together again and leaves it on the coffee table.
He buys a burner phone from a corner kid he’s pretty sure he’s arrested a couple of times before. He sends one message:
Phone bugged. Sketchy doctors trying to find you.
Call me on this number.
- D
It’s a shot in the dark. Will’s phone has been disconnected since the day he landed in Reykjavik but short of sending up signal flares to warn him, Diego doesn’t know what else to do.
When he gets back to his apartment, he lifts the ceramic lid off the back of the toilet and duct tapes the burner to the underside. He figures if anyone had eyes and ears inside his apartment, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to bug his cell phone. That doesn’t mean they won’t ransack the place if they get desperate enough and he doesn’t want to take the risk of leaving it out in the open.
He’s woken up at 4am by a muffled beep. It takes him a second to figure out what’s going on but when he does, he lunges out of bed. He opens the cistern with the bone-rattling creak of porcelain scraping over porcelain, and sinks down to the cold tiled bathroom floor. Propped against the bathtub he reads:
United Neurology is a subsidiary of BPO.
They’re very bad, very dangerous people.
BE CAREFUL. Don’t contact this number again.
Diego never mentioned the name of clinic, which means Will must still have a line of intel into the force. Whatever is going on, this thing is way bigger than Diego realised. He wishes Will had clued him in to more of it before he left, but in a way he’s not surprised. Leave it to Will to think he has to protect everyone by tackling government-wide conspiracies alone.
In the morning, Diego wakes from a restless sleep fifteen minutes after his alarm goes off. Rushing out the door, he almost collides head-on with the Fed-Ex guy.
“Whoa, dude,” he yelps in surprise as he narrowly hops out of the way. “Diego Morales?”
“Yeah?”
“Glad I caught you, man.” He hands Diego a large envelope and waits for him to sign for it.
“Thanks,” Diego mutters as the delivery guy walks away.
He flips the envelope over. It’s been overnighted from an address he doesn’t recognise in San Francisco. He’s already late for work but backs up into his apartment, regardless, and re-locks the door behind himself.
He rips the package open and shakes out a plane ticket to Buenos Aires and a US passport. The name on the passport is Juan Martinez but the photo is Diego’s. The flight leaves at midnight.
“You’re late, Morales,” the Captain hollers, when Diego finally gets to the station. Morning debrief is already in session and he points to the closed door. “Get your ass in there before I write you up for being tardy.”
“Actually, sir, can I talk to you?”
The Captain raises his eyebrows in surprise and gestures for Diego to follow him into his office.
“What’s up, Morales? And I don’t want to hear any bs excuses about traffic on the highway holding you up.”
Diego shakes his head. “You remember that neurology clinic a bunch of us got sent to?”
“Sure. The test results show something we need to be worried about?” The Captain’ voice is laced with gruff concern.
“No, but the doctor said some stuff that got me thinking, you know? About how Will’s disappearance has been stressing me out maybe more than I wanted to admit. And I think... I think I should take some time off to get my head straight about everything.”
The Captain sits forward in his chair, studying Diego’s face carefully. “I gotta say, Morales, I’m surprised to hear you say that...”
“Captain—”
“...but I’m glad. I’m real glad. It’s tough to admit when things are wearing you down and I’m impressed you stepped up before I had to step in.”
Diego frowns. “Step in?”
“Look, Morales. Your work is good. You do things by the book, but your attitude has really gone downhill lately.”
“Sir?” Diego objects.
“You’re starting fights and squabbling with the other guys. Bates put in a formal complaint yesterday about roughhousing going too far. I know the guy is an asshole but my hands are tied. I’ve got to take that shit seriously.”
He opens his mouth to defend himself, to explain that Bates is the jackass with a hard on for stirring shit, not him, but closes it again without speaking. As much as it grates his sense of justice, why fuck with a sure thing?
“Take two weeks,” the Captain suggests after a pause. “Find someone to talk to, someone professional. I’ll clear it with HR; just let me know when you want to go.”
“I can finish up my paperwork and be out of here by tonight.”
The Captain sucks in a long breath, considering.
“As soon as that? It’s short notice... I’ll have to move some of the guys’ shifts around.” He laughs softly. “Bates won’t be happy to pull a double to cover your ass but we can make it work.”
“Morales,” he adds, just as Diego is about to walk out the door. “This stuff with Gorski? No one who counts is gonna hold it against you. Clear your head and come back ready to work. You have a good career ahead of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Any news?” Will’s dad asks as Diego sits down next to him at the bar.
He shakes his head and gestures to Larry, the bartender, to get them some beers. “You?”
Mr. Gorski shakes his head too. “This fucking kid.”
“I know,” Diego agrees. They’ve been having the same conversation once a week since Diego started checking up on him.
“You think he knocked her up?”
Diego shrugs. Will’s dad has mulled over a thousand different theories as to why Will dropped off the face of the earth. He knows by now that shooting them down – no matter how logical Diego is about it – will only make him mad.
“I like kids. I don’t care if they’re not married. I don’t care if they eloped to Iceland to get married.” He swills the last of his beer around, staring at the whirlpool it makes in the glass. “I always wanted grandkids...”
“So listen,” Diego interrupts before this conversation goes too deep and things get emotional. “The Captain wants me to take a leave of absence.”
That gets Mr Gorski’s attention. His eyebrows pull together and he looks irritated on Diego’s behalf. “What the fuck for?”
“This whole thing with Will...” Diego says softly. “He thinks it’s getting in my head.”
“You gonna fight it?”
“Nah,” Diego gives him a one shouldered shrug. “What could I say? It’s not like he’s wrong.”
Will’s dad lets out a long sigh. He slumps a little on the barstool, deflated. Larry sets out another round of beers.
“So what’re you gonna do?”
“Go see my folks, maybe,” Diego lies. “Or just get in my car and drive. Anything to get out of the city for a while.”
“Jeeze. First Will and now you. At least you’re planning on coming back, right, Morales?”
“Hey,” Diego says automatically. “Will’s coming back.”
Mr. Gorski waves his hand. “Yeah, I know. Relax, I was kidding. I dunno, maybe you kids have the right idea. Maybe this city is doing a number on all of us. Maybe I should leave for a while too.” He laughs bitterly. “You know what’s weird? I even got a thing in the mail this morning saying I’d won a fishing trip to the Great Lakes.”
“What?”
“Right?” He digs in his coat pocket and hands Diego a colourful, dog-eared postcard. It hasCONGRATULATIONS!!! emblazoned across the front. “I figured it must be a scam but Larry—” he gestures to the bartender“—checked out their website and he says it’s on the up and up.”
“It is,” Larry insists. “I even called them. Spoke to some sassy young lady on the phone. I’m telling you, Mike, you should go. It’s legit.”
“Yeah right,” he scoffs. “I don’t even buy lottery tickets. I definitely didn’t enter some competition.”
Diego turns the postcard over in his hands. It looks like junk mail. If he wasn’t obsessively looking for any sign of communication from Will, Mr Gorski probably would have thrown it in the trash without reading it. The prize details listed on the back are pretty strict. He has to pick up the keys to the lakeside cabin by Saturday night or the whole thing is null and void. If Mr Gorski wants to make it, he’d have to hook up the boat trailer tonight and head out as soon as he sobers up.
Diego is about to tell him to throw it away and forget about it – it’s probably some predatory scheme to lock the old guy into a timeshare – when he notices the return address. San Francisco. Twice in one day? Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe Diego’s not the only one Will is looking out for.
“Holy shit,” he says slowly, shaking his head in not-entirely-feigned disbelief.
“What?” Will’s dad demands, suddenly alert. “What is it?”
“I remember this thing,” Diego explains, making it up on the fly. “Someone down at the station was selling raffle tickets. For their kid’s school or to save the whales, who the hell knows? I told Will it was a waste of money but you know he’s a sucker for that bleeding heart kind of thing. He put down your details. Figured if he won you the trip, you’d let him skate on Christmas gifts for the rest of his life.”
It’s a lie but damn if Diego hasn’t convinced himself. It’s exactly the kind of thing Will would do.
Mr.Gorski takes the postcard back from him. He holds it with a reverence that’s almost painful to see. His eyes get misty and he stands abruptly, choking out, “I gotta take a piss.”
Diego downs the last of his beer and catches Larry’s eye.
“He has to go on this trip,” he says urgently. “I’m not saying Will’s not coming back...”
“But if he doesn’t,” Larry finishes for him, “Mike will always regret throwing his kid’s final gift back in his face.”
Diego nods solemnly. Larry buses his empty glass.
“He’s a hard-headed son of a bitch, but I’ll try my best.”
The Arrivals Hall is packed at Ezeiza International Airport. Diego mills around scoping out the crowd and trying to look inconspicuous.
A guy loitering by the vending machines catches his eye. He’s tall and wiry with floppy hair. He’s wearing a jacket that looks too warm for the weather, and sunglasses indoors. Diego does a second scan around the room and when his gaze lands on him again, the guy flashes a sheet of paper in his direction.
J. MARTINEZ is printed across it.
Diego moves toward him. He elbows his way past a tour group, skirts around a tearful family reunion, and by the time Diego reaches him, the guy looks a little antsy.
“Hi,” he greets Diego awkwardly. He has a German accent.
“Hi?” Diego replies, unsure.
In the painful moment of silence that follows, Diego realises has no idea how this secret agent stuff is supposed to go. He’s never even been undercover on assignment before, and this guy is giving him nothing to work with.
“The eagle has landed...?” he tries in quiet desperation.
Against all odds, the guy cracks a smile and lets out a warm, surprised laugh.
He hugs Diego suddenly. Diego tenses. There’s far more full-body contact going on than he would have expected (given what he thinks he knows about cold German relationships), but the last thing he wants is to draw attention to himself by shoving him away.
“Diego?” the guy whispers in his ear.
“Yeah,” Diego confirms.
“Oh thank god,” he mutters under his breath. He pats Diego firmly on the back a couple of times and releases him from his arms. “I’m Felix. Let’s get out of here.”
Diego shoulders his duffle bag and follows Felix’s lead. They move quickly but they don’t take the most direct route. Felix shies away from the nearest exit, plunging them instead into the middle of a crowd funnelling through the main doors. Diego might not have any covert ops experience but even he can recognise when someone is trying to avoid the security cameras.
Out in the multi-level parking garage, Felix pulls his hood up over his hair. Diego pops his collar and keeps his head down. He does his best to look forgettable. They walk side by side between the rows of cars, and without so many people around them, Felix’s shuffling footsteps become more obvious.
He isn’t limping, exactly. But there’s something pained about the way he walks. Felix keeps one arm wrapped protectively around his stomach.
“You doing okay, man?”
Felix gives him a sidelong look.
“I’m fine.” He shifts his jacket aside, without slowing down, and tugs up the hem of his t-shirt. It’s enough to flash the bandages underneath. He grins wryly. “Gunshot wound. Occupational hazard.”
Diego sucks in a sharp breath. If Felix is walking around with an injury that must have knocked him on his ass for a couple of weeks, then what the hell happened to Will that he’s been lying low for months?
He stops abruptly.
Felix gets a few steps further before he stops too and turns to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Will?”
Felix looks nervously over his shoulder. He lopes back up to Diego, hissing, “Not now.”
He slings one arm around Diego’s shoulders. If anyone’s watching, it probably looks friendly. Felix uses his hold to get Diego moving again, marching him faster towards the parked car.
The further they get from the airport, the more Felix relaxes. With one last glance in the rear view mirror to confirm they’re not being tailed, he makes a call.
“Ja?” a male voice answers on the first ring.
“Wolfgang, I got him. He’s here with me. You’re on speaker.”
“Any problems? How far away are you?”
“No problems,” Felix assures him. “We’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”
There’s a pause, as if Wolfgang is listening to someone else on another line. “Avoid the highway. There’s too much traffic.”
“Alright. And listen,” Felix adds. “I had three J. Martinez’s come up to me before I found Diego: a Javier, a Jesus and a Jose. They weren’t even brothers!”
Diego laughs. That explains so much about their awkward first meeting. Felix looks over at him and grins too.
He continues, “Tell Nomi not to use such a popular fake name next time, okay?”
Nomi?
“Nomi Marks?” Diego interrupts.
“Yes...?” Wolfgang confirms after a beat of silence. His voice sounds different: curious, more cautious, a little nervous.
“Nomi Marks, the chick on the run from getting her brain sliced open?”
“The one and same.”
“Will was looking into her case when he got suspended. Right before he...”
“Will saved my life,” Wolfgang says abruptly.
“Of course he did,” Diego mutters. Between looking out for Nomi, and apparently saving this Wolfgang guy’s life, it turns out rushing gangbangers to the ER was only the tip of Will’s Superman Complex.
At least these guys are attempting to repay the favour.
“I know we’re almost there and everything, but can I talk to Will real quick?”
There’s silence in the car and on the other end of the line.
Wolfgang’s voice is brusque again and he’s as business-like as when he first answered the phone. “The sooner you’re here, the sooner we can talk.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Wolfgang doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. He’s locking the door behind them. It’s obvious he’s serious.
The safehouse is pretty sweet, much nicer than any place Diego could ever afford, but the room they’re in is dark and empty. The blackout curtains aren’t just closed, they’re duct taped to the walls around the windows, sealing off any slivers of sunlight. Wolfgang stands opposite him, his face lit up by an LED lantern sitting in the middle of the carpet. Shadows settle under his chin and in the hollows of his eyes. The skin on the back of Diego’s neck prickles. There are campfire stories less creepy than this.
“Don’t say where we are or mention our names. Don’t say anything they could use to track us down.”
“I got it.”
“Whatever happens, don’t open the door.”
Diego doesn’t ask what might happen. Questions only get him increasingly bizarre answers. His fingers twitch reflexively at his side but even if things go seriously south, there’s nothing to grab. It’s not like Diego could pack heat on an international flight, and Juan Martinez certainly couldn’t.
“Let’s do this,” he insists.
Wolfgang closes his eyes and goes still. There’s an anticlimactic moment that seems to stretch on forever where nothing happens.
Diego hears it first: Wolfgang’s breath speeding up. His chest rises and falls quicker and quicker, and it sounds like he’s working himself into a panic attack. Diego reaches out to him. He touches him on the arm, to check he’s okay, to make sure he’s not going to pass out any time soon, and Wolfgang’s eyes fly open.
Diego stumbles backward. He looks like a different person.
Wolfgang is still breathing hard and now he’s shivering too. He peers around the room, staring agitatedly into the dark corners the lantern can’t illuminate. His pupils are so wide his eyes look like they’ve turned completely black and he can’t seem to focus.
He looks high as a fucking kite.
Diego shakes his head angrily. Of course. Of fucking course. He didn’t see Wolfgang take anything, mainline anything... but he must have. He could have done anything at anytime because Diego was distracted. He got razzle-dazzled by the pimped out house, and caught up in the stupid cloak and dagger ‘rules’ of what to do and say to make this ritual work. He bought into their bullshit like a gullible idiot because it lined up exactly with the kind of crap Will used to say, about connections and feelings and knowing things without knowing how.
Wolfgang is still twitching in front of him. His eyes dart around the room desperately like a sick, caged animal. Drugs are a hell of a thing. Diego needs to play along until he can figure out how Will got caught up in all of this.
“Wolf—” he starts before he catches himself. “Will?”
Wolfgang’s head snaps toward the sound of his voice. He leans forward and his eyes lock onto him with sudden, terrifying intensity.
“Diego?”
“Yeah, it’s me, man,” he says as soothingly as he can. “How’s it hanging? What’s going on?”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Wolfgang mutters. He runs his hands through his hair, pacing side to side. He’s doing an eerily good impression of Will freaking out. “This isn’t good. We shouldn’t be talking. They’ve seen your face now. They’ll come after you.”
“Don’t worry about me. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. It’s dark.” Wolfgang shakes his head. He knocks his balled up fist against his temple. “It doesn’t matter where I am, he’s in my brain.”
Whatever he’s on, Wolfgang’s distress is real and he’s mimicking Will’s mannerisms so well, it’s messing with Diego’s head. It’s like he’s watching Will have a breakdown in front of him.
Wolfgang keeps bashing his fist against his head.
“Gorski! Hey, Gorski, listen to me.” He grabs Wolfgang’s arm. He resists, weakly, and then lets Diego pull it down. “We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay. We can fix it.”
Wolfgang laughs. He laughs Will’s laugh. Will’s sad, humourless laugh for when everything has gone to shit and it’s either that or lay down and die. Diego’s stomach twists.
“There’s only one way to fix it. He knows you know that, Diego. He’s whispering it in my head. He won’t stop.”
“Only one way, huh? You talking about that hot new brain operation everyone’s dying to get?”
They’re practically chest to chest by now. Wolfgang looks exhausted and Diego’s hold on his arm is not so much keeping him from hurting himself as it is helping to prop him up.
Wolfgang laughs desperately again. “No, that only makes us easier to control. There’s only one way to get him out of my head. You need to destroy the source.”
Diego replays in his mind the CCTV footage Will had shown him before he disappeared. Footage of a guy who may as well have been a vegetable deepthroating a gun.
“No,” Diego snaps immediately. “Absolutely not. That is not an option.”
He crumples into Diego’s arms. Wolfgang? Will? Diego doesn’t know what to believe anymore, he just fists his hand into the back of his shirt and hugs him close. No one is going to off themselves. Not today. Not ever, if Diego can help it.
“You need to be strong,” he urges. “You can do this. You need to still be there when I get to you.”
“If I can’t—”
“You can.”
“If I can’t,” he murmurs hauntingly, “I need you to take care of my dad.”
“I’m ten steps ahead of you as usual, Gorski,” he says as brightly as he can, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “Any day now your dad is gonna be askingme to call him Pops.”
Diego doesn’t know how long they stand there, clinging to each other in the dark. Eventually, Wolfgang’s breathing evens out and he starts to pull away.
No one sobers up that fast.
Diego staggers backwards. He tries bracing himself against the wall but his legs won’t take his weight. He slides down to the carpet and blinks up at Wolfgang, still shrouded by the shadows.
“This is all for real.”
“Yes,” he says.
“This isn’t a drug thing or a cult thing or...”
Wolfgang barks a short, sharp laugh. It’s completely different to Will’s. “No.”
“That was really Will I was talking to?”
“Yes.”
“We need to help him before he does something stupid.”
“Yes,” Wolfgang agrees. “But how?”
He doesn’t know how long he sits on the floor of the darkened room, trying to figure this shit out. After a while, Felix sits down next to him. He sets a six-pack of beer between them.
“Here,” he says, handing Diego one and taking another for himself. “You look like you could use it.”
Through the open door, they can hear Wolfgang talking, holding a conversation with people who can only reply inside his head.
Diego takes a long, grateful drink. “You have no idea.”
“I don’t know,” he says, shooting Diego a small half smile. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”
“Yeah? You can’t...” Diego taps the side of his head. “...either?”
“Nah, that’s Wolfie’s thing.”
“How’d he break it to you?”
Felix shrugs. He pats his stomach gently. “I was so drugged up when he told me, he could have said anything and I would have believed it.”
“And now?”
“He’s had plenty of time to come up with a better story. Instead he keeps telling me he’s basically psychic. No one says that and expects to be believed unless they’re telling the truth. Besides,” he stares out at Wolfgang, standing in the hallway with his back to them, “he saved my life. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
Diego gestures to Felix’s midsection. “Those BPO assholes do that to you?”
“No, BPO doesn’t even know Wolfgang exists. Thank god.”
“So what happened?”
Felix looks him up and down. “I’ll tell you, but you won’t like it.”
“Why’s that?”
He avoids the question and says instead, “Wolfgang’s cousin, Steiner. He shot me.”
“Oof.” It’s bad, but Diego’s broken up worse family situations on patrol. “How come?”
“We stole his diamonds.”
Diego laughs incredulously. “You fucking with me?”
“No, I swear it’s true!” Felix takes another big swig of his beer. “They weren’t even Steiner’s to begin with but he wanted to take them and he was mad we got there first.”
It sounds like the plot to a movie, something with over the top special effects and tons of explosions. The kind of thing Diego would totally pay extra to see in 3D. “Then what?”
“Wolfgang blew him up.”
A laugh catches in Diego’s throat. It sounds surreal but Felix’s face is coldly, deadly serious.
“Fuck.”
“Ja,” Felix agrees sombrely. “Wolfgang blew up Steiner and shot his uncle before he could retaliate.”
Diego’s head falls back against the wall with a thump. “Fuck.”
Felix drains the last of his beer and lets the empty bottle fall to the carpet. “It’s all pretty fucked.”
Understatement of the year.
“You know I’m a cop, right?”
“I told you you wouldn’t like it.” Felix opens two more beers and passes one over. “The authorities are looking for Wolfgang. That’s why I picked you up today. Security is always tight at airports.”
“Sure.”
“I had to tell you. You’d have figured it out sooner or later.”
A week ago, if someone had offered Diego a deal with the devil, he would have said yes to anything if it meant saving Will. There’s no point in going back on that now.
“Is that how you’re bankrolling this place? Hot diamonds?”
“No,” Felix snorts. “The diamonds are long gone. Wolfgang fenced them for a fraction of what they were worth to get me fixed up. This is all Nomi. I don’t know how she did it, but she set it up.”
“Nomi Marks.”
Everything always seems to come back to her.
“You know what they tried to do to her, right?”
“I know,” Diego says grimly.
“They would have done the same to Riley if Will didn’t get her out of there in time.”
“And look where he is now,” he mutters.
“Will’s in the same place he would have been if he didn’t save her,” Felix says dismissively. “If one of them is taken, they’re all compromised. At least with his brain in one piece we still have a chance to save them.”
It’s hard to come to terms with, thinking of Will as a them instead of a him, as a collective made up of so many parts completely inaccessible to Diego.
“Will, Wolfgang, Nomi, Riley... how many of them are there?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Felix mutters. “Wolfgang doesn’t like to say. He thinks the more I know the bigger the target on my back.”
Diego thinks of the lengths BPO went to shake him down. It’s not easy to get a Chicago PD medical contract. They pulled some serious strings to bug his cell phone. “He’s not wrong.”
“He’s an idiot if he doesn’t realise I’m already in deep. Just knowing they are all what they are is dangerous enough.”
Felix’s face is flushed. His eyes are a little glassy. He’s probably had too much to drink already considering whatever medication he’s gotta be on for that gunshot wound but Diego cracks open the last of the beer and hands it to him anyway.
They clink their bottles together.
“I know one more person,” Felix confesses, leaning into Diego’s space to whisper, “Kala.”
“Kala?”
“Uh-huh.” Felix glances at the doorway again but Wolfgang has wandered out of sight. He shuffles closer to Diego, tipsy and companionable. “Wolfgang’s in love with her.”
“Oh god.” Diego rolls his eyes.
Will and Riley, and now Wolfgang and this Kala chick. Was there some guy on the other side of the world mooning over Nomi to complete the set?
“How does that even work?”
It’s mostly a rhetorical question but Felix cocks his head and smirks.
“The usual way, I guess. Lots of...” he makes the apparently international gesture for jerking off.
Diego wrinkles his nose. “With three, four people listening in?”
“He won’t care.” Felix laughs. “I’ve shared a flat with Wolfie before. Trust me the walls aren’t enough to drown him out when he really gets going.”
“Jesus,” Diego mutters. Wolfgang and Will aren’t exactly bad looking guys – a little more built than maybe Diego’s into but still. He can’t imagine what it would be like having direct line of sight every time one of them kissed someone or fucked someone or touched themselves; to never be able to close his eyes to it, because it was transmitted directly into his brain.
Diego’s dick would never not be hard.
He licks his lips. He presses the cool glass of the beer bottle against his temple and casts a look in Felix’s direction. Felix tips back his head to drink. His neck is long and lean, and his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. His hair falls messily over his eyes. He’s definitely more Diego’s type.
Felix catches him looking. He raises a speculative eyebrow. Diego doesn’t have to be in a psychic mind-meld with him to know Felix just read his mind.
There’s a couple of things the old timers down at the station repeat like gospel: never go out on foot patrol in brand new boots; it doesn’t matter how hot the waitresses at the Bluebird are, their breakfast special will give you the shits; don’t ever volunteer for protection duty because it’s goddamn boring.
Diego’s never considered what it would be like to be on the other side, to be the one being protected. All he knows is that after days of being cooped up indoors for his own good, he would give his left nut to patrol an empty but important hallway, or keep watch outside a strategically positioned closed door. At least he’d be doing something that made a difference. Scratch that: at least he’d have something to do.
As luxuriously as the house is furnished, there’s no internet here or cable TV. Felix and Wolfgang have cell phones that are no better than burners. It’s for everyone’s safety or so Nomi – via Wolfgang – had explained to him (and wasn’t that a mindfuck of a conversation to have?). Any communication between them online can be tracked and traced and used against Will. Why take the risk when they can communicate directly, brain-to-brain?
Of course that means any information Diego gets is filtered through Wolfgang. It’s not so much that he shuts Diego out as it is he has nothing to tell him. As far as Diego can tell, besides going on the lam, picking him up from the airport is the most action the other two have seen since Will went missing. Nomi figured out the minor details but beyond that, she’s been lying low too.
They’re all waiting for something to break the case. There’s nothing else they can do.
Back in Chicago, this is when they’d start drinking to pass the time but they already drank the place dry the night Diego arrived.
He’s sitting on the couch flipping between a local soccer game he’s not invested in and game shows he doesn’t know the rules to when Felix sits down beside him and steals the remote. He switches the channel impatiently. On screen, a guy wearing tight leather pants, and duel wielding pistols stalks toward a church. Neither of them will admit it, but Diego hazards Felix is as hooked on this telenovela as he is. Watching it has practically become their afternoon ritual.
He’s just about to kick in the door and shoot the place up when the hot nun comes out of nowhere grabs him by the arm. She tearfully tries to talk the guy out of it and they kiss. It’s smoking hot.
“If nuns looked like that in real life,” he says to Felix, “I never would have played hooky.”
“If nuns looked like that you’d have your hand in your pants all day. You may as well have skipped school because you would never have learnt anything anyway.”
Diego laughs but he doesn’t deny it.
“The guy’s not bad looking either.”
Felix hums a sound of agreement. “Yeah, but they’d never get together in real life.”
“Are you kidding me?” Diego looks at him incredulously.
“No, look at them. They’re so different. He’s a criminal and she’s a nun, for god’s sake. It would never work.”
A hail of bullets and spurting blood fills the screen. “I dunno man. She wouldn’t be the first person to fall for a bad boy.”
“That never works. She’d want to save him. He’d shut her out to protect her from his seedy world. It would pull them apart.”
“No way,” Diego counters. “She doesn’t want to change him. She knows he’s doing the right thing. That priest was a scumbag. She just wanted to jump his bones one more time before he killed him, in case the shit hit the fan. Come on,” he adds, because Felix still doesn’t seem convinced. “She wouldn’t abandon her vow of celibacy unless she knew he was a keeper. And you saw that kiss, you know she totally isn’t a virgin anymore.”
Felix laughs softly. He looks at Diego up and down, out of the corner of his eye. “Just because you want to fuck someone doesn’t mean you’re meant to be together.”
Diego licks his lips. Somehow he doesn’t think they’re talking about a TV show anymore. “Maybe not, but it’s a great place to start to find out.”
Wolfgang storms into the room. “He’s here.”
Diego doesn’t realise how close he and Felix are sitting until Felix springs away from him.
“Who?” he asks quickly, shutting off the TV.
He throws a newspaper onto the coffee table. There in black and white is a picture of a guy going by the name of Dr. Theodore Franklin. Current alias aside, it’s Whispers.
Felix picks up the paper. Diego leans in and reads the article over his shoulder. BPO has been funding the construction of a new genetic research lab. Whispers is slated to give a speech at the opening ceremony tomorrow morning.
Wolfgang says, “We have to get down there.”
“And do what?” Felix counters.
He has a point. It’s not like they have a viable plan to help Will, and going down there without one risks exposing them to BPO. But Diego understands where Wolfgang is coming from: what are the chances they’d end up on the same continent as the bastard, let alone in the same city? It’s too perfect of a coincidence to pass up. Or is it?
“How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
“Nomi looked into it. The lab has been in construction for over a year and Whispers, going by Dr. Franklin, has always been head of the Board of Trustees. If it’s a trap, they would have had to know we’d be in Argentina before we did.”
“BPO doesn’t know who we are,” Felix reminds him.
“They know who I am.”
“Diego Morales, yes, but not Juan Martinez. Diego Morales isn’t even in the country.”
“Okay,” Felix murmurs, thinking out loud. “We go down there. We blend in with the crowd. And then what? Confront him?”
“No,” Diego says firmly. He stares the photo in the paper, at Whisper’s weasel-y face and his cold eyes; at the man torturing his best friend. “Maybe Will had the right idea all along: we destroy the source.”
Felix inhales sharply. “What?”
Wolfgang looks at him appraisingly, and chuckles darkly. “Simple. Elegant. I like it.”
“What?” Felix demands again. “No. Wolfie, are you crazy? You’re already wanted and now you want to draw more attention to yourself?”
“What else can we do?” He shoves the coffee table aside with a grunt and flips up the corner of the rug. He moves aside the floorboards, pulling out a hidden cache of guns.
Diego’s eyes go wide. “The fuck...”
Wolfgang smirks. He clicks the sight into place on a sniper rifle and checks it. To Felix he says, “The longer Whispers is alive, the closer he gets to breaking Will. That cannot happen.”
“Will would kill himself before he let Whispers break him,” Diego spits.
“I know, and that would only make it easier for Whispers to pick us off one by one. None of us can survive without Will, not for long.”
“Okay,” Felix concedes. “But this isn’t like Steiner. You can’t go in there with a rocket launcher and make it up as you go.”
Wolfgang’s face goes blank. Diego is starting to recognise the expression. He’s conferring with the others. After awhile, Wolfgang says, “There’s a building directly opposite the courtyard where Whispers will be giving his speech. I can be in and out before anyone even knows where the bullet came from.”
“No way. I’ll do it.”
Diego reaches for the rifle but Wolfgang pulls it tighter against his chest. “Don’t be stupid, Morales.”
“You’re the one being stupid. If this all goes to shit and you’re the shooter, you won’t be able to hide from BPO. Your mind will just be one more way for Whispers to get to all of you.”
“And what about you? You’re a policeman,” he sneers dismissively.
“Yeah, I am. And it’s time Will got some justice.”
Wolfgang holds his gaze a second longer and then he nods, handing Diego the gun.
Diego scans the fake student ID and lets himself inside the building. No one pays him any attention as he makes his way to the empty freight elevator with a clarinet case slung across his back. Through his Bluetooth earpiece, Nomi gives him a running play by play.
“I can’t do anything about the cameras in here without getting security’s attention, so keep your head down and don’t touch anything.”
He tugs the dark ball cap down further and pulls his sleeves over his hands. He jabs at the elevator buttons through the fabric of his hoodie. He keeps his eyes trained on the ground.
Three floors up and Diego switches to the fire escape. The cameras are more sporadic here and it’s easier for Nomi to keep him off of them. Anyone tracking his movements from the security office would think he’d disappeared on the third floor, into one of the music practice rooms.
Instead, he heads to the roof.
“I’ve jammed the electronic lock behind you,” Nomi tells him. “You can get out but anyone trying to get up here with you will think the door is stuck.”
Across the street, the courtyard is set up for Whispers’s speech. Most of the audience has already gathered, milling around, drinking champagne. Diego can’t think about them and how much he’s about to fuck all of their days up. He can’t afford to think at all, in case he loses his nerve.
He ducks down low and sets up the gun mechanically. He trains the sight on the podium, and waits.
Time seems to stretch on forever and at the same time, it feels like he’s barely had a chance to breathe before Whispers’s face is in the crosshairs. Later, he’ll be shocked at how easy it was to pull the trigger.
As it is, it’s the nearest Diego’s ever gotten to an out of body experience. His limbs feel like jello and the ringing in his ears is so loud, it’s as if his whole head is vibrating. It’s only Nomi yelling non-stop in his ear that gets him up and moving again.
“Go! Diego, drop the hat, the hoodie, the glasses and get out of there. Now!”
He sheds everything she tells him to and gets to his feet. He doesn’t look back at the carnage.
Diego moves as quickly as he can without outright running. He can’t afford to draw that kind of attention to himself. By the time he gets back down to the ground floor lobby, the students have started to figure out something is up. A group of them huddles around their phones.
“Did you hear that?” one of them says to him in Spanish.
He shakes his head and tries to look as much like he’s not fleeing the building as he can.
“I think it was an explosion,” someone else says.
“No,” another one interrupts. “A car backfired, that’s all.”
They get distracted, bickering with each other and Diego slips out onto the street. He’s left his DNA all over the building. His hairs, skin cells, and sweat permeate the pile of clothes right by the fucking murder weapon but Nomi’s right, none of that matters as long as he can get out of the country. Fingerprints are easier to track over international lines but Diego was careful to wipe those away.
The police are quicker on the uptake than the students. Officers are already starting to canvas the neighbourhood. Up ahead, he can see them clearing the street, urging people to stay inside. He turns around and hurries in the other direction. In the distance, there’s a cacophony of rapidly approaching sirens.
He’s passing by an alleyway when someone grabs him.
Felix pulls him into the shadows.
Diego barely hears him say, “You did it,” before Felix’s tongue is down his throat. He throws his whole body into the kiss, plastering Diego back against the cold brick wall. It’s rough and messy, and Diego pours all of his lingering adrenaline into kissing him back just as hard.
From the mouth of the alley, someone makes a low disgusted sound in the back of their throat.
“Get out of here before someone shoots you,” a police officer spits at them angrily.
Diego grabs Felix by the arm. They run down the alley, moving further from the crime scene while the officer looks the other way.
Wolfgang drives them out of the city. They switch cars under a bridge and split up. Felix drops Diego at the airport.
“Go. You can’t afford to miss this flight.”
He really, really can’t. Diego leans in and kisses Felix again regardless. His heart doesn’t stop racing until the captain turns off the seatbelt sign, the plane cruising over the ocean.
Diego wakes up in Chicago with a tight knot of anxiety in his chest. He flicks on the TV, eating dry cereal by the fistful because everything else in his fridge has gone bad. He scans through the channels but Whispers’s death is never more than a passing footnote to the headlines. It’s an election year; no one cares about a murdered academic in Argentina.
That’s what they’re calling it when they mention it all: murder, not an act of terrorism. Whatever else happens, at least Gitmo isn’t going to be in his future.
Diego stares at his phone for as long as he can before he has to leave for work. Will doesn’t call.
“You look rough.”
“And what do you think you look like, the second coming of Brad Pitt?”
“Hey man,” Leibowitz says defensively. “I’m just saying, I’m not the one who had a two week vacation.”
Diego drums his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. The kid means well. “Yeah, I know,” he says eventually. “I’ve been dealing with some stuff, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What about you?” Diego asks to change the subject. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
Leibowitz starts to rattle off the intradepartmental stand-offs Diego missed. He tries to find it in himself to care, to get back into the groove of things again, but he can’t. It’s like driving around with a white noise machine in the passenger seat for how much Diego’s taking in.
Then, underneath what Leibowitz is saying, Diego starts to hear the low murmur of Nomi’s voice. He touches his hand to his ear instinctively. The Bluetooth earpiece is long gone, though, crushed in an Argentinean trash compactor. His heart rate speeds up and he has one wild moment of thinking this is what it must be like, before he gets his shit together and cranks up the radio as far as it will go.
Leibowitz stops midsentence.
“...disproportionately targeted, LGBT individuals haven’t been the only victims of the Biological Preservation Organisation. Anyone rich enough could pay to have the procedure done on their relatives without their consent.”
“By ‘the procedure’, you’re referring to a forced frontal lobe lobotomy?”
“That’s correct.”
“That chilling testimony is from Nomi Marks. She came forward in a press conference this afternoon with allegations the Biological Preservation Organisation has been engaging in gross medical malpractice. Authorities suggest the recent shooting of Dr. Theodore Franklin may be in connection to his work with BPO. And now onto the weather with Cassandra.”
Diego shuts the radio off.
“Fucking Nazis,” Leibowitz spits. “I mean, that’s basically what they are, right? ‘Biological Preservation’ my ass. It’s eugenics.”
“Yeah,” Diego murmurs, his mind reeling at the great big fuck off target Nomi has willingly put on her back. “It’s disgusting.”
“My grandpa was there, you know?”
Diego turns his head sharply to look at him. “Where? In Argentina?”
“Nah, man, Germany.”
Diego frowns in confusion.
Leibowitz rolls his eyes. “During the war? His unit helped liberate the camps. What’s wrong with you, Morales? You never crack open a history book?”
“Sorry,” Diego says, feeling like an idiot. “I’ve just—”
“Got a lot on your mind, I know.” He sounds a little exasperated but mostly amused. “You should stop whacking it to Veronica on Channel 9 News and actually pay attention to what they’re saying once in a while.”
“Oh, Veronica!”Diego grins lecherously. “Have you seen the tits on her?”
Leibowitz laughs. Of course he’s seen them; Veronica’s tits are legendary.
They’re heading out of morning debrief the next day when the Captain beckons him over to his office. Diego has just enough time to wonder if this is how it all goes down, if Internal Affairs and the CIA are waiting for him behind the closed door, when the Captain swings it open and Will walks out.
“Gorski?”
A giddy, incredulous laugh bubbles up in Diego’s throat. He jogs the rest of the way toward Will and wraps him up in a bear hug.
“What the fuck, man?” he mutters in Will’s ear.
Will hugs him back tightly. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Behind them someone wolf-whistles. It’s accompanied by a sarcastic smattering of applause. Without letting go of Will, Diego gives them all the finger.
“Okay, okay,” the Captain says mildly to the gathered men. “The show’s over. Move it along.” He turns to Diego and Will. “Break it up you two.”
Will pulls away and clears his throat. “Sorry, sir.”
“Morales, you have ten minutes to gab and then I want you out on patrol. Gorski, I don’t want to see you back here until I have a clean bill of health on my desk. Dismissed.”
Diego walks Will through the station.
“They’re letting you back on the force, then?”
“Yeah,” Will says with a grateful nod. “I’ll be on probation for at least six months but it’s worth it.”
“It’s good to have you back, Gorski. I missed you. You won’t believe the shit I had to put up with from these assholes while you were gone.”
Will laughs.
“I heard you got up to some pretty wild stuff yourself.” He looks at Diego meaningfully. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done...” he trails off. Quietly he adds, “You saved a lot of lives.”
“Yeah, well, it’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for me.” There’s a lot more he wants to say but it’s not really the time or place for that conversation. “Have you been to see your dad?”
“We went straight there from the airport.”
“I’m surprised he let you out of his sight again.”
Diego’s not trying to make him feel bad but Will cringes guiltily anyway. “Riley’s with him. His freezer is full of fish and she won him over when he found out she knows about seventeen million different ways to pickle it. She’s frying him up some herring for breakfast.”
Diego wrinkles his nose. “That’s nasty.”
“I don’t know,” Will says with a dreamy look in his eyes. “I think it’s sweet they’re getting along.”
Diego shakes his head fondly. It turns out love isn’t just blind, it clearly has no sense of smell either. “Buddy, you are in deep. But I’m glad you’re happy.”
They’re almost at the station door. In his peripheral vision, Diego can see Leibowitz loitering at a respectful distance. He’s about to say he’ll catch Will later when Will stops him with his hand on his arm.
“Hey listen,” he says suddenly. “Do you think you could do me one more favour?”
“Like what? Rob a bank? Overthrow the government?”
“Nothing so dramatic this time,” Will assures him. “I’m gonna stay at my dad’s for a while. Do you think you could put up with a houseguest for me for a couple of weeks?”
Diego frowns. Will’s seen his place. It’s not like he’s rolling in spare rooms. But if Will and Riley aren’t staying together then maybe Mr. Gorski isn’t as smitten with her as Will wants him to be. After everything that’s happened, Diego doesn’t exactly blame him.
“Sure, I guess, if Riley doesn’t mind couchsurfing...”
“It’s not Riley.” Will flashes him a cryptic smile and pushes his way through the door.
Diego follows.
It’s a cold and gloomy day and there, across the street, leaning against Will’s parked car is Felix. He straightens up when he spots them.
Diego’s mouth goes dry. He licks his lips. He raises a hand and waves dumbly in Felix’s direction. Felix brushes his hair out his eyes and grins. Out of the corner of his mouth Diego says to Will, “You still got my spare key?”
“Uh-huh. And don’t worry, I already changed your crusty bed sheets for you. You’re welcome.”
Diego punches Will automatically on the arm. He shies out of the way laughing, “Come on, man. It’s the least I could do.”
Behind them, the Sarge yells, “Morales! Hurry it up!”
Will looks back over his shoulder toward him, but Diego can’t tear his eyes off Felix. It’s not like he can storm over there and kiss him until neither of them know which way is up - not with the Sarge breathing down his neck – and Diego knows himself. If he goes over there, there’s no other way things would go down.
Maybe this sensate shit is catching because Will is totally on his wavelength. “You’d better get back to work, before both of us end up on probation.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Will jogs across the street and says something to Felix. Diego waves weakly one more time. Felix flashes him a small smile and gets into the car. Diego watches as they drive away.
When he can’t see Will’s car anymore, Diego turns on his heel and takes the stairs two at a time back up and into the station. He throws an arm loosely over Leibowitz’s shoulders.
“Leibowitz, my man. We need to stop and get some lottery tickets because today is my lucky fucking day.”