Work Text:
Spring, 199X
Lower Manhattan, New York City
Lights flashing through her plastic blinds cast a rotating shadow across her apartment wall like the blinker atop a cop car. It reminded her of work, following her home where she avoided thinking about that case or the other sitting on her desk.
NewYork City: the city that never sleeps; but she had to, at some point.
Neon lights, the sounds of sirens and traffic, voices of her downstairs neighbors arguing filtered through the air vent; sleep was hard pressed to come in a place like this.
She did her best to relax so it found her instead of chasing it down like her colleagues. Through alcohol, gambling, one night stands, the rare control freak (or, in one well known case, hyperfocused to near delusional pursuit of a respected citizen), they all found their way to relax after a long day.
Jill favored the bubble bath to mindless entertainment combo. Using the ambient light, she flipped to the next page of her pulp novel.
Her CRT TV flashed Channel 3, stuck on static from where the VCR tape had run through to the end. Tomorrow was her last day to return it to the video store.
She was too comfortable in her fuzzy bathrobe on the old, patched recliner to get up and turn it off.
Like most of her furniture, it was a sidewalk find. Nothing matched in her apartment - not the chairs to her round dining table by the kitchenette, or the recliner to the couch, dresser to coffee table. Her most solid piece of furniture was a cherry wood dresser that doubled as a TV stand; it was the only piece strong enough not to collapse under the weight.
Plastic blinds instead of curtains on the windows and posters tacked to the walls instead of nicely framed - it was a mismatched shoebox, but it was hers.
The analog flip clock on the side table rotated to 11:01 PM, stuck an hour off from Daylight’s Savings.
Jill stretched and yawned, setting her book face down on the coffee table to save her place. Her nighttime routine was multistep but leisurely done. It was another 30 minutes before she made her way to the “bedroom” side of the apartment.
Creativity was required in a studio; an odd L shaped nook running along the edge of the building housed her bed, just big enough for a queen frame. Plastic beads clicked against each other as she parted the curtain, flopped face first into a nest of color pillows.
Unlike her mom or her aunts, she didn’t use an eye mask. There was something comforting, knowing the city was alive around you. You were small in a crowd of millions, but you weren’t alone.
On the other side of the window, light reflects in a single sharp instance. Blink of settled darkness, then again, are two twin crescents almost glowing.
Jill sleeps soundly under the lights and sounds of the city; the unknown presence watches on.
---
Commuting in New York is busy, crowded with the din of conversation and the smell of too many people in a crowded space. Jill preferred to walk where she could, but work was too many blocks to book it.
Nonetheless, taking the fastest route was a mess of headaches and underground transfers. Not to mention the chance of a missed connection.
She takes the longer, more direct route (one train, no transfers) and runs her errands along the way.
Breakfast is fruit and a pastry bought off an older woman camped out under an awning two blocks from home. Empty milk crates, stacked, and a plank of wood make up her stand.
“You need a scarf, girl,” the woman scolds her as she counts the change. When you grow up in the city, your neighbors know you whether you want them to or not, and this stand had been in this exact spot since before Jill was born.
Jill shrugs with a rustle of plastic under her brightly colored jacket; spring is never that cold in the concrete jungle. “I’m comfortable.”
The woman scoffs and waves her off. “You, go. Catch a cold, I’ll not get you tea.”
Jill knows from experience that this was untrue; a regular so much as sneezes, the next day, there’s a thermos.
“Thank you, ma’am,” says Jill over the cacophony of the morning commute and walks on, dodging a bike hopping the curb.
In the next block is the video store, closed this early in the morning, but there’s a drop box for returns chained down next to the door. The bolded reminder “be kind, rewind!” in bubble letters is mostly covered by graffiti. Her movie from the previous night shifts and clicks against the others inside.
She jaywalks with the rest of the crowd past a grid locked intersection; someone turning from the one-way beeps, but it’s not like there’d be anywhere to go.
It’s in the next block, dodging bodies and looking for a trash bin to throw out her rubbish, that she feels something shift.
There’s been a sense of attention on her since she woke up that morning. Common, in the city, with no shortage of people, moving from place to place, but Jill hadn’t made detective in her 20s without situational awareness.
The hair on the back of her neck rises and gooseflesh breaks out on her arms. It’s like she’s under a microscope, every small movement watched and scrutinized.
Or frozen under the gaze of a predator.
Jill can hear her heart beat in her ears. The paper wrapper from her breakfast falls into the trash bin in slow motion.
But nothing truly stops in New York City; someone bumps her shoulder in the crush of the commuters, muttering disparagingly under their breath.
The feeling leaves as quickly as it came.
Jill checks the rooftops, the side walk, the street, for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. A sea of people, someone shouting the news, her reflection in a bus window as it wizzes past - all steady, all normal.
She steps back into the rhythm of the crowd, jacket wrapped tighter around her.
---
“Say that again, Chief?”
She makes it to work on time and ready for the day only to hear the most outrageous request.
Their chief is a shorter black man with a receding hair line; when he coughs into his fist, the fluorescent lights reflect off the badge hooked into his button down pocket.
“Take Orcott his paperwork, would you?”
Jill signs and leans one hip heavily back into her desk hard enough the chair thumps from impact.
“He’s in the hospital on medical leave,” she points out. After getting shot on duty two days again; they’d had to rework the roster and she’d been lucky to keep her day shift.
Chief harrhumphs. “Perfect, then he’s got free time.”
Jill tries again, reaching from another angle, “Isn’t this against union policy?”
The chief gives her a measured look. “Cut the crap, detective.”
He pointedly looked over her shoulder at Detective Leon Orcott’s monstrosity of a desk; night shift put his paperwork away for space but they were running out of banker’s boxes.
She sighs. “I’m not going to be able to carry all that.”
“Not all of it, just this case’s worth. We need it by the end of the week.” He flaps a manilla envelope at her. “Case number’s in there, if you can find what he’s put together.”
At least he wasn’t making her dig blind.
The state of the boxes, though… they looked… sticky and dusty at the same time. Like digging through grandma’s attic.
“Another thing,” the chief said, his no nonsense tone clearly telling her to control her face. “Count D left his fancy tea set. Return it too, would you?”
Went unsaid that they would likely be in the same place (the count dropping by the office for tea; visiting his bedside while he was unconscious from a bullet wound; putting up with Leon kicking down his door without a report filed for harassment, tresspassing, or the host of potential charges ending in a restraining order. Count D had a case, but he never used it.)
Jill resigned herself to the worst shift type - a fetch and carry day.
Before anything else, she reaches into her draw and pulls out plastic glovers usually used to collect evidence. There is no way she’s touching that stack with her bare hands.
---
Large letters in solid yellow embroidered on her jacket’s back “NYPD” give her space on the subway. While less crowded than rush hour at 10am in the morning, there were still people.
She’d gotten a tote bag for the papers and a plastic take out bag for the tea set, both weighing down her free side. It felt like a waste to cover the gorgeous wood carvings of the box that housed the tea set, but there wasn’t a handle to carry it around. She could vaguely see the impression of birds, beasts and vining plants through a series of red “Thank yous” on the bag’s outside.
The subway slowed as it approached the next station. People got on, people got off, like the flow of a river.
Something shifted with the click of the doors closing.
Eyes on her, deep and attentive as this morning.
Her grip tightened around the plastic handle, knuckles white. She shifted her stance to be more secure, ready to fight or run, whichever it came to.
In the reflection of the blacked out subway wind, she sees a small glint of unnatural movement, twice in succession, almost like the light had bounced back.
Like eyes glowing in the dark.
She tilts her head slightly, breathing slow and controlled through her nose.
Through the crowd, a tall and lanky figure with wild, matted hair looks back at her. Mirrored aviators and unruly facial hair hide his expression; it’s too far away to see herself reflected, but from the way he’s standing, the body language and intent, it wouldn’t be that way for long.
He slips his way around the first few commuters with greater dexterity than his size suggests. He ignores all other passengers, focusing on her.
This isn’t her first stalker, but it’s a first not to recognize the person - a former perp, informant selling her out, or a jilted ex.
His facial hair moves like he’s saying something, but she can’t see his lips to read them.
She let go of the handle and grasped the upper railing for support as she slowly backed away towards the doors.
Experience helped her keep a cool head. Despite his movement through the subway car, no one had reacted to his presence, not even in the looking-without-looking way. They’re focused on their newspapers, books, conversations, or own thoughts; no backwards glances through the windows or pointedly looking away.
This is not the type of encounter to be a set up - too many people, too much to chance - but it was unusual enough she was grasping at what to do next. Unlike some of her coworkers, she wasn’t the type to pull her gun, or even badge, unless absolutely necessary. The jacket was usually enough to buy in or leave space when needed, socially.
He was within 12 feet by the time she was next to the doors. She raised her bags to switch her to her nondominant hand for more mobility for whatever came next, and he stopped. Froze, even.
The stranger’s nose twitched and his face twisted in a grimace, like he was smelling something unpleasant.
She kept her arm raised, tote and plastic bags at shoulder level cutting off the circulation at the wrist.
He didn’t move at all
The subway slowed down to turn a curve, brakes squealing loudly, and the lights flickered, not fully out but dark as long as a slow blink.
They flickered. Her eyes readjusted as the fluorescents came back on fully,
He’d disappeared, as if he’d never been there in the first place.
Jill lowered her arm.
The train slowed to a full stop at the next station, announcing the destination and transfers.
She stumped back into an empty seat by the train door, giving room to the exit and entry around her.
What the hell was happening?
---
Subway versus the hospital, both were loud and crowded but healthcare gave an air of ordered chaos rather than lawlessness. The nurse at the desk gave her quick, efficient directions and Jill moved on, no one questioning her as she took the elevator up a few floors to the inpatient wing.
The cheapskates at the city had even splurged for poor Detective Orcott to have a room with a view, two beds but technically private with no one else taking up the second bed. All this from the chief’s complaints and watercooler talk.
If she was, god forbid, shot in the line of duty would they go to the effort for her? (She pointedly doesn’t think about the man on the subway.)
Jill is not one to knock politely.
“Orcott, I’ve got a gift for you --” she sing-songs, slamming the door open.
Leon chokes and drops his cigarette out the open window. He’s lucky he didn’t fall out himself, unsteady on his feet and leaning out and over like that.
She laughs at the caught expression on his face. “Living dangerously here too, huh?”
Leon swears under his breath and shuffles away from the sill. “Nurses ain’t letting me smoke, alright?”
“I thought the department could at least get you into the smoking section.”
She walks over and dumps her bags on the visitor’s chair, one of the ones with scratchy fabric and wooden armrests, half made for torture and hell to sleep on overnight. It was softened by a silkened throw blanket draped over the back.
“Har har.” Leon shakes out another cigarette from his pack. It’s a low tar variety, not his usual, but likely what was available from the vending machine downstairs.
She perches on the edge of the best and leans back, crossing one long leg over the other.
He flicks at his lighter, only to turn up sparks, and curses softly under his breath.
“Need some help?” she asks, already reaching into her breast pocket.
He snorts and tries to lean over obligingly, but winces at the movement.
“Stay right there, handsome,” she teases with a wink.
Matches with the name of a dive bar on the back strike a flame easily. He offers her the pack, but she shakes her head; she only smokes occasionally, and never if she’s on duty.
He huffs another laugh and ends up in a coughing fit, smoking trailing from his cigarette.
“Careful or you’ll set off the fire alarm.”
He jerks the cigarette out the window in a flash.
Once he’s done, she settles him back on the bed with minimal complaints that he could do it himself. That bullet really took a lot out of him.
“Damn, it’s so fucking cold in here,” he complains. She’s still got her coat on and can’t tell, but grabs the throw off the chair regardless to drape over his legs. He looks at it with great suspicion. “Ah, hell, not that…”
“It’s all we’ve got, unless you want to call a nurse,” Jill shrugs.
Leon scowls, “He left this here to taunt me, I just know it.”
So the blanket did belong to Count D. Telling, but in what way?
As much as Jill loved a good mystery, her colleague’s personal life was none of her business. She’d tried, and failed, to make sense of their cat and mouse relationship; though really, it felt more like the count was making Leon chase his tail than a true Tom and Jerry run around.
She pointed to the bright red call button with a raised eye brow and he shut up.
“What did you bring me, anyway?” Leon asked with a half hope of some entertainment.
Jill turned the table tray over his lap and dumped out the contents of the tote bag. His face fell at the official police logo on the papers.
“Damn it, paperwork?!”
“No one can escape,” Jill grinned with all her teeth. “With a case this high profile, guess when it’s due?”
“I’m on med leave!”
“You’ve got til the end of the week, pal, get to it.”
“You have no mercy.”
Jill shrugged. “Blame it on the chief.”
No one liked paperwork, but Leon was notorious for putting his off until the last minute. They were slowly integrating into a virtual system for all reports, but anything with a history more than a few months old was still tied in paper copies.
Leon made unhappy murmurings but picked up the papers regardless and began to read through them.
She asked, to check, before he was too absorbed in work to answer, “Do you think Count D will be back today?”
“No,” he said shortly. “He was here early this morning, then swanned off to an appointment with the mayor or some shit.”
“I see.” Could she leave the tea set in the hospital or would that be too disruptive for the staff? It wasn’t a lost and found, after all.
“Why’re you asking?” Leon looked over the top of the sheet of paper suspiciously.
“He left something at the precinct,” she said, not elaborating to hopefully stave off his switch being flipped.
But Leon was already getting worked up. “Alright! Score! What’d he leave? A suspicious baggy, incriminating receipt?”
Jill smacked her forehead, annoyed. “He left the tea set. You know, from when you had tea time like two little girls at recess.”
“Hey!” Leon protested. “That was his idea!”
“Regardless, he left it and we need to return it to him. Like upstanding citizens who set a good example for the common man,” she said in exasperation.
“Count D’s no common man,” Leon grumbled.
Jill flipped her long hair over her shoulder and smirked. “Of course not. He’s a gentleman.”
Leon let out a choked sound of outrage.
“Stop working yourself up, you’ll pop a stitch.”
Leon slammed his fist into the table, scattering papers. “I’m fine!”
“You’re really not.”
Leon had nothing to say to that.
---
Leon gave her the address of Count D’s shop and the throw blanket to “return that fucking thing too, will you?”
Chinatown was familiar to Jill in a nostalgic sort of way, ever changing but always keeping the same spirit since she was young. She lived a a few neighborhoods over, now, but still came back when she could.
Count D’s shop was new but well established.
Down a set of stairs under a string of lanterns was the door.
She knocked politely, and waited.
No immediate answer.
She knocked again, and waited.
Another long moment of still silence.
She tried the knob, and it turned, the door opening with a soft creep of the hinges.
“Hello?” she called into the shadowed hallway. While the outside was well lit by the afternoon sun and illuminated signed, the inside was dim.
Jill went inside and down a set of stairs, careful of her steps. Times like this, she wished she carried a handy bag with a flashlight.
A half curtain obstructed the entrance from view. She heard voices behind it.
“...had no idea, really, my dear,” Count D’s smooth voice reassured.
There was a pause and no reply, but he continued as if there had been.
“Are you quite certain?” There was an edge of slight exasperation in his voice, as if he couldn’t understand the decision but he would respect it regardless.
“Sorry to barge in,” Jill said, announcing herself and pushing aside the curtain. “The door was open.”
Count D sat with his back to her on one of the elegant antique couches of his foyer. There was no one else there, at least of adult height that she could see.
He turned and smiled, calm and enigmatic. “That’s quite alright. What brings you here, officer?”
She smiled back. “Detective, actually. I’m here to return some lost items.” Jill raised the bag with the tea set and blanket.
Count D stood, hand cupping his cheek. “Oh my, thank you very much. That’s gracious of you to come such a long way.”
“It’s no trouble,” she reassured him.
He really was so nice to look at.
“I hope I’m not interrupting something?” she asked, coming fully into the room.
“Not at all,” Count D replied. “I was correcting something quite simple.”
“I see,” she said politely, turning her head.
On the couch was a pile of blankets not unlike the one from Leon’s room. Spread across them was the fluffiest cat Jill had ever seen. It blinked up slowly at her with bright yellow eyes, as if it was peering into her soul.
“Oh, you’ve noticed him, have you?” Count D said, amused. “This young man came in just today.”
She set her bag on the table and moved over to the couch as if entranced. The cat batted at her hand with a large paw until she was petting his head.
His fur was long, but matted, as if he’d spent a lot of time outside unable to groom himself. Under the fluff he was thin as a rail; she could feel the hard edges of healed scars, too.
“Poor thing,” she whispered, tearing up in sympathy. She had a weakness for a sob storey, animals included.
“He is in need of a home,” Count D said softly. It carried like smoke, or the strong scent of incense, throughout the shop.
Jill turned to look at him, pulling her hand away. “I’m not sure-”
The cat meowed plaintively, and she looked back down. He was giving her the biggest eyes, proud, not begging, but saying silently, “I chose you.”
Jill’s determination wilted. “Can you tell me more about him?”
“He came in just today. As you can see, we haven’t had the time to groom him.” Count D gesture with a manicured hand. “Something of a mix, a bit of Jeccille, a bit of Maine Coon.” He reached over to pat the cat on the head, who hissed unhappily and swatted at him without claws. “Very territorial, as you can see. He’s quite a bit more relaxed with you here.”
“Where is he from?”
“Local, I imagine. He’s certainly not from too far away.” He sounded like he was holding back a laugh.
“I see. And he’s up for adoption?”
“Quite. Though I can assure you, he’s quite healthy.”
When you get a cat, some say it’s fate - commonly known as the cat distribution system. (Sometimes, it needs an extra small bit of help).
---
It was a good thing her furniture was second hand. Hardly anything survived the claws of Meowinardo DiCatprio.