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The night is not entirely black. No, the night is made up of many muted shades, of many surprisingly light places and of their balancing shadows. It’s more like a muddle of deep amethyst, navy, pine, and pewter. House lights give a kind of weak fight against the muddle, their yellow haze an attraction to the insects of the night that do not sleep. Above all, the night is humid—so humid.
It’s two in the morning. Hange can barely walk, and Levi’s no better.
There are a few things that are entirely black in the night. Levi’s hair, like he’s a paintbrush dipped in ebony ink against a white-spackled navy sky. Hange’s brown eyes meld with their irises in this light, framed by somehow darker lashes.
He’s had much more than they have, but somehow, he’s the more stable person.
“The sidewalk’s wet,” mumbled Hange, tripping over their own feet in an attempt to walk without holding onto Levi.
“Sprinklers,” Levi reasoned automatically, tightening his grip on his partner’s arm. He may be the most wasted he’s been since college, but he’s not dumb. Just rather clumsy. In just a couple yards, he saw their house with that purple light bulb sitting in the light at the corner of their lawn. Hange had put that light bulb in last Halloween, and it was still surviving.
They stumbled up the pathway to their front door. Levi fumbled with the key as Hange flopped down onto the grass in front, no doubt getting the back of their already soiled shirt soaked with dew. After a moment more of fumbling, Levi got the door unlocked, but stared at his partner. He didn’t open the door.
Instead, he went to lay next to them, ignoring the way his formerly crisp white dress shirt clung to his back. The grass was surprisingly soft. When he and Hange had decided to move from their hometowns respectively and into this little cottage together, they’d travelled quite a few hours and definitely saw the results. Back at home, the grass grew in sturdy little spikes that reached for the sky and made walking barefoot into a chore unless you’d been raised there. Here, the grass grew in thinner spikes, and was more prone to moving than the other kind. This was the kind of grass that he could see having a picnic or two on.
He turned his head, staring at the person next to him. Hange always looked so peaceful when laying down to relax, giving them the illusion of someone who hadn’t just had an extremely rough day.
They turned their head to meet his eyes. “Look up,” they said softly between barely parted lips.
Another thing that was not entirely back during the night was the sky. No, the sky was anything but black. Against a hazy blue backdrop were thousands of little lights, glittering like shattered glass in the absence of moonlight. The sight took his breath away.
“I didn’t want to break code, so I couldn’t tell you about work at Kelsey’s,” Hange stated. Kelsey’s was the bar they’d gone to, and code was in reference to the oath that every medical practitioner took to not talk about their patient’s cases within means of others hearing about them. Drunk or not, Hange was pretty adamant about staying true to code.
He sighed. He couldn’t have told Hange about the results of his case this week because he simply preferred to keep private legal matters out of the public eye. “That case, with the man and that teenager, y’know that messy one? Finally got it resolved.”
“Oh?” Hange tore their eyes from the sky. “How did it turn out?”
“The teenager won, of course,” Levi replied, stretching his arms over his head. “She won from the start, but that dude kept dragging it out. Drove me insane until he finally ran out of excuses. Jury debilitated for about an hour until they finally gave him the word. I felt bad for his lawyer, though.”
“That’s so stupid… if you know you’re guilty, why drag it out?” Hange complained. “Why did you feel bad? He was just doing his job.”
“I felt bad cause he was a newbie and he got stuck with possibly the worst case you could get for a newbie,” Levi answered, returning his eyes to the sky. “Regardless, it’s resolved. They’re not assigning me another case until Wednesday though.”
“That’s a welcome break,” Hange answered. After a pause, they burped. “God, that’s the last time I have two Long Island’s in one night. This is gonna suck tomorrow morning.”
Levi grinned. “I told you not to do that. You’re the one who insisted.”
They shrugged. “I had to drown the ER out somehow.”
Levi sat up for a moment, watching the world spin as he did. He considered getting up and getting them some water, but decided against it the moment he found him head hitting Hange’s stomach. It was soft and rather unstable as he felt them laugh underneath him.
“Is that your way of drowning it out for me?” They asked once they stopped laughing. “It’s not working.”
He sighed, angling his head so he could meet his partner’s eyes. “No, but I do want to know what was so bad that you feel the need to drown it out. It’s been awhile since you felt like this.”
A flash of sadness crossed Hange’s eyes. “I started Monday night with a teenage boy who tried to kill himself. Tuesday, an adult female succeeded. Wednesday, I watched someone get denied right before their top surgery because their insurance had suddenly decided not to cover it. Thursday night, I dealt with a guy who got two sharpies lost in his butt for some fetish. And today? Another suicide, except that one died halfway through me giving them stitches. Didn’t tell us they’d taken their antidepressants and chased them with vodka until we examined his stomach.”
Levi took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Too much to process right now,” he admitted. “That’s shit. Was the last one a teenager too?”
“Yeah,” Hange flopped their head against the grass uselessly, as if trying to knock the memory out of their head. “She was a very pretty black girl. I wish you could’ve seen her hair, I’ll never understand how those girls have the patience to sit and have it braided like that.”
“They love doing stuff with their hair. You’ll dedicate any amount of time to doing something you love,” Levi smirked. “Even you and your experiments.”
Hange laughed, a little too much. “Even me and my experiments.”
“Let’s go in,” Levi said after some time of mulling over their stories. “Get some water in us.”
“I wanna kiss you though,” Hange suddenly whined, grabbing his hand and sloppily pressing their lips to it. “You’re much softer after a drink.”
“Everything’s softer when you’ve got alcohol goggles on, Four-Eyes.” He somehow managed to get up off their stomach and stand, using the stones separating the front planter from the yard as support. He managed to stand, holding his arm out for Hange to take. They took it, rather clumsily, almost taking him down as they stood up. Together, they made their way up the steps, through the front door, and into a house darker than the sky outside.