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This northern european city is cold; let’s say it’s somewhere in Scandinavia. Of course it’s cold; it’s winter, and perhaps they think the winter will keep the protesters and the terrorists away, because they’ve decided (in their infinite wisdom) to have a summit here. Rick’s on guard detail, but it’s an easy assignment. No doubt Waller’s heard his news, but she’s not saying anything until he does. He hasn’t told June, yet. They still talk; their affection is easy and calm. Her baby’s due in the Spring. She wants him to be the godfather. Of the real father he knows nothing other than he’s not around. He feels light; when he turns back and looks down the streets he’s just walked he’s surprised to see his own footprints in the snow. He supposes this is what acceptance feels like.
June’s taken to sending him poems, because, she says, she only knows the language of ancient things. She can tell him a million different words for ancient bricks and pots but not the ones to tell him what she’s feeling right now, so she has to borrow them from other people. He skim reads them, enough to get the gist but not enough to absorb it. It’s just so many words, after all, and he knows he’ll be drowning in other people’s soon enough. Well meaning words from well meaning strangers. June’s not a stranger; she knows him best of anybody, but he’s taking a pre-emptive break from people and their words.
Two days into the conference and he’s coughing up blood; his replacement takes less than twenty four hours to get into the city. This was an eventuality that Waller had prepared for. He’s told to go home, but he ignores it. He wants to be a tourist in a foreign city for once, rather an invader. The city, in its turn, embraces him; all the faces are friendly, the architecture comes from a storybook, and he has his coffee bought for him by a sweet hipster chick who wants to practice her English. She takes him back to meet her friends - all of whom he has a decade on- to smoke his first joint. One of them promises to take him up country, to see the Northern lights. Nice long hike, through miles of cold snow - will Mr America be able to make it? No Mcdonalds out there. He laughs at that. The sweet hipster chick is snuggling up to him; his would be guide is on the other side, puts his handsome, shaggy head on Rick’s shoulder and smiles.
Rick makes his excuses. They’re all high and he feels like a cradle robber. So he makes his way back to his hotel; now a five star. Funny thing, an email came through, offering an upgrade. A small, boutique place that sits in one of the quieter streets in the central city, where concrete gives way to cobblestones. The proprietor's a gruff old woman who tells him that he should be thankful that the snow’s not bad for this time of year; his boots are shit and his coat isn’t warm enough. He tells her he’s not sure than getting a new one is worth the money; she looks at him with the strange mixture of annoyance and pity that she appears to treat all her guests. But she stops complaining about his late night comings and goings, and gives him her security card so he can get in and out.
The walk back is longer than he expected. The cold doesn’t bother him. He’s had worse and often without the promise of a warm bed at the end. The streets are empty and the night is beautiful. The light pollution isn’t bad and he can see the stars - he imagines how lovely they’ll look when he’s out of the city, hiking with his new young friends. The fact that there won’t be any soldiers peering down on him from rooftops is also a pleasurable thought. He’s managed to block out the undercurrent of paranoia present in the city; for once it isn’t his problem. He can feel the eyes on him, even now.
There’s a movement up on the roof - his eyes catch it, a flash of red light. Here? Now? Really? He knows who it is. Maybe something shifted in the political landscape and Waller needed someone - or perhaps he escaped. Rick doesn’t care. He’s well out of it now, and even Waller would baulk at bringing him back in. The thought of those hours spent in the company of violent criminals doesn’t feel like time wasted. None of it feels like time wasted. His life probably couldn’t be defined as “well lived” but he’s lived it and probably wouldn’t change anything. Not the violence, not the pain, not the stolen kisses and the ensuring self hatred. That was just part and parcel of the things he did. Probably not something they’d write about in the obituary, of course.
There’s no way to communicate this to the man on the roof. A red dot appears on his chest and Rick laughs. If Deadshot wanted him to be gone then he would be; is this some kind of warning or a tease? He laughs, knowing that the other man can see him. Then he waves, turns around, and keeps walking. The weed is starting to make the stars and the streetlights blur into each other; he’s hungry, so he goes into a convenience store and buys snacks. Then the hotel appears, and he is back in his warm bed, without much recollection of getting there. There’s another email from June, which he’ll read in the morning.
“Flag. Flag. Hey.” The harsh whisper brings him out of sleep; as soon as he opens his eyes, there’s a hand over his mouth and a cold barrel of a gun against his temple. It says something about him and Lawton’s relationship at this point that his cock gets hard. Lawton’s hand is ice cold against his mouth. Rick reaches up and pulls it away; with his other hand he pushes away the gun.
“What do you want, Lawton?”
No answer. Rick sits up, takes Lawton’s cold face between his hands, and kisses him. They’ve never kissed before. His lips are cold, and he’s tense. But he doesn’t pull away. It’s always been like this, Rick realises; him searching for tenderness, Lawton unable to give it. So when he’s pushed down and his hands pinned above his head, he’s not surprised. As is his wont, he relaxes into it. The rough handling is welcome, as is the heat that Lawton generates.
The nights here come in so quickly; even more, since they’ve spent all day in bed. Not talking, because what would they have to talk about? Rick feels it’s a lapse of professionalism on Floyd’s part. Usually his M.O would be to get the job done and get out. A thought strikes him; perhaps he is the job. Waller might be tying up a loose end. And she’s got a good cover story; soldier in his prime receives a rather pessimistic diagnosis and decides to shoot himself rather than face the indignity of hospitals and a potential slow decline. It would be disappointing if she thought so little of him; even at this stage, he’s got a fighting chance, and that’s all he’s ever needed. She knows he’s faced worse odds.
He goes out, gets them both coffee and pastries. Floyd’s still asleep. June’s sent him another email. Just an attachment; a blurry black and white picture. He can make out the tiny hands, clasped in fists. Closed eyes. The subject line: it’s a boy. He knows he’ll make it through to this Spring; just hopes that June won’t name the baby after him. There’s a movement behind him.
“That little guy yours?” Floyd sounds...angry, almost.
“No. But he’s June’s. That’s close enough.”
He turns to look at Floyd, who seems somewhat mollified.
“What’s with the tone?”
“I just don’t like guys who cheat on the mothers of their kids, that’s all.”
It’s another example of Floyd’s erratic morality; Rick opens his mouth to argue the point, but decides not to. It’s an argument they’ve had before, and it’s gotten boring. Besides, Floyd seems to be spoiling for a fight. So he shrugs and writes out a quick reply, hoping that the kid is as clever as him Mom or something. Floyd’s still looking at him, now angry again.
“What is this man? You’re too young for a midlife crisis. Your girl’s having another guy’s baby and you’re ok with this? You’re not out there playing bodyguard for some world leader? What’s going on with you?”
Rick looks at him.
“I’ve got -”
“Don’t say it. No. No.”
“It’s not cancer. It’s -”
“I don’t care.”
Still more anger. Why is he angry? It’s not like they’re friends, and you certainly couldn’t call them lovers, even as wrapped up in each other as they are.
“This isn’t some Fault in our Stars bullshit,” Rick says. “I’m not dying. I could have quite a decent chance of seeing forty.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, you know what they say about the good dying young.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, you did. I’m going to be feeling that tomorrow.”
Floyd is staring at him, clearly disbelieving.
“And what, you’re just accepting this?”
“I don’t have much choice.”
“I always thought you’d go down fighting.”
“Yeah, me too.”
This feels like a conversation he should have had with himself.
“If it was me-”
“Yeah, you’d put a bullet in your brain. But you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that to Zoe.”
In all of these weird, snatched encounters, he’s never mentioned her name. It’s always felt like the violation of something sacred.
“She’s your reason, right? Well, June and I aren’t...in love anymore. But she’s my reason. The baby’s my reason. I’m not abandoning them because of my pride. Sure, if it gets too much I might change my mind later. But it won’t be because I’m too proud to die in my own bed.”
Floyd is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the ground.
“I don’t want to deal with this.”
“Don’t, then. It’s not yours. Walk away. Go murder someone, it’ll make you feel better.”
Floyd doesn’t go. Instead he gets back under the covers, and motions for Rick to join him. It’s not tender and not angry. Instead, it feels hungry; Floyd devours him like a man half starved. Or a man not expecting to eat again.
Rick wakes up to find Floyd gone. Of course, he thinks. He has two more days left in this city; his friends from earlier in the week have told him they want to head north before things get too bad for hiking. He goes for a walk, gets breakfast, then comes back. The hotel owner grumbles at him about overnight guests in broken English. News doesn’t indicate that anyone’s been assassinated, so that’s a weight off his conscience. Finally, there’s June’s email to read. More poetry by the look of it.
“This is not Love, perhaps,
Love that lays down its life,
that many waters cannot quench,
nor the floods drown,
But something written in lighter ink,
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.
A need, at times, to be together and talk,
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces;
A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand,
And then find Earth less like an alien land;
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street.
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
Arthur Seymour John Tessimond.”
Jesus, what can you say to that?
Snow blocks the airports, keeps all those diplomats penned in, sniping at each other, paranoia growing. Someone does get shot, although Rick won’t hear about it until a week later. He’s up in the snow, his with his new friends. They’re good kids. The Northern Lights - he lacks the words to articulate what he feels when he sees them. He wonders if he can find something to send back to June, borrow someone else’s words. Pictures will never do it justice. He wonders if he’ll be able to take June’s little boy - due in Spring, safely named Matthew, after her father - to see this one day. Right now, though, it’s enough to just be here himself.
If he ever sees Floyd Lawton again, he’ll only need to say one thing:
Go see the Northern Lights. Take Zoe. It’ll be the one thing you do that I promise you you’ll never regret.