Chapter Text
April 1992
Herc isn’t a smoker yet, but by the end of this story, he will be.
The night is setting the scene: neon buzzing; last call long gone; bar door coughing them out. Herc sitting on the curb outside, shaking out a sore hand and wondering how to explain it’s not fair if you get hurt without me while Carver checks his teeth with his tongue and pats his pockets for Newports.
Head hung, elbows on his knees, Herc spits blood between his feet. “Think I overreacted?”
“Think you’re a fucking idiot,” Carver mutters, leaning against the brick wall near the door they just got kicked out of. Wrist swiping over his forehead, he scowls: he’s still bleeding. “Shit. This is gonna leave a scar, isn’t it?”
Herc feels like shit and rolls his eyes. “Well, personally, pretty boy, I’d consider it a favor if it does.”
Carver huffs but doesn’t disagree, because it’s true: a scar will look good on him. He’s one of those annoying fucks who’s so good-looking he’s annoyed by it, like his face is a gift he didn’t ask for – which is especially annoying to Herc, whose sex appeal requires a very specific audience and a generous sense of humor.
“Here’s an idea,” Carver says. “Next time you pick a fight with someone twice your size, you do it when you’re with somebody else?”
It hurts when he smiles, so Herc presses a thumb to his bottom lip and finds it dotted with blood. He wipes it on his shirt and looks over his shoulder up at Carver. “No can do, Carv,” he says. “You’re my favorite sidekick.”
Fingertips freezing with his next cigarette halfway free, Carver barks a laugh. “Unbelievable. I have to get between you and some brick shithouse so he doesn’t kill you for being a yappy little bitch, and I’m your sidekick?”
“Good point,” Herc says. “You’re more like my henchman. Asshole had to go through you to get to me, so that makes me the final boss.”
Carver scoffs. “That makes you Princess fucking Peach.”
“So what, you’re Bowser?” Herc scoffs back. “You wanna kidnap me and lock me in your castle? That’s fucked up, Carv. All you gotta do is ask.”
It’s only been four months since Thomas “Herc” Hauk met Ellis Carver on their first day at the police academy, but he already knows this look by heart: eyebrow up, lip curled, impatience unabashed. Dark eyes that can’t fucking believe you, lashes unblinking, too long, the grip of his gaze squeezing. Herc doesn’t know why he likes to bring it out of him — Lord knows Herc should be much better at walking on eggshells than he is — just that he does.
Maybe it’s because with Carver, the look is where it always ends.
The look doesn’t come with a cuff to the back of his head. It’s never bent Herc’s arm behind his back or pressed his cheek against a wall while he guts his brain for a reason why he doesn’t deserve it, and it’s never come with a sermon about blue blood and older brothers and dead mothers and how he’s an embarrassment to all of them. Carv just looks at him and leaves it at that.
“Fucking idiot,” Carver mutters again, cupping his hand against the wind and sparking a small, steady sun between his hands as he lights his cigarette. Exhaling smoke from the corner of his mouth, he holds out the pack to Herc like it’s a mint after dinner.
Herc looks at it and wants one for no other reason than it’s being offered. “Trying to quit,” he lies. Not his first lie of the night, but the only one he could pick out of a line-up and pin a motive to. Most of the other recruits smoke, and Carver in particular is a chimney, not to mention a few years older than him. Herc doesn’t want to look like he can’t keep up.
When Carver shoves the Newports in his back pocket, his hand shakes, and Herc realizes he’s probably hurt worse than he’s letting on. He should tell Carver he’s sorry for picking that fight. At least say thank you for trying to protect him. Should, sure, but that’s not the language he knows. Herc speaks damage control. Herc speaks triage. Herc speaks cover-up. He speaks broken bottles and beatings, not reason or apology.
So he glances back at Carver and asks the question he was raised on: “Anything broken?”
Carver doesn’t get a chance to answer, because that’s when the brick shithouse walks out of the bar with his friends. Pushing away from the wall, Carver strolls over to Herc and stands above him, nudging his hip with the toe of his boot. “Time to go.”
“Yeah,” Herc mutters, using the front bumper of a parked car to hoist himself to his feet. As far as beatdowns go, he’s had worse, but he got his bell rung pretty good. He’s woozy, his eye is swelling, his neck is killing him, and that’s with a BAC that would make most people sleep through a small house fire. “See you Monday.”
Clamping a hand on Herc’s shoulder, Carver glances at the asshole glaring at them like he’d love it if they tried shit again, then drags his gaze over Herc. He sees the unanchored sway, the glassy eyes, the bark not beaten out of him, and does a risk assessment.
Four years, two states, and a socioeconomic bracket separated Herc and Carver as kids, and that’s why they grew up learning the same language but two different versions of it. Like a couple of romance languages who abandoned Latin to speak for themselves, they share bloody root words and a violent grammar, and knowing one makes it easier to learn the other, but their childhoods gave them separate vocabularies. Carver doesn’t speak damage control and triage. He speaks mitigation. He speaks exit signs.
So before Herc can hobble away, Carver stops him. “Motherfucker, if I let you wander off right now, you’re gonna get your drunk ass killed, and that bottle to the head I just took for you will be for nothing,” he says. “Where do you need to go?”
Herc’s supposed tell Carver to fuck off. Crack a joke about him being queer. Stagger home alone, and if it feels bad or lonely, let it rot into anger, and find someone to take it out on. That’s the script. He knows his lines. He’s an understudy, and he’s been practicing for this role his whole life.
Thing is – he might be grandson, son, and nephew to two generations of police officers, but he’s also a little brother. He likes being looked after. Cared about. Protected. He’s too drunk to resist that yearning right now.
“Not far,” he claims, and it’s enough that he lied, isn’t it? Nobody said it had to be convincing, did they?
And it’s not. “Where?” Carver presses.
“Fawn and Exeter.”
“Little Italy?”
Herc nods. It blows his mind how well Carver knows Baltimore, like every street name is someone he grew up with and could tell you five facts about. Herc gets turned around even when he’s sober. “I can make it,” he says, but probably wouldn’t.
Carver knows. “All right. Let’s go.”
Without waiting to see if Herc puts up a fight, Carver steps off the curb and jaywalks, head down and heading east.
Herc, who would’ve headed west, follows.
And the next time Carver lights up a cigarette, he takes a drag.