Chapter Text
March didn’t talk much about life before the house fire.
Healy only ever learned snippets from Holly when she decided to share, and those moments were few and far between. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious, but he knew when something wasn’t his business, and this definitely was one of those subjects.
And so he was content to learn from the little snippets that trickled through daily conversations.
“Dad used to cook all the time,” Holly once said out of the blue, watching pasta noodles flip over and over in the boiling water, like she was seeing a distant memory instead. “At one point, he tried to cook British food for Mom, to make her feel more at home, I guess. I was his taste tester, ‘cause, y’know-” She gestured at her nose, and it wasn’t hard to understand what she meant. Healy nodded along, steadily chopping some vegetables as he listened.
“I don’t think he’s even looked at the stove since the fire,” Holly continued more quietly, and the conversation sort of awkwardly died after that, leaving the two in silence once more.
Healy wasn’t sure what to make of the surprise fun fact. Imagining March in the kitchen was something he found both foreign and natural. Maybe he wore a silly apron, maybe he hummed cheerfully to that loud jazz he enjoyed on the radio.
Maybe he smiled more easily, brows only ever pinched in concentration instead of near-constant stress, and maybe his eyes were all the brighter for it.
Healy wasn’t one to dwell on what-ifs and has-beens. Still, a sentimental part of him hoped that that March could return one day, at least for Holly’s sake.
A couple of weeks later, Holly randomly dropped another tidbit.
Healy was crouched at the bottom of the empty pool, attempting to clean up the countless cigarette butts piled there, courtesy of one Holland March. Said man was currently snoring gently on the living room couch, surprisingly not inebriated with his favorite whiskey for once, instead thoroughly exhausted from an almost cartoonish chase sequence after trying to question the wrong crowd.
In any case, Holly spoke quietly enough that Healy almost missed it. Her skinny legs dangled from the pool’s edge, kicking an uneven rhythm into the concrete sides. “It’d be nice to go to the pool some time.”
Healy considered it, and she wasn’t wrong. With summer rapidly approaching, perhaps that would be a good way to cool down. Healy wasn’t much of a pool guy, but March seemed to have an affinity with them, considering his “questioning the mermaids,” (whatever the fuck that meant) and that time he fell several stories off a building and by some miracle landed in the pool with only some bruises and hallucinated presidents to show for it.
“Yeah?” he replied, scooping another handful of cigarettes into the trash bag. Jesus Christ, Healy knew March smoked a lot but this was really something. At the rate he was going, he’d choke himself to death on the fumes one day. And maybe… maybe that was what he wanted. Fortunately Holly didn’t seem to notice the way he froze for a second.
“Mhm,” she said, staring up at the partly cloudy sky, “We used to go every summer before Mom died.” Her tone was what could only be described as an unsteady mix of matter-of-fact and fragile.
“Sure,” Healy carefully replied. “Once school’s out.”
“Okay,” Holly said simply. “Thanks.”
Then a short pause later, almost like an afterthought: “Dad once tried to teach Mom how to swim, but she never really got the hang of it.”
-
A while passed before Healy got any more insight into the Marches’ old life, probably another couple of months or so. He and March were out on a standard case, tasked to look for a missing wife, and it was about as cut and dry as their work tended to get.
Currently at a modest grocery store, March was busy interrogating the manager, who didn’t seem very forthcoming with answering his questions, or letting them see the security camera footage for that matter. Healy’s job, as usual, was to loom somewhat ominously behind him. Unfortunately the manager didn’t seem deterred. If only there weren’t customers milling about; Healy probably could’ve just let his fists talk then. Pity they were trying to be discreet. Then March pulled out an origami shirt of all things, folded out of a 20 dollar bill.
The manager stared at it unamused, but March cranked up his charm factor and just barely managed to chip away at his defenses, getting them the information they needed.
Healy glanced disbelievingly at the back of March’s head. His partner, seeming to sense the hole he was drilling into his skull with his gaze, turned with a cheeky grin. “Always works!”
“Didn’t you tell me it didn’t work with the Amelia case?”
“Damn it, you remembered,” March grumbled, lips downturned in a pout that was almost endearing. If Healy squinted.
“Where’d you learn to do that stuff anyway?” Healy asked, changing the topic.
“What, this?” March asked, pulling out a 10 dollar bill folded into a star this time. “It’s called, what was it, oregano, or some shit?”
“Why the hell are you asking me? You’re the one who made it,” Healy replied before tacking at the end, “Origami. It’s called origami.”
“Right, that,” March nodded along like he’d known that already. “I figured it makes people laugh, gets them to lower their guard when answering questions, right? There’s basically nothing to lose!”
“Sure, aside from, y’know, ten, twenty dollars,” Healy answered, “Anyway, as I was saying- where’d you go learning that anyway? From a book?”
“Well, um,” March’s smile took on an uncomfortable edge. He took a bit longer to answer that question, like he was considering lying but ultimately decided not to. “I used to do it with my wife. I think I fidgeted so much she thought I needed a distraction for my hands.”
Before Healy could get a chance to respond to that, the manager returned from the CCTV room, beckoning for them to follow. March peered in the dim room and quickly got settled. He’d briefly mentioned his time in the force, so his familiarity with the system was probably from experience, Healy thought. Upon rewinding the footage a bit, March lit up when he spotted the missing wife they were looking for. And as they continued the investigation, any intention of continuing the conversation was left behind in favor of defending themselves from a sudden barrage of gunshots. Figures that they would run into some gang.
What was it with their shitty luck? Maybe whatever unnaturally good luck kept March alive needed something to counteract it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction or some shit. Whatever. In any case, Healy cursed, pulling his gun from its holster and firing back, the origami discussion long forgotten.
-
Healy always wondered about the words perpetually written on March’s hand. It would only be natural to be curious, he reasoned. He refrained from asking about it, of course.
‘You will never be happy’
What a depressing phrase, not alleviated in the slightest by the little smiley face. The writing might as well be a tattoo with how often March refreshed it, using his surprisingly neat handwriting and a fine tipped pen.
One time Healy had stumbled upon him doing just that at the ass crack of dawn, eyes weary and sad, more than a few bottles of alcohol lying around.
“What does that even mean?” Healy had asked, dark circles matching his business partner’s. It was only because fatigue had worn away any semblance of common sense he had left that he’d even dared to do so.
March had looked up at him then, a haunted look in his eye, and the pen’s cap in his mouth like his usual cigarette. “‘S nothing,” he’d said, mumbling around the cap and refusing to elaborate further. And if he’d clasped the wedding ring around his neck like a prayer afterward, well, that wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.