Mike Logan was used to walking around his own apartment naked. He had never quite understood people — like Bobby — who wore clothing of some kind almost twenty-four hours a day. Usually it was pure comfort, a sense of being *home,* owning his own terrain and to hell with anything he didn’t personally care about; there was nothing erotic, in Mike’s opinion, about nudity per se.
Usually. Tonight his body was glowing diffusely, and his genitals felt warm and heavy as they brushed against his thighs. He felt air moving invisibly over his skin, over the short, dark hairs on his limbs, his chest, his crotch, cooling the water that still speckled his skin. It was 7:48 on a Saturday morning, and Mike was exhausted, with a bone-deep tiredness that exerted a constant, not entirely unpleasant, pressure on him to lay the fuck down and give his overextended body a break. And here at the same time, his nerve endings were moaning softly, breathily, fresh lust pricking his skin like the bristles of a coarse wire brush.
Dammit, how could Bobby look so insultingly peaceful, asleep in Mike’s bed?
Mike let the towel drop in the floor when he finished drying his hair. When he turned out the light in the bathroom, he could see nothing distinctly. In the grey morning light coming thinly through his west-facing window, Mike could see that there was a man in his bed, but it was memory and not eyesight that fondly filled in the details.
The details of Bobby Donnell. Muscular, but with a fine-boned grace that made him seem thinner and more delicate than he was. Creamy skin marked with fine, soft black hairs, a handsome contrast that Mike had never seen except on a pure-blooded Irishman. That matinee-idol jawline, square but not stubborn, its severity tempered by its juxtaposition with lips that were silky and expressive. Right now, this morning, he knew Bobby with perfect intimacy. Fuck it; every *right now* with Bobby was letter-perfect. Funny how a streak of right nows didn’t exactly add up to a perfect life.
*No. Christ. Don’t go there, Logan, you masochistic bastard. It’s the weekend. It’s all good.*
He was just now getting over the tension headache brought on by the hassle of talking Bobby into coming back to New York – which you wouldn’t think would be one of the twelve fucking labors of Hercules, but Bobby had a way of twisting reality. For almost two months, his dark, tranquil voice had filled Mike’s nights, Mr. Bell’s marvelous invention bringing him tantalizingly, excruciatingly near in sound, though so far away in the flesh. For two months they had shared between them the El Dorado of vacation time, the question hanging unspoken as a backdrop to every reluctant goodbye: *When can you come back again?* They had fallen into the habit of blithely promising each other the moon, all conditional on that answer. *When I can get away — when I come to New York — when I see you again --*
But that was Bobby’s influence on the relationship. Bobby was the romantic, the one who tilted against windmills, the one who waited for the perfect moment. Mike finally had to take a stand, just flat-out say, "Come this weekend." He couldn’t, he couldn’t, of course it was impossible, obviously he was insanely busy, soon, next month sometime, a whole week, two days wasn’t enough anyway. But Mike held his ground. It had been too long already, their words reaching for each other, Mike living his nights in this fantasia of intimacy, sending confidences he hadn’t even known he was keeping out across the empty spaces that lay between the two of them, and waking in the morning tired and cold and lonely. He needed Bobby, and more than the sound of his voice, more even than the certain knowledge he had of what kind of a man Bobby was. This weekend. I can’t leave town; I’m on call. You have to come here, Bobby. This weekend. You have to.
He had arrived almost twelve hours ago, and it had been like the first time they’d touched, like being forged together by their own heat. Seven weeks of separation had created a need that they had no choice but to find the stamina to meet, and other than a late-night trip to the grocery store to fortify themselves with a weekend’s worth of food, they had not allowed distance to have even the slightest power over them. When they were too worn out to fuck anymore, there were other ways of maintaining the contact — Bobby’s perfectly-manicured hands roaming Mike’s back, Mike’s teeth gently worrying at Bobby’s earlobe. They breathed in tandem, their hands slipped on each other’s slickened skin, they sucked so hard on each other’s tongues that it was almost painful, sometimes when they were overwhelmed by it all they found themselves laughing breathlessly to blow it off again. It was great sex, and already Mike could tell that it was more.
Ever since their first date, which had really been nothing more than five days in Bobby’s hotel suite, periodically dragging his ass out of bed to go to work, there had been something solid about the two of them, something almost tangible. More than Bobby’s utterly unjust natural beauty. More than the way he could keep Mike up all night, lighting up the city all the way from Boston with the white heat of his intellect. Maybe it was the way he got more polite when he dug in his heels and got stubborn, or the way he objected in court — "ob-*jec*-*tion*" — three separate words, as if Jack’s every iffy statement was the most appallingly offensive thing he’d heard in all his years on the job. It could be the way he couldn’t help breaking into laughter when they tried to have phone sex, or the security cameras he bought for the parking lot of his church, or how he laced his fingers behind Mike’s neck when they kissed.
Man, the way Bobby Donnell kissed. He took over Mike’s body, the slow motions of his lips and tongue controlling everything, from the tingling in the top of Mike’s head to the curling of his toes. He reduced Mike to begging, starting with the inside and working out. Sometimes it even broke the surface, and Mike heard his own voice from twenty storeys overhead, saying quiet, inane things like *aww, Bobby* and *so good, the best* and *c’mere, Bobby, don’t go.* Bobby had this way of letting him talk, freeing Mike’s lips to shape his name over and over, without letting Mike remember that he ever once broke the kiss.
Fuck this. Bobby was not sleeping until noon, not on the clock.
Although Mike weighed significantly more than Bobby, he was careful and precise, even graceful in his athletic way. He moved slowly onto the bed, disturbing the mattress a little, but not enough to wake his sleeping lover. Stretched out on his bed with his toes to the headboard, Mike rested on his elbow, enjoying the view. Bobby, dove-white against even whiter sheets. He brushed the tips of his fingernails back and forth over Bobby’s thigh, then kissed the path his fingers had traced.
Mike’s fingertips found their way across the top of Bobby’s leg, tracing the shape of the muscle, finding the pulse high on the inside of his thigh and pressing a finger gently against it. He lowered his head, feeling faintly drunk on the scents of cum and sweat caught in Bobby’s impossibly soft, black pubic hair. Bobby Donnell. So fucking gorgeous he could break a Promise Keeper’s heart. Even Lennie noticed; what was it he had said the morning Mike swaggered into work after his first night with Bobby? "Bagged your pretty Boston lawyer, didja?" Pretty Bobby Donnell, Lennie still called him. Everyone did, everyone who knew about Mike’s affair-turned-relationship.
Pretty, hell. He was devastating, leagues beyond any other lover Mike had ever had, and Mike could afford to chase a better class of person than most. Mike pushed his head lower, feeling his ears ring in rhythm to the blood his fingers could feel thudding through Bobby’s body, just under that delicate skin. The hair was like silk, not harsh at all against Mike’s moistened lips, and he opened his mouth to moan helplessly against Bobby’s groin. Bobby stirred, then stilled, his breathing deeper than ever. To hell with that.
Mike opened his mouth wider and drew it, wet and slow, along the length of Bobby’s soft dick. He eased Bobby’s legs farther apart and shifted his own body so that his shoulders were squarely over Bobby, his elbows on either side of Bobby’s hips. Gently, he scooped his fingers under Bobby’s dick and lifted it, taking it slowly into his mouth as it twitched and began to enlarge. Only slightly erect, it was easy to close his mouth around it, and Mike’s heart thudded wildly in his chest at the sensation of holding Bobby’s penis completely inside the well of his mouth as it hardened.
Bobby squirmed against the sheets, just as he was becoming hard enough that Mike had to ease off, leaving the rising shaft of his dick glistening with Mike’s saliva and concentrating his energies on the head. He couldn’t tell if Bobby was awake or asleep, only that his legs were quivering a little, his breath coming harsher and deeper. Mike wrapped his thumb and forefinger around the base of the shaft, his tongue pressing in, firmly and quickly circling the rim of the head.
Suddenly, Bobby’s back arched, and Mike set his free hand against Bobby’s stomach, pushing him back down. He ignored the weak groan and even the gentle palm that glided across the back of Mike’s head, maintaining his steady exchange of tongue for kiss, kiss for tongue. "Jesus, Mike," Bobby’s voice said, after clearing his throat twice, "do you know what time it is?"
Deeply unromantic point of view, especially from Bobby. Thankfully, his actions were much less draconian than his speech, as Bobby turned his head, rubbing his stubble-textured cheek against Mike’s leg. "Mickey, lover, you’re too good to me. You get the gold star for the day."
He smiled around Bobby’s dick. Mikey, a bunch of the guys from the precinct called him, and Claire, along with a handful of ex-girlfriends, had been known to pull a Michael now and then. Mickey, never. For the rest of his life, he knew that name would put him in mind of the taste of sex on Mike’s lips and the feeling of his own erection pressed flat against the smooth, hard muscles of Bobby’s chest as they both squirmed and scraped against each other, fighting down uncivilized noises of pleasure.
As his lips rose up Bobby’s dick and dropped back down toward the base again, Mike could feel his own erection roaring for attention. Slowly, lazily, he rotated his hips, nudging it harder against Bobby’s chest and shoulder. With a little chuckle, Bobby let the backs of his fingers glide up Mike’s ass, his knuckles coming to rest snugly in the small of Mike’s back. The last thing Mike was expecting was to come this quickly, but somehow just as Bobby was shuddering and breathing the chain of *yes, yes, yes* that always came just before Bobby did, Mike felt the orgasm knife through him without warning, leaving an unbearable sense of relief behind, replacing a tension he’d hardly noticed.
Mike swallowed a few mouthfuls of Bobby’s semen, letting the rest run down Bobby’s softening dick; at his own leisure, he sucked it slowly out of the curls between Bobby’s legs, licked it with long strokes of his tongue out of the cleft of Bobby’s ass. He pillowed his head on Bobby’s thigh, savoring the pungent, humid air that hooded him. For all that he’d practically been out of the house when he’d come, Mike was enjoying the hell out of the aftermath, the sensation of his satisfied groin gummed hotly against Bobby’s body.
"Good morning, starshine," Bobby murmured, his voice a thick purr.
"The earth says hello," Mike responded. His head was empty of rational or meaningful thought, but he could remember the lyrics to two million songs he never liked to begin with. Mike could get lucky with the entire membership of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and he’d still be able to get through the Gilligan’s Island theme in under thirty seconds; memory could be funny like that.
"This doesn’t mean I have to get out of bed, does it?"
"Only if you’re hungry." Mike paused, then added, "Or sticky."
"Eventually, these things will come to bother me. Then we’ll talk lunch and a shower. Right now what I am is sleepy — and very happy."
"Sneezy, Dopey, and Doc."
"Mike...shut up."
Smiling comfortably into Bobby’s hipbone, Mike wrapped his arms securely around Bobby’s thighs. "Go to sleep, Donnell."
"Like it when you’re butch, Mickey." He was already half asleep. On Mike’s time, in the middle of their weekend. Which was okay, actually.
He bit down a flicker of jealousy at the thought of releasing Bobby back into the wilds of Boston on Sunday afternoon. Christ, Mike’s first semi-interesting relationship in – since – *Christ.*
*Pull it in, Logan. Keep it together.*
First semi-interesting relationship in the last two or three years, and he was already scratching at it like a scab, trying to make it bleed again.
First person in that long to kick-start Mike’s engine like this, and here he was trying to fuck it up in his own head with this too-little-too-late routine. No way was he going to blow this by getting edgy, jumping the gun, turning into some freaked out relationship junkie on a long-distance fly-by-night.
*Yeah, say it like that. Tell yourself that. Whatever gets you through the night, Mike.*
Mike’s hand caressed the soft skin of Bobby’s stomach. Pretty Bobby Donnell, and no fucking way was Mike going to ruin this, even for his own good. It was okay, the way things were *right now,* the way they had to be until something changed, if and when anything ever changed.
Bobby’s half-snore, Bobby’s steamy breath on his skin, Bobby lying peaceful and unguarded in the circle of Mike’s arms. Not okay, but...okay.
"What happened to my...." Jack was processing a little slowly today, and while he was thumbing through a law book to find the page to which the index had directed him, the word he needed was fading from his mind. Jesus, it was late. If Claire were here, she’d know automatically what he was talking about.
"Earth to McCoy. What happened to your...briefcase, hole punch, trial notes, career?"
He grinned. So Logan wasn’t as easy to work with as Claire. He did still liven up a night at the office. Actually, he was a lot like Claire — witty, easy on the eyes, helpful without getting under Jack’s feet. It was no wonder Mike and Claire got along so well. "My wontons."
"You said you wanted the eggrolls."
"Not to the exclusion of wontons. You ate them all, didn’t you, Detective?"
"Sorry, man. Thought you wanted the eggrolls." He didn’t sound very sorry. Jack might have been disappointed in him if he did. Jack had always liked a man who didn’t apologize.
Jack reached for his eggroll, trying not to keep his eyes on Mike Logan. He was laying low these days, trying not to crowd him. Jack McCoy was famous for never giving up on something once he had it between his teeth, but local legend tended to overstate the tendency. He did know when he was beaten, and he did know how to back down when it happened.
Surreptitiously, he glanced up at Logan, sitting behind Jack’s own desk. Damn shame, though. That it was. Jack had instincts when it came to sex, like cops did when it came to crime, and he knew that he and Logan would have everything in common in bed; Mike Logan didn’t have a clue what he was missing out on. A man like that, with his strong, substantial body and his expressive face, handsome and not-handsome at the same time, like an actor from the ‘40s, would always rate just the right treatment from Jack McCoy, but there was more with Mike. It was the way he dared Jack to try something, the way he sparkled when he led Jack on and then rebuffed him. It didn’t irritate Jack the way it would some men, because he understood. Like Claire, Mike wanted to be convinced. He wanted to see Jack break a sweat bringing him down.
Jack chuckled to himself as he found the case he was looking for and highlighted it. Well, the game had been fun while it lasted, and it was Mike’s loss that he’d put a stop to it. Mike would have enjoyed losing.
But fate was a funny thing. Now Mike Logan was pretty deep into this relationship with Bobby the Beautiful and sinking fast, while Jack — well, Jack had his own life. Things were more serious with Claire than they had been even a month ago; on the surface, nothing had changed, but Jack knew better. She was Jack’s future; he was sure of that, and he thought Claire was, too. They hadn’t actually said the words "exclusive relationship" to each other, but when they did, Jack thought he’d be ready.
So losing Mike Logan — well, it went against the grain, but Jack was capable of letting it go. He had a good thing, Mike seemed to think he did, too, and the detective was decent company over Chinese food and paperwork on nights when Claire had a wedding to be at.
"That’s it. I can’t find it." Impatiently, Mike shoved the folder across the top of the desk.
Jack raised his head off the arm of the couch. "Well, keep looking."
"This is ridiculous, Jack. If you’re so sure his manifesto mentions Wright, then you tell me where."
"Logan, if I knew where, I wouldn’t need you here. Just don’t panic, all right? Go downstairs, get yourself a cup of coffee, and check again."
"Why do lawyers always believe that coffee is the universal panacea?"
Jack quirked his eyebrows at Mike. "How do you manage to know us so well while avoiding us so thoroughly, Detective?"
At first Mike looked annoyed, and then he smiled in something like satisfaction, pushed away from the desk, and propped his feet up on it. "I’ve tangled with my share."
"Especially lately, I hear."
For a moment, the smile was completely gone from Mike’s eyes. "Yeah. Whatever." With visible effort, Mike smoothed out his expression, but Jack was not going to be persuaded to forget that easily. Trouble in paradise? "Lawyers, you know, they’re like roaches. You can swear off them all you like, but you forget to wash the dishes a couple of days, and boom. They’re back."
"Ah, a battle-scarred veteran."
"I’ve had my...day in court." He was smiling again, a lazy, not-quite-wicked smile that really turned Jack’s crank.
"You have me intrigued, Detective."
Mike shook his head slowly. "You want me to drag this manifesto for information that contradicts his testimony, or you want to gossip?"
It was about time for Jack’s ten o’clock coffee break anyway. He laid the book face-down across his chest and fixed his laser-like gaze on Detective Mike Logan. "Gossip, of course."
"Oh, for Christ’s sake, McCoy," he snapped, but the flash in his eyes, so unexpected, was a quick and cornered fear, not anger to match his voice. "If you’re trying to get at something, why don’t you just ask me?"
"If I were, I would," Jack assured him.
But Mike was barreling ahead, apparently oblivious, and picking up steam as he went. "You want to know if I was fucking Paul Robinette? Well, I was. Yeah, and Stone, too. What else, Jack? You want to know about the lawyer I’m doing these days? That turns you on, doesn’t it, hearing about me and Bobby? You want him, Jack? You can have him!"
"Logan. You’re frothing all over my desk."
Mike stood up so quickly that he sent Jack’s wheeled desk chair bouncing off the wall behind him. Angry Irishmen, very hard on paint jobs. No one knew that better than Jack. "I don’t have to do this, you know. This isn’t my fucking job. Let Claire work over the weekend; she likes you."
Stifling a sigh, Jack stood up to intercept his temp help. What was it with cops, anyway? Did being temperamental and moody make you want to go out and get a gun, or did it happen after? Put a whiskey sour or six in Mike Logan, and you’d get Sergeant John McCoy.
Well, there were two kinds of fire-breathing Irish cops: some were drunk, naturally mean, or both, like Jack’s father, and they were the kind you avoided at all costs. Most were more like Logan, and relied on the amount of noise they could make to see to it that nobody interfered with their moods. Those you just did whatever you felt like with; they normally were so thrown off by the fact that you weren’t afraid of them that they didn’t know what to do next.
Jack grabbed the collar of Mike’s leather coat as he tried to shoulder belligerently past. "Mike, sit down. Don’t make me prosecute you for driving while an asshole."
"If that’s illegal in New York, we need a whole new division on the force." No wonder Mike expected his sense of humor to be capable of defusing every situation; it seemed to work just fine on himself. Jack could feel Mike relaxing already – not much, but enough that Jack felt comfortable letting go of his coat.
"Some fireworks show, Mike. What’s the occasion?"
Mike collapsed on the couch, spreading his arms across the back and stretching his legs out in front of him so that he took up all the space his already-substantial body could take up. "Not my day. I’m having this...thing with Bobby. This fight, I guess. I don’t know."
"You don’t know. A thing, a fight, you guess."
He winced a little, hearing his own imprecise language quoted back at him in Jack’s dry, sardonic tones. "It’s too weird, Jack. We can’t fight because we can’t date because we never see each other. I’m on call here six days a week, and Bobby puts in eighty hours making sure his goddamn serial killers don’t get convicted of burglary."
Jack quirked an eyebrow. Colorful crimes were kind of a hobby of Jack’s; even when his cases were boring as hell, there was sure to be something with dramatic value happening somewhere in this great nation. "Serial killers? Let me think, in Boston right now you’ve got – nothing but the Harbor Stranglers, and there aren’t any suspects."
"Don’t get me started. You goddamn lawyers and your goddamn lawyer ethics. Why can’t you have the same basic ethics that make sense to normal human beings?"
"Why can’t we have the same basic ethical dilemmas as normal human beings? Should I go through the express lane with thirteen items, give that homeless guy a buck, leave my insurance info on the windshield after I back into a Buick?"
"So when the stakes get higher, what’s the first thing to go, Jack? Honesty? Respect for human life?"
"Are you asking me for my notes from Ethics 101? Go to law school and pay eighty bucks for a textbook that will explain it all to you."
Mike rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Double-talk me. What happens to you guys if you ever just answer a question straight out? They stop letting you go to the Christmas parties?"
"Who told you?"
"Told me what?"
"About the secret lawyer Christmas parties. I suppose you know about the annual worldwide meetings, too, where we pour unrefined oil over Canadian waterfowl and give blowjobs to the Devil."
Logan didn’t even try to hide his grin. Maybe Mike was just so accustomed to going through life pawing at the ground like a bull in front of the red cape that he couldn’t afford to let it blind him to life’s small charms. "The Devil should get so lucky."
He faked a shocked look at Mike. "Detective Logan. I’m willing to agree that you have a certain degree of expert knowledge on the topic of blowjobs from lawyers, but do you really think it’s appropriate talk for the office?"
"Aw, fuck you, Jack."
"Yeah, yeah. You don’t date lawyers."
"I’m quitting."
"Everybody’s quitting, and nobody ever quits. We’re worse than cigarettes."
"In so many ways." Mike brought up one hand to prop up his head, letting his eyes roam lazily up and down Jack’s body. You had to give Mike Logan the prize for chutzpah, ripping into Jack on the inhale and coming on to him with the exhale. Well, well, well. Jack had obviously been much too hasty in kicking Mike loose.
It was no time to shoot himself in the foot by leaping on this sign of interest like a starving dog, however. Jack limited himself to giving Mike a calm, satisfied look that did nothing to reveal the sudden excitement he was feeling at having the concepts of Mike and blowjobs so tidily juxtaposed. "Back to work, Detective. The beatings don’t stop until you find me something I can use in court."
Mike put in another twenty-five minutes going over the manifesto before he spoke another word to Jack, but when Mike’s sulk did break, it broke but good. "I’m not staying with Bobby. It’s just...we’re too different."
"The lawyer thing?" Jack said noncommittally, keeping his eyes on his own paperwork.
"Nah. Whatever."
Jack nodded. So much went without saying, between two of the same breed. They were neither one romantics, neither one speechwriters — just mostly honest micks with mostly decent jobs who lived alone and worked too hard and got laid now and then, guys with very little to look back on at the end of the day except for the undeniable fact that, bottom line, all the blood and sweat ended in a few less killers on the street. Good men, mostly. Regular guys, definitely.
And then there was Bobby Donnell. Jack understood completely about *too different.* At least his silky, sweet-eyed, rich Irish Rose was a prosecutor like himself; you couldn’t give Jack a good enough reason to deal with all of that socioeconomic class shit on top of a relationship that, at its best, would still be a relationship with a defense attorney. Hell, even if he hadn’t had a personal stake in the matter, Jack would have been against Mike dating a defense attorney. He wouldn’t wish that kind of trouble on a regular guy like Mike Logan.
"If you ever want to talk."
Mike grunted. "Here’s what you can do, Jack: you can break up with Bobby for me. The two of you can talk and talk and talk about it."
Jack echoed his grunt, with slightly more amusement than Mike had shown. "Toughen up, Mikey. You want to date up on the food chain, you have to learn which fork is which and how to conduct a dumping in a civilized manner."
"Long-distance relationships. All of the bullshit, none of the sex."
"Welcome to the global society."
And welcome back into the game, Mikey.
Bobby recognized the New York area code on his caller ID right away, of course, but a part of his brain just below the conscious had known from the instant that the phone woke him from a half-nap on his couch — *Mike.*
Ridiculous. His phone rang the same way, no matter who was calling him. It was just that he’d had Mike on his mind all night, waiting up — more or less up — for just this call. "Hi," he managed, his voice croaking a little.
"Hi."
Bobby swung to his feet; it was darker in his apartment even than it had been when he fell asleep at ten minutes til ten, and he found himself creeping into the kitchen as though he might wake someone up in the darkness. What a strange mental lapse, considering how long it had been since there had been anyone but him sleeping at Bobby’s place. "What time is it?"
"Almost one. Sorry for--"
"No. It’s okay. You had to work."
You had to say that, of course. Had to be polite and say you didn’t mind when every time you tried to talk — forget about seeing him, that was just a pipe dream, but *talk* to your alleged lover, one or both of you got called in to work some emergency. Had to be politically correct, respect his personhood, his natural male tendency to confuse his job with his self-worth, and not just say *I was bored, I was lonely, I missed you, where the hell were you?* Because that would be insensitive. God knows, couldn’t be insensitive. Just because you were tired and you hurt inside and you were falling in love, holy Christ, falling hopelessly in love with this bristly, stubborn Manhattan cop.
"Bobby. We should talk."
There were three different types of juice in Bobby’s refrigerator, and he couldn’t make a damned decision. Robert Donnell, one of the most prestigious criminal defense attorneys in Boston, who held the lives of the rich and famous in his hands every day of his life without so much as flinching, could not narrow down his juice options. Bobby leaned his cheek on the cool surface of the freezer door, pressing his eyes closed. It was so easy to believe that if Mike were here, behind him in the darkness, slipping his solid arms around Bobby’s chest and pushing his chin into Bobby’s hair, that it would change. That Harvest Pear would suddenly sound either a lot better or a lot worse than Cranapple, that his life would be simple and sane in the way that Mike’s always seemed to be. "I’m not really at my best right now, Mick. Can we do this later?"
"Right now I don’t know about later. Is there going to be a later?"
Some part of Bobby, down around his bones, had been expecting this for days. "I don’t know, Mike. You tell me."
"Turn the evidence over to the police, Bobby. Please. You don’t know that it will incriminate your client — it might turn out to be good for him. Let the police make that decision; they know the case."
"Mike, stop. Just stop it. First of all, he’s Rebecca’s client, not mine--"
"Oh, fuck that. It’s your firm, and you know damn good and well that they all go where you tell them to go. You can--"
"I *can’t.* Mike, I can’t." He would never understand. Sometimes it seemed like he didn’t want to. Maybe that was the drawback to having a simple, sane life: how far you had to go to keep it that way, to defend it against ambiguity and this hellish confusion of ethics and decency that Bobby had been living with for so long.
"You can withhold evidence, but you can’t--"
Bobby tried to push down his annoyance, knowing he was more irritated because he’d had to explain all this to Rebecca than because Mike wanted an explanation. It was reasonable, an outsider being confused. The law could be...counterintuitive. "What we have isn’t evidence, Mike. I mean — yes, it might advance the police investigation, but it’s purely circumstantial, and it would be a complete betrayal of the client...." Dammit. It sounded worse than counterintuitive; it sounded sleazy. But those were the rules, the way the profession worked. It didn’t matter what made sense, what the sporting thing to do would be. It mattered what would ruin his career, get him disbarred, probably end up causing a mistrial anyway. That wasn’t selfish; it couldn’t be. He was living up to an oath, to the law. The goddamned law. "If we knew he was one of the stranglers, that would be a different situation completely. As it is, Rebecca has to act as his lawyer, not as a police officer."
"And police officers are the only ones who are supposed to care about getting serial killers off the streets?"
At this point, Bobby was profoundly sorry he’d ever told Mike about this damn case. Wonderful, another fatal flaw in the relationship; he couldn’t talk to his own lover about his work. "Of course I care, Mike. Obviously we all do. But my part in the process is different. I protect--"
"The criminals."
"The rights of citizens. Constitutional rights, basic, inalienable rights, and okay, sometimes it gets all — screwed up and nothing seems to make sense, but the last thing I need right now — and by the way, it’s been a long day, thanks for asking — is you advising me on how to run my firm, because Mike, you are not a lawyer. Okay? I went to law school, I passed the bar, I’ve been practicing for ten years, I know how to do my job. You don’t. You know how to be a cop. Great, so you do that, and I will handle my clients, and everything will be fine." Now they were yelling — Bobby was yelling. Wonderful. He chose Cranapple, but he wasn’t happy with it.
He was standing in the kitchen, in the dark, hungry but too tired to cook, wishing he were anything but an attorney but too proud to say so to Mike Logan, heartsick at the thought of losing this man but too — too courteous to say *Motherfucker, don’t you leave me, don’t you dare, not because of the Harbor fucking Stranglers and not now that I love you.*
"Everything won’t be fine. It isn’t fucking fine."
"Don’t say that."
"It’s not about the Constitution, Bobby. You’re not an angel and you’re not a saint. You are very rich, and you got that way by winning a lot of cases, not by devoting your life to feeding the orphans in Calcutta, so don’t even pull the philosophy shit on me."
In a fit of sudden frustration, Bobby slammed his fist into the refrigerator door and was immediately sorry. It hurt a lot and it didn’t feel like him; hitting things was more Mike Logan’s style. So absurd, so surreal and illogical — so much for the American Dream. All his life, scrimping by on next to nothing, studying and working and taking all the right risks, starting his own firm instead of working for the legal factories that tried to woo him so that his career, his choices would be his own. All those years of careful deliberation, seeking the spotlight while cultivating the right reputation, investing his time, his money, his every hope for the future in this one chance to have it all. And now here he stood, rich and respected, with a career that any lawyer might envy, friends who believed he could do no wrong, and every choice in the world open to him — except that he lived alone, was alone, couldn’t hold on to any relationship because he was a workaholic, a perfectionist, too serious, too old for his age, and now — almost beyond belief — *too rich.*
"What do you want, Mike? Just tell me what you want."
"I want you to be on my side." There were layers to the statement, things that Bobby didn’t know how to unravel.
"Mickey, I am. I am on your side. I love you. And you’re right that I’m not a saint, and maybe I’m not a philosopher either, but I do believe I’m doing what I should be doing. I’m a good lawyer. I believe in my job, I enjoy my job, and I like that I’m successful. If any of those facts bother you beyond all repair, then — then I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I love you, but you have to be able to put up with me, or this is never going to work." The speech didn’t come out right; it sounded too harsh, too much the faceless ultimatum. It expressed none of what Bobby felt for his lover, none of the warmth that came up to engulf him when Mike hit him out of left field with some deranged joke, or the way that Bobby felt genuinely humble, aware of his small place in the large world, when he touched his palm to Mike’s cheek and saw those snapping, dark eyes close softly in response, or the almost frightening way he was coming to rely on Mike’s utter inevitability, his habits, his unchangeableness. Nothing that meant *Mike* to him was anywhere to be found in "or this is never going to work." It did work; it already had. It was real, happening to him, working in and upon him, and now Mike wanted to take it away, and Bobby was too demoralized and too new to this world of need and trust to fight him. He didn’t even know *how* to fight for a relationship. What kind of evidence was admissible? Was anything privileged, and where did you get a warrant, and did motive count for anything?
His instincts told him that motive counted for everything. For whatever Bobby Donnell’s relationship instincts were worth.
"You...love me?"
Oh. Hello. Rule number one: the defendant has a right to face his accuser, or in this specific case, Mike needed to know what he was up against. "I do. Is that good or bad?"
"That’s...aw, Jesus. Good. I think. It’s been awhile, that’s all. Since I got serious."
And even longer, probably, since Bobby had been anything *but* serious about anything. Did that make them the two most incompatible people on the face of the earth, or born for each other? "Let me ask you one favor, Mickey."
"What?"
"See me in person before you dump me. It’s never going to seem real to me if I can’t look at you while you do it."
There was a long pause, and then Mike’s gruff, whuffing laugh. "So you can fall in love with someone over the phone, but that’s as far as it goes, huh?"
"That’s as far as it goes," he agreed placidly.
"Deal."
Bobby closed his eyes, relief warring with dread; this wasn’t a decision, exactly, but it was a chance, and Mike wasn’t here, exactly, but he wasn’t gone, either. They’d won time, nothing more — time for Mike and Bobby to figure out how to come through for each other.
At four-thirty in the morning, the food at Aunt Greta’s Pancake Emporium was actually not too bad. Most civil servants had been forced to eat at Aunt Greta’s at one time or another in their career, greasy and overpriced as the breakfasts were, simply because it was open early and located right by One Hogan Place; Mike wondered if this ultra-pre-dawn loophole was some kind of deep, guarded secret, or if he was the only cop out of the loop.
Or maybe they’d just cracked out the edible food for him because he looked so fucking pathetic. He’d been in his car in the courthouse parking garage for almost five hours, trying to figure out whether to panic or pick up the cell phone, call Bobby back, and propose to him.
Neither one the most rational response to a simple "I love you." It was hard to be rational after the first couple of hours in your car.
"Detective."
Mike’s head snapped up at the sound of the raspy voice, and he stuck his elbow in the tabasco sauce soaking his scrambled eggs. He grumbled the foulest curses he could think up under his breath as he wiped his sleeve clean. "What did you do, sleep in your office?"
Jack sat down across from him with a plate of Belgian waffles. "What did you do, sleep in my lobby? I’m usually at the office by five or five-thirty."
"I...never made it home." Maybe it was the pre-dawn light, a soft-focus effect that made Jack look less hawkish and mocking than usual, or maybe it was just the night’s general emotional chaos, but Mike was feeling talkative. "I called Bobby and we talked a little bit."
"Ah. End of Bobby Donnell?"
"You wish."
Jack just smiled, and something pierced the ambient fog that had blanketed Mike’s brain all night long. Bobby made it impossible to know up from down for sure; he changed reality with the intricacies of lawyer thought and the even greater mysteries of what’s-this-love-thing-anyway. But Jack McCoy was simple. Jack was sexy — that look in his eyes, that smile that managed to be smug and self-effacing at the same time, that lethal focus.
What was it with him and lawyers? Fucking in love with Pretty Bobby Donnell, that he told himself it would never be serious with, and he was still stuck with this hard-on for Jack, who had a kind of rough trade, fuck-you sexiness that would have been much better suited to a pouty, thick-lashed twenty-one-year-old on a Harley than a weathered, insanely smart old guy on a substance-over-style riceburner who, apparently, was put on this earth to strike fear into the hearts of Belgian waffles everywhere — Jesus Christ, how fast could that man *eat*?
"Sorry I flipped on you last— no, earlier tonight."
Glancing up, Jack quirked an eyebrow in that eloquent way. "You’re stressed. It happens."
"Been a while since I was in that place after-hours." What was he doing? What in the hell was this about?
"What’s a while?" Jack sounded curious, but not too attached. If he’d been any more bored, or any more eager to pry around in Mike’s personal life, it would have seemed weird, but the way things were — what could it hurt to have someone to say it to, just get it off his chest? Claire trusted McCoy, so he must be reasonably sensitive; Claire might like a little cave in her men once in a while, but she’d never stick with anyone who didn’t communicate like a pro. Which Jack was, he guessed.
And it needed to be said. It needed to be said to someone, and not Bobby, yet. "Two years since Paul left. Almost three."
"Ah." *Ah* again. This must be Jack McCoy code for "Well, that explains everything."
If Jack had all the answers, Mike would like to hear one or two of them. Why his four years with Paul Robinette had seemed so easy at the time, why it was so easy to get used to his gentle tranquility, his thoughtful, wry way of giving Mike a different perspective on life, and why things hadn’t ever gone back to normal after he left.
Lawyers. Selfish bastards, all of them. Bobby and his fucking Constitutional decency, Paul and his — his need for *space,* his crush on Stone, his continual identity crisis, sure that he wasn’t black enough because his lover was a white guy, or wasn’t gay enough because he wore a suit to work. And yet there was something so compelling about their glibness, their mental flexibility, the way they seemed able to make things true just by talking long enough about them. He’d believed Paul when he said that Mike would be with him every step of the way, and everything in him wanted to believe Bobby when he said they would make it work. Christ, that was the nature of the job. You talk, and if you’re any good, ignorant saps like Mike Logan agree with anything you say.
Jack McCoy, thank God, was not talking. He was just sopping the last of his strawberry syrup off the plate with a piece of Texas toast. Sometimes it was good to sit there across the table from someone who got it, who didn’t push at Mike and pull him in at the same time, who just wanted him, in the frankest, most honest way possible.
When Jack’s eyes flicked up, Mike found himself smiling, and not in a good-working-relationship sort of way. Jack returned his smile, placid and knowing, and this had just been going on too fucking long for Mike to keep on denying that something was between them, and getting bigger, not going away at all.
Reluctantly, Mike set his fork down. "I’ve got to get some sleep before my shift, Jack."
"Call you?"
Shit. Mike closed his eyes briefly. Thought of Pretty Bobby Donnell, the rasp of weariness in his voice tonight, the perfect blue of his eyes, the way things were finally — different for Mike, the pain of losing Paul hardly pain at all anymore. "I wouldn’t, if I were you."
"If you were me?"
"Sorry, Jack," he said, knowing he sounded belligerent, but unable to bully himself into obedience without sounding like he was trying to bully the rest of the world, too. "Can’t do it."
"Ah," Jack said, making Mike wonder what he thought he understood *this* time.
Maybe just the simple truth. Maybe just love.
