YAY! Another update! And I've gotten some reviews lately, which made me very happy, so thanks a lot! And now, of course, I can only assume that you ask yourself what sneaky business our dear little Adam has really been up to...
10. What Lies Beneath
Lawrence sat in his office chair, dazed and vacant. Adam was now safely locked up in a cell, a much higher security one than the room he'd escaped from. He hadn't been in very good shape when he'd been put there. When they'd reached the station, the kid had been so weary and shaken, Lawrence and Jack had had to support him between them, all the way to his cell. Once there, Adam had collapsed, exhausted, onto the hard bed of the room, not even waiting for either of his companions to remove his handcuffs.
Lawrence had been sitting there, thinking of Adam, for the last three hours. He'd been thinking about when he'd met him for the first time in that deserted alley, about the "interrogation" that had taken place at this very station, about how angry he'd been when he had escaped, about how the kid had been unable to shoot him... And, most of all, he was thinking about the three times he and Adam had...
"Fuck..."
Wearily, Lawrence raked a hand through his sweaty hair. Try as he might, he just couldn't stop thinking about him. He was worried about him. The young delinquent's face had been deathly pale when he'd last seen him, huddled under the thin sheets of the jail bed, his face still bruised and bleeding from the harsh reunion he'd had with his lover.
And, when he'd un-cuffed him, Lawrence had noticed even more cuts on the unfortunate kid's hands, so bad- and painful-looking that he'd been inclined to point out the basic first-aid kit in one of the draws in the cell, though he'd known that Adam had been too tired to comprehend him.
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Jesus Christ, Lawrence thought, as he fidgeted with the tips of his cards. There was no better way to put it.
Jesus Christ.
This was senseless. He'd been to his coworkers' funerals, he'd questioned husbands about why they'd killed their wives with a hammer, he'd tried to explain to mothers, dissolved in tears, why he'd had to blow the head off of their sons.
He'd lived his life in a bad atmosphere.
But words could not describe a New York police station at night.
He and Jack were the only ones left. The others had gone home, to their families and their children, to the lives they had outside of the building. Lawrence had always believed that. Cops, doctors, firemen -- they all had two different lives. They had one life in either misery or overwhelming happiness. It was different every day. It was a life with colleagues that they didn't like that much, a life where desperate people needed their help. And they gave them that. Sometimes.
But at the same time, way too rarely.
And they had a life where they got to be human. They never thought about their other lives when they got to live that. Why would they? Now, they were in their other life, right then they got to be husbands, fathers, friends.
They didn't have to think about a prisoner in a cell who was really just like any other prisoner, but at the same time, so different, so terribly different. Different in a way that had woken Lawrence, woken him from his emotional numbness in an oh-how rude way.
Lawrence sighed and laid his cards down on the table.
"Gin."
Jack muttered something and gathered the cards up.
It was three o'clock AM. Neither one of them wanted to play cards, and now, they seemed to have crossed the line where they didn't even have the energy to pretend that they wanted to do anything, so Jack left the cards in a stack on the table. Lawrence looked at the wall next to him. Adam was on the other side, and he was tired, he was hurt, he was...
"You think he's okay?" he asked, beckoning vaguely to the wall. Jack looked at the indicated space.
"Faulkner?"
Lawrence nodded.
"He'll live," the desk boy said doubtlessly. "He might not stand on the bunk and sing "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover," but he'll live."
Lawrence smiled wearily.
"That's a pretty calm song, at least, isn't it?"
"Well, he'll definitely not pull off "Metallica,"" Jack said, and his coworker offered him a tired chuckle in return.
The next second, the sleepy, dull mood in the room was broken by their boss, Vincent Grey, and old, wizened-looking man that no one really liked, who appeared in the doorway. Jack raised his eyebrows lazily, and Lawrence stiffened, trying not to let his emotions show too clearly on his face.
"Good, you're both here," Grey said, his usual, confused police-features more visibly mingling in his wrinkles than usual. "You're both on Faulkner, right?"
Jack made a grunting of approval and rubbed the tiredness out of his eyes.
"Why? Did he escape again?"
"No," the superior said, "but we've talked to some new witnesses. Follow me to my office, please."
Lawrence and Jack exchanged a look, a look that every cop knew, even though no one really knew what it meant, and got up from their uncomfortable chairs.
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Lawrence walked through the hall with Jack next to him.
You're both on Faulkner, right?
Vincent Grey. Silly old man.
Asking Lawrence if he was on Adam. As if he'd been thinking about anything but Adam in the past twenty-four hours.
The old man opened up the black door to his office -- just like all the other times Lawrence had been in there, he felt a twang of irritation at the thought that this was the only office in the station that was fancier than his own -- and sat down behind the overloaded desk.
"Sit down, if you will," Grey said, gesturing to two empty chairs that at least looked more comfortable than the ones Jack and Lawrence had been sitting on before, and they obeyed. Lawrence found himself beginning to feel nervous.
We've talked to some new witnesses.
We've talked to some people that Adam has hurt. We've talked to some new people that can lock Adam up, lock him up so tightly not even you will be able to help him, Lawrence.
It couldn't happen. Couldn't.
"What about Faulkner?" he finally asked, almost managing to sound like he only cared about his paycheck. Grey sighed and leant back in his chair.
"This is the deal," he said slowly, seriously. "There's a chance Faulkner'll only get a few years instead of the ten he deserves."
Lawrence almost laughed with relief, but Jack scoffed and looked condescendingly at his boss.
"Lawrence will be at the trial," he said, as though that changed everything. Grey smiled weakly.
"I know. But the thing is that the witnesses we've been talking to tossed Faulkner into the heavens. You know why?"
Lawrence and Jack shook their heads, and Grey leant forward again.
"He didn't raid those houses for his own profit," he said in almost a whisper, as if they were discussing a legend, a myth, or a God. "Every penny he got his hands own, every royalty for every damn little thing he stole, he gave to poorer families."
Jack's brows were lazily raised again, Grey looked among his papers and Lawrence's brain did its best to absorb this information.
No.
Please, no.
He couldn't have been so wrong. He couldn't have been so heartless.
"What do you mean?" Jack asked, leaning slightly forward in his own chair. Grey looked at one of his papers and quoted it with his brows furrowed.
""You see the TV over there?"" he said, his voice mechanical. ""I wouldn't have that if it wasn't for Adam. He bought all the food in our fridge, too. He's the kindest man I've ever met.""
He put the paper down.
"An unemployed mother with three kids who lived in a little shit-hole in Bronx said that," he said plainly. "And God knows how many more there are who've said similar things. He's still broken into people's houses, but he doesn't have an apartment of his own, no job. The only thing he seems to have is the clothes on his back. And his lawyer -- if he gets one -- will definitely use that against us."
Jack chuckled and drew his hand over his rough chin.
"Seriously? The kid's a Robin Hood of the twenty-first century?" Grey smiled tiredly again.
"So it would seem."
So it would seem.
So it was.
Of course it was. Lawrence had been blind not to see it, but he saw it all now, he saw all the blinking warning signs that he'd seen before but that he'd chosen to ignore.
It had all been so obvious. He saw Adam's gaping wallet -- he bought all the food -- his emaciated, starving body -- in our fridge, too -- the black stains of mud on his skin, his dirty hair -- he's the kindest man -- his worn shoes, his torn clothes -- I've ever met.
The kindest man I've ever met.
Of course. Of course Adam would do something like that with his money. He'd never do anything else, because he was a good person, underneath the sarcasms, the roughness. Underneath that shell of a bitter, homeless, neglected little kid, there was such a terribly good, terribly helpful person.
A good person. A good person that Lawrence had beaten half to death.
The guilt ate away at his stomach, ate him up from the inside out.
He didn't even wait for Grey to say anything else. He just stood up and left the room, absorbed in his own agonizing thoughts.
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It was these thoughts, mainly, that finally made Lawrence get to his feet, roughly pushing his chair back and discarding his gun as he did so. He would go and visit Adam. Just to see how he was, to bandage up some of the wounds on the criminal's hands and face. He owed him that much, after all.
AW! Lawrence is so guilty... And may ask if you're guessing for smut in the next chapter? Ah, you know me... XD And are you also guessing that I want you to review? Once again, it's what I do!