The long day had taken more out of his system than he'd expected, and Steve found himself snuggled into bed by 10pm sharp, an extraordinarily rare occurrence for the young Inspector who liked to stay awake until the wee hours of the morning on any given date.
With the double set of blankets keeping him cozy and warm, and the occasional traffic going by lulling him to sleep, he'd enjoyed a couple of hours of uninterrupted peace, until the loud knocking on his front door ripped him out of his dreams.
Jerking awake, Steve blinked against the darkness a few times, trying to gather his bearings, just to hear another round of knocks.
"I'm coming…", he yelled and clumsily climbed out of bed, his bare feet touching the black cowboy boots he'd carelessly left in the way when he stripped out of his clothes upon returning home.
Running a hand through his disheveled hair, Steve slowly got up and made his way down the short corridor, grunting, before heading toward the front door. Turning on the porch light to get an idea of his late-night visitor, he was surprised to see Mike stand there, his expression unreadable, as he waived at him from the other side of the alcove window.
"It's a little late for you to be out and about, isn't it…?", he breathed as he opened his front door to let in his best friend, trying to ignore the bone-chilling cold that accompanied him, "What are you doing awake this late at night anyways?"
"It's not even midnight yet, what are you talking about?", Mike countered facetiously, as he took off his overcoat, "We're in the middle of a murder investigation, Inspector. One of us has to keep up with things."
"Yeah. It's not like you sent me home early to get some much-needed rest.", Steve countered half-heartedly as he tried to stifle a yawn, "So, what is it that was so important that it couldn't wait until tomorrow? We've got another victim?"
"Hardly.", looking him up and down and smiling at the sight of his partner dressed in boxer shorts and a white tank top, the Lieutenant shook his head, "Did you know, you look like a teenager without your suit on?"
"Aw Mike, come on now…", Steve complained and headed back toward the kitchen, "Don't keep me waiting. I am freezing."
"Have you ever thought about turning the heat on in this place? You'd be warmer sleeping in your car."
Hanging his overcoat and fedora on the nearby clothes rack, Mike symbolically rubbed his hands together, as he followed Steve into the kitchen.
"Bernie just came back with the autopsy results. Turns out they were running really late down at the morgue."
Listening in with one ear, Steve had walked around his kitchen island and began to dig through his fridge, surfacing a couple bottles of beer, then a bag of wheat bread.
"What are you doing?", Mike asked curiously and leaned against the barren counter, eyebrows raised.
"What does it look like I am doing? I am making you dinner. I can tell from here that you still haven't eaten.", came the muffled response from inside the fridge, "You have your choice of cinnamon toast, tuna fish sandwich, leftover Ddeokbokki that'll burn you up from the inside…or…a house favorite, PBJ sandwich."
"You? Making me dinner? Well, that's quite the honor. I didn't even know you could cook. I'll take the PBJ sandwich, please."
"I never claimed to be good at cooking, but I do know how to operate a toaster.", Steve returned jovially, before pulling a jar of strawberry jam out of the fridge door and closing it again, then reaching for the peanut butter on his near-empty counter, "So, what did Bernie have to say?"
Sharing an overdue smile as he opened both beer bottles, Mike helped himself to a long sip, before clearing his throat.
"The murder weapon is described as a 1/16-inch metal wire used to garrote the victim. It's the same type that was used on the kid Norm and Dan found."
"So, it is the same killer.", Steve noted and shoved two pieces of wheat bread into his well-used toaster.
From the looks of the little silver box, Mike figured it was older than his partner.
"That's the way the cards are falling, yeah. Haseejian's kid was found down near Candlestick Park though. I just wonder why our killer held on to McMillan's body so long before dumping him in the bay?"
"Out of impulse maybe?", Steve hypothesized and opened both, the jar of peanut butter and the one for jam, before taking a sip of beer, "It's possible that he didn't plan on killing him but something happened and he had to act fast. I feel that until we get a better idea of our killer's motive, we won't be able to figure out his pattern and choice of victims. Like I said earlier, could just be that McMillan was at the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Yeah. That's what has me worried, Buddyboy."
Both detectives stared at each other from across the counter for many long moments, the underlying fear in Mike's heart quickly spreading through every last corner of the small apartment. It was a fear that was as realistic as it was crippling.
Their quiet standoff was disrupted when the toaster sprung back to life, surrendering its charred contents with a pained groan that sounded as wore out as the suspension on the young Inspector's Porsche.
With a final shake of the head, Steve turned around to tend the burnt toast as best as possible, trying not to shiver against the cold that was working its way back into his bones through his bare feet against linoleum floors. With the heat turned down most days, the young Inspector hadn't felt like warming the house by the time he'd come home, a decision he was quickly regretting.
"Here. I am going to grab some sweat pants and a t-shirt.", he announced and shoved the plate of Bachelor food in front of Mike, who worked particularly hard to look genuinely excited about his culinary disaster.
"Now I know how you stay so skinny.", the Lieutenant said smilingly, patting him on the shoulder in deep gratitude as he walked by and disappeared in his bedroom for a moment.
By the time he returned decidedly more dressed, Steve found his partner sitting in his small beige arm chair, an inheritance from a college roommate many years ago. Wrapped in a fleece blanket, with a book in one hand and a beer in the other, the Lieutenant seemed to have finally found the peace that had been out of his reach for so many days.
"What 'cha reading?"
"The Do's and Don'ts of Commercial Law and the Immersion of Far East Markets…", Mike mumbled, seemingly half asleep, as he closed the book and smiled back at his partner, "Here I figured that the most dog-eared book in your collection would be some romance novel, but it's this sterile…dry…publication. Go figure."
Feeling much warmer, Steve slid into his dark green couch, facing his partner with a mixture of mild amusement and admiration for wanting to study his habits like he studied his cases.
"It served me well during my time in Vice. I swear every Narc Detective ought to read it. Makes everything so much more…logical. The basics of far east drug trade in 350 pages, give or take."
When Mike stayed quiet, Steve got up to grab his beer bottle from the kitchen counter, before sitting back down across from the Lieutenant.
"You can…you know…stay here if you think it'll help you sleep better. I don't mind at all. You can crash in my bed and I can take the couch. I can even turn on the heat."
"No, that's ok.", Mike began, only to have his partner waive him off.
"No, seriously, I don't mind. You need some rest and God knows; I've crashed at your place enough times."
Smiling in deep appreciation, Mike succumbed to the young Inspector's insistence, his eyes growing sad as he glanced down.
"I just need to go through a night without…without seeing you dead, Buddyboy."
Steve bit his lip at the earnest words that cut through both of them, playing with the beer bottle in his hand at the growing unease spreading in his soul.
"This year, you will have been on the force for twenty-nine years, Mike.", he then explained and leaned forward, elbows on his knees before glancing back up at those worried blue eyes, "Between your military career and your time on the force, you have seen worse things than most of us can imagine. No matter how strong you are, no matter how many times you tell yourself that you're fine, eventually, it will get to you. And it will turn into the type of stress that's causing your nightmares."
"I have had nightmares.", Mike admitted, then shook his head decisively, "But never like that. And never in that form…night after night, the same thing happens. There's gotta be more to it than that."
"Have you ever considered that your…your obsession with this problem might actually be feeding it?"
Steve knew he was threading sensitive territory with his prying, but this late at night, in the privacy of his apartment, it was his only chance to help his best friend.
Looking straight at him, Mike's expression turned serious, his eyes so full of pain that they cut right through his wall of logic and lightheartedness.
"For your benefit and mine, I hope you're right, Buddyboy.", the Lieutenant countered and swallowed hard, his lip quivering slightly, "Because if you're not, well I…I can't live with those images of my mind turning into reality. I can't lose you…do you understand that?"