Title: fool me twice
Author: kangeiko
Summary: "Sometimes, you dream about killing Arvin Sloane." Filler for The Getaway (season 2).
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Sometimes, you dream about killing Arvin Sloane.
It is on hot nights, usually, when you consider opening the window for a fraction of a second before turning the air conditioning on and letting the room fill with blissfully artificial air. You wonder if any particle of dust in your beige-and-mauve apartment has spent more than a couple of hours on your dresser before the inevitable blast of air sends it swirling around, desperately trying to find an open window and escape.
You do not leave your windows open. Ever.
Sometimes, and it is usually on hot, stifling nights, you lie in your too-cold bed breathing artificial air and dream about killing Arvin Sloane.
It is never very clear to you afterwards why, and the thought of your ignorance is incendiary; humiliating. Unlike the common parlance of MTV clips and disconnected images, the language of your dreams continues uninterrupted around Sloane's death, calm and collected – and then a careful Marshall putts the last hole-in-one and he's wearing a novelty tie and what does that mean, then? – though you can feel Sloane gasp and shudder against you.
He is close during this.
He always is.
It feels oddly like killing a deer or a lamb or some other helpless creature, and you are still deeply amused by the incongruity. You do not notice the dream before or after it, nor even the specifics of his death, merely the sensation, the feeling of it around you.
You feel the thrum of a heartbeat flail wildly beneath your fingers, like the beat of a bird's wings; too-fast and fragile. Sloane's eyes are bright and hard as they fix on you; it is curious that you should remember his eyes, though perhaps you do not truly remember and are simply reconstructing a more disconcerting image to analyse later. It is odd, truly, that he's always looking at you as you end him, and that you cannot bear it. Strange, that you should be so squeamish when you have done so much, but that you cannot bring yourself to let him die alone. And so, each time, you pull him to your chest as that frantic heartbeat stills; one small tremor after the other echoing against your steady heartbeat. He rests against your chest, his breath hot and gasping against your neck, his hands pressed flat on your smooth sharp pressed suit lapels, the fabric crinkling under his grasping fingers.
There is a tiny pale scar across one forefinger that catches the light like polished metal.
Sometime after you woke up in your twisted sheets this morning you fetched yourself a glass of water and tried to work out whether that was a nightmare or not. The mess on the bed says otherwise. The crescent-shaped marks on your palms and thighs disagree.
At this rate, you thought, you may have to actually go to that damned shrink voluntarily.
You fixed yourself some coffee, had a cold shower and some more coffee and headed in to work.
Arvin's hand tapped a greeting on your forearm and you tried not to flinch. You didn't have to worry about anyone but Sloane noticing because, well, no-one was looking. No-one except Sydney (and she wasn't here) and maybe Dixon (who doesn't like you because you stood Sydney up) and maybe Marshall (who doubtless thinks you'd be a peachy-keen kind of guy if you'd just loosen up and wear a novelty tie occasionally) and possibly McCullough (who… no, you didn't want to spend your morning thinking about McCullough).
And Sloane. Sloane was still watching you, forefinger and middle finger stroking an even stripe across your forearm. If you looked down, you would have seen the pale scar bisecting his flesh.
You poured yourself a glass of water and watched your hand not shake.
You had a cup of coffee and contemplated your body not twitching.
You attended another meeting. The mirrored wall behind Sloane's head gave you a perfect reflection of your lack of facial expression.
You wondered if it's possible to erase yourself entirely.
Pay attention, Jack.
That wasn't this morning.
The thing is, there's not one particular morning where you woke up and changed your mind.
Well, maybe.
Maybe when you came in to work one day and Arvin sat you down with a tapped greeting into the palm of your hand, like signing messages to a deaf, mute and blind man. It was curiously apt, and you wonder now if it was a sly insult that only you were meant to catch, or whether it was simply an absent-minded gesture of comfort, left-over from… left-over.
It doesn't really make any difference now, of course.
That morning, it might have done. You wonder what you could have done differently that morning to unmake it all, though 'it' had happened perhaps months earlier (and why weren't you paying attention? Why didn't you notice?). Instead, you sat down with Arvin and drank your coffee and very carefully did not change your expression any more than any concerned father would when you found out your daughter was now risking her life on a daily basis.
Arvin reached across the table and caught hold of your hand, fingers surreptitiously sliding up to circle your wrist, to feel your pulse accelerate. It is perhaps what the huntsman feels when his hands circle the throat of his prey; a sharp flutter of heartbeat beneath the thumb and forefinger, an echo of your own.
You have killed with your bare hands before. It is always quick, now; you know enough to not relish the feeling.
You know enough not to wonder what it would feel like to hear that echo slow and still, thrum thrum thrum because you know that it wouldn't feel like you imagine it would.
Occasionally, you separate yourself from yourself too much and end up debating yourself.
This is one of those times.
Wake up, Jack.
Sloane's hands are undoing your restraints and the sodium pentothal is making your head fuzzy and heavy and – and – really, there's no excuse. You bite down on your tongue so hard you may draw blood, but it is worth it to say nothing at all when Sloane's hands snake across your torso and raise you in a graceless fireman's carry.
Dimly, you hear Adriana Kane's screams in the background but it is all too far away to matter.
Your left hand is pressed, palm open, to Sloane's neck. His pulse flutters once – twice – three times – but it is not enough, and you know that something is desperately wrong.
Wake up, Jack.
Pay attention. Fool me once, shame on you.
The white scar across Sloane's forefinger catches the light like polished metal.
fin