The FBI always put him in the same hotel. He'd been to Philadelphia enough at this point that he should probably start scoping out a good apartment instead of this half-assed that he was shut in for the duration of his visit to the colonial city, where the water was so hard that Jayden was afraid to wash his suits and the sheets were so starched that they made his balls itch for days. Still, he didn't complain—his comfort wasn't really worth anything to the Bureau, and truthfully, he only cared so much about his lodgings. Jayden was a man married to his job—where he did it made no difference to him, whether it be a roach motel or a five-star establishment.
He arrived at this destination close to six in the evening, the sun's last tangerine rays beginning to creep behind the horizon, peeking through the clutter of storefronts and skyscrapers. As the taxi pulled up to the front driveway of the ten-story, grand-bricked inn, Jayden grappled for the stuffed duffel bag in the seat to his left. He reached for the handle to exit the cab when his astute Pakistani driver once again addressed him. "Good luck," he wished honestly, turning to nod kindly at Jayden. "Good job you do, you know." Jayden wasn't sure if the man recognized him from his work on the Origami Killer case; his face, after all, had been pasted over talk shows and televised news stations for several weeks followed Shaun Mars's rescue. Strangers—once more, people that Jayden hardly cared for—called him the "hero of Philadelphia" and the "savior of a hundred future lives," all because he'd been the one to pull Shaun out of his fluid prison and usher him into the waiting arms of his overjoyed mother. He was tired of being idolized by a populace that he felt he was serving only from his desk. The last thing he needed in his life was celebrity and attention.
All he wanted was to be left alone; apparently, that was too much to ask.
He secured his room key in the cramped lobby of the typical city lodge at the front desk, trying not to make eye contact with the skinny, mousy woman as she clambered to write down his name, speaking shaky instructions with a noticeable stutter. Jayden eventually waved her away and tautly—but as smilingly as he could manage—told her that he could take care of himself. Slinging his bag to a more snug position on his gray suit shoulder, Jayden headed toward the elevators, their stainless steel exterior fairly polished and clean for being used so often. This hotel was not necessarily dirty or inhospitable—it was just boring, archetypal of a room service in the downtown portion of any metropolis.
The moment he pressed the button on the large metal panel to summon the elevator, Jayden's cell phone began to vibrate in his inside suit pocket. He frowned deeply. Oh, who the hell is it now? He'd just finished a conversation with Captain Perry so cold that he was positive there was winter in his voice, making it all the clearer that nobody in the Philadelphia Police Department wanted Norman Jayden back there. Unfortunately, they were going to have to suffice; it was because of them that the FBI was reopening the Origami Killer case, after all. All along, Jayden had known that Ethan fucking Mars was not the killer—the evidence against him was too circumstantial, barely strong enough to hold up a house of cards in court. Still, nobody listened, and an innocent man died in vain for a sociopath that continued to live among decent human beings to this very day.
But he knew Perry wouldn't admit it. Not a single member of the force would.
Sighing cynically, Jayden reached into his suit and pulled out his bluetooth earpiece, too jaded to check the identity of the caller. The elevator doors open, allowing Jayden into its belly as he tucked in the earphone, solemnly pressing the switch on the exterior to take the call. "Jayden," he introduced, tapping the Floor 4 button with his free hand.
"Hey, princess. Heard you're back in town."
The instant the familiar gruff, condescending tone touched his ear, Jayden immediately reached his finger indignantly to his ear to hang up. Before he could even raise his arm above his hip, however, the man on the other end cut him off. "And don't you even think about hanging up on me, Norm. Don't be an asshole."
Scowling, Jayden dropped his hand. "Oh, like ya always are, ya mean?
"Oh, snap, kiddo," the man on the other end sniggered, his voice dripping with obvious sarcasm. "Your insults are killing me. Seriously, though, why is your queer little ass back here? I thought we got rid of you once we stuffed Ethan Mars in a box and tossed it in the fucking Delaware."
Biting his lip, Jayden tried not to draw blood as he immaculately pictured his conversational partner. He imagined the rugged lieutenant, his tall, stocky figure leaning back with overt comfort in his swivel office chair in the open lobby of the Philadelphia Police Department, possibly stroking his bristly beard with a condescending smirk on his eternally smug face. For the life of him, Carter Blake could not wipe the arrogant expression from his psychopathic slate, despite the number of times that Jayden had tried to punch it off him. Perhaps it was merely because Blake was infinitely stronger than him and always won the fight, or he was born feeling superior to everyone and everything—Jayden was not entirely sure. For being a master in psychological profiling, he could never quite analyze Blake well enough to come to a conclusion about what the fuck was wrong with him.
"Unless ya haven't been enlightened, the case is back open," Jayden snapped. The elevator jerked to a sudden halt with nothing more than a warning ding and the doors gradually opened to his floor, revealing a long corridor. Stepping out, Jayden swerved around a man wearing nothing but a bathrobe, boxers, and curious pink bunny slippers shuffling in to take his place. "Federal ordas."
"Well, fuck you up the ass," Blake snorted. "Ethan Mars was the killer. We caught him, and he's dead now. So why the hell are you federal bureaucrats pissing all over this again?"
"Fuck me in the ass? Why?" Jayden completely ignored Blake's second statement in favor of the clearly derogatory phrase.
"Because you're the faggot here," Blake stated with a tenor so even that Jayden wanted to reach through the phone and slap him, a characteristic emotion he had while interacting with the lieutenant.
Rolling his eyes, Jayden pulled out his room key as he approached his hotel room. Sliding the card into the electronic reader, he watched as the green light signaled the unlocking of his temporary home. With his free hand, he turned the doorknob and entered, using this action as an excuse to hold off responding to Blake. Fuckin' asshole. "Just because I don't have a girlfriend doesn't make me a fag, Blake," he said, tossing his duffel bag on the queen bed in the direct center of the cramped place, already dreading sleeping between the sky-blue sheets that adorned it. "I happen ta be dedicated ta my job. I don't need any distractions."
Jayden heard Blake click his tongue disdainfully at the other end, followed by a dark chuckle that froze the agent in a loathing chill. "Maybe you'd be a little less tetchy if you had regular access to some pussy," Blake taunted. "I kept trying to take you to strip clubs while you were here, but you're the master of weak excuses."
Goddammit. Enough a'this "How'd ya even know I was here?" Jayden demanded.
"Perry's not the quietest man," Blake said. "I heard every word of his chat with you from my desk. I'm not exactly far away from his office, you know. Then again, maybe it was the sound of your whiny voice from the receiver that tipped me off instead."
Jayden could almost hear the pathetic bastard sneering in triumph. Stifling a groan, he unzipped his duffel bag and began to unpack with a bit more force than required to perform the task. This was his relationship with Carter Blake—a constant battleground with flying fists and lethal bullets of invectives that were rarely dodged. The pair were placed together as stopgap partners during the initial investigation, all because Perry presumed that the two were scarcely similar enough to get along. But by the end of the first briefing that Jayden led, Blake was at his throat. Jayden met him with little resistance, glad to finally have someone on which to take out the stress that weighted him down like a lead mass at the base of his heart. Every time he even thought of the man, Jayden wanted to claw his eyes out and watch him bleed—and he knew that Carter Blake wanted no gentler fate for him. Time and again, the members of the police force in Philadelphia tried to placate the two, tell them to go out for a beer and sort some things out. Their bickering was getting tiresome, they'd say. We can't deal with it, they'd say. Why can't you two just be civil to each other for once?
But for the week that they knew each other, neither of them tried to make amends.
Somehow, Jayden didn't think that they want their bottomless antipathy to end.
Pulling out a pair of red plaid boxers, Jayden paused and finally released his bated grumble. "Blake," he said, tossing the underwear in the corner with the intention of sorting it later, "I know ya hate me and I hate ya, but—"
"You just get on board with this now, princess?" Blake interrupted. "A little late, don't you think? Next, you're going to tell me that you got that scar of yours on your cheek from tripping and falling on a sharp rock or some shit like that."
Jayden felt a scathing blush burn across his face. That asshole knew everything, didn't he? "As I was sayin'," the FBI agent stressed, sticking his gray-clad forearm deeper into the recedes of his luggage as he searched for his toiletries that he was certain he packed in the bottom. "I'm gonna be back there whether ya or I like it or not, so yer just gonna have ta' deal with me and not be a fuckin' bully, okay? I don't wanna hafta put up with anymore a' ya bullshit."
Blake snorted contemptuously. "Yeah, yeah, and you just keep on talkin' smooth with that prissy accent of yours while I stroke my dick. You're ridiculous, Norm."
"I'm hangin' up now, jackass." Reaching up, Jayden's finger hovered over the button to terminate the call, set on detaching himself from his nemesis—at least until Blake opened his mouth once more.
"Before you go," Blake began. "You never answered my question from before. We got a little too caught up in discussing your stupidity, which I admit can be an engrossing topic. Mind telling me why exactly the Origami Killer case was reopened when we solved it already? Wait, don't say anything. You feds actually believe that somebody else performed the Origami murders? Really? Mars was the best lead we had, and you knew it."
"I told ya, Blake, the evidence against Ethan Mars bein' the killah was astoundingly—" Clink. Jayden's hand ceased moving as it rummaged around in the base of his duffel bag, covered in a small heap of clothing as his fingers brushed over the cold, slick surface of an item he was sure he'd gotten rid of months earlier. His blood turned to ice in his veins, the thoroughfare in his skin suddenly stopping as the baleful memories flooded him. The shaking hands. The nosebleeds. The everlasting sense of falling into an inevitable river that wished to drown him. Without warning, they were back—the vicious thoughts of the tremors that once quaked him. Back when he was working on the case with Blake the first time around, the situation had gotten so bad that he could barely control them. Once or twice, the meddlesome lieutenant had seen his withdrawals, and Jayden feared that he would spread around that the delicate FBI boy was a hopeless addict. Strangely, he'd said nothing—he'd even overlooked them.
Perhaps he hadn't known.
If he didn't, Jayden wanted to keep it that way.
"… I'll call ya back, Blake," Jayden said.
"Goddammit, kid, finish explaining your sorry ass fir—" Jayden did not hear what came after that, for he had already hung up and pulled the bluetooth from his ear and stowed it away in his jacket pocket. Thrusting his arm further into the mass of clothing, he fumbled around to collect the elusive item, as it continually disappeared under the soft fabric of one of his ties. As he gathered it, he found more, chasing them with the same amount of determination as the first. When he finally believed that there were no more hiding for him to root out, Jayden yanked his fist from the duffel bag as if bitten by a venomous snake. He uncurled the tight fingers around the items, slowly revealing their presence to him, actors in a play Jayden wished he'd long forgotten.
Ten vials of triptocaine sat there, the liquid inside them far bluer than his teal-shaded eyes. They were destructive friends, visiting him once more from the bottom of a travel bag that he must have used to stash them years before. Jayden could do nothing more than stare at them, hoping that they would disappear under his vision, melt into oblivion and serve to trouble him no more. Unfortunately, they did not, so he resorted to throwing them into the drawer of his bedside table and slamming it shut. He heard the glass chink together, the inertia brushing them against one another in a melody that was singing to Jayden, begging him to take them. Jayden squeezed his eyes shut and sat down quickly on the bed, his head falling into his hands. His whole body began to throb with need—a want that he declined to fulfill.
"Three months clean, Jayden," he whispered shakily to himself. "Three months. Don't break it now. Don't you dare fucking relapse." His right hand balled, and he brought it down on his knee, the pain jolting him upright. Opening his eyes, Jayden glanced down in disbelief at the scarred limb, the crossing canals of marks on his fingers jeering at him with silent judgment. He quietly concentrated on the bruise he'd just created, visualizing the soreness sparking through him, the pain reaching every end of him. His blood swelled and he began to feel pleasantly lightheaded. Expelling a breath, he flickered his eyes shut once more.
Norman Jayden was an addict; he knew that no addiction could ever be completely purged from his system. The triptocaine was still there—the pressing desire to have it swimming inside of him again was always there. He knew for a fact that it would never go away. When he wanted it, he turned to something else.
The same craving manifested elsewhere.
All he did was trade one deadly obsession for another.