Chapter Text
It isn't that he doesn't care that his woman will wake up unhappy, it's that he can't stand to sleep at all. He soon finds that this was untrue upon waking staring at the ceiling of his car, the chill of an ending November wrapping her thin, drafty fingers around his throat. He had never failed a case before. He reluctantly supposes there's a first time for everything. Goddamn it, no! It's going to happen. He's going to find those little girls. He's been trying to draw the pieces together. People keep dying off and not being viable options...the last one never should have managed to get ahold of that gun and fucking shoot himself. Detective Loki hadn't seen that coming. The boss has made it clear how much he's fucked this up. He doesn't want to be a fuck-up…The rain continues to pour and the detective turns his key in the ignition, followed by the dial on the heat, rubbing his ungloved hands together. As he waits for the engine to warm up, he finds himself thinking about Franca, the last thing he should be thinking about on the job. It had taken him by surprise to turn the light on in his room the previous night and find her lying there. He was almost certain she'd given up.
They met in February, under circumstances that never would have told the detective he'd end up loving her. She was amongst a bunch of hippies in a park that was marked for demolition to put up a strip mall—all the trees had to go. There was some kind of complaint about an endangered bird living in the trees, and a group of locals gathered to protest the day everything was to be cut down. He'd been in the vicinity, finishing lunch, when he got a call about a minor disturbance and responded to it. Franca caught his eye the moment he set foot in the park, pushed through the crowd. She had been the one bold enough to let the hippies help her chain herself to a maple. Somebody tried to throw the key in the gutter, but another officer managed to tackle the kid to the ground. Loki sauntered right over to the key, ignoring the loud megaphone some dainty-voiced man was yelling over. The demolition crew were already waiting to continue their work, mobs of people trying to tip a bulldozer, inside which an irritated man in a hard hat sat.
Franca's amber eyes hit him like sunlight through the clouds overhead, and she stood there fearlessly as he made his way closer. She wasn't even wearing a coat, only a black blouse and matching mellifluous pants that nearly hid a pair of feet in mauve flats. She didn't speak as he grinned casually and asked her whether she was crazy. But when he tried to unlock her shackles, she kneed him and turned every which way, until he got one handcuff around her wrist.
"Miss—I'm going to need you to stop moving," he'd said firmly, although he'd wanted to laugh deep down. Perhaps it was that he thought someone so pretty would be the last to choose to do something so foolish, despite knowing that the demolition crew couldn't possibly operate until the park was clear.
"You shoulda left before we got here, 'cause now I have to arrest you," he said, unlocking the chain and quickly pinning her against the tree to finish connecting the cuffs. It was getting hectic and the tear gas came as soon as the detective walked Franca out of the gates, people scrambling and screaming behind them.
"You can't do this. Aren't you going to read me my rights?" she'd said, standing still as a statue when he opened the back seat of his car. He'd merely smiled and made sure she didn't bump her head on the way in. As soon as he sat in the driver's seat, he began to recite her rights, and she sighed with exasperation.
"You can shut the fuck up now," she said.
"Excuse me?" he'd said, casting a wide blue-eyed glance in the rearview mirror. He hadn't driven for more than three minutes before he noticed she was shaking violently in the backseat. He turned around to watch her thrashing about on the floor, and surmised she was in no state to be brought to the station.
"Fuck," he'd cussed, pulling over and stopping. He was already reaching into his pocket to call for an ambulance when he pulled the door open. He managed to pull Franca out, her amber eyes having vanished, to be replaced by white orbs that continued to roll uncontrollably in her skull. No one had ever had this particular reaction to one of his arrests before. He laid Franca out on the pavement and carefully unlatched the cuffs. He turned her on her back and had the phone to his ear, dialing for help when she finally stopped. She was still and quiet, and he lowered his ear to her lips to tell whether she was still breathing. He pressed two fingers to her throat to catch a pulse, afraid she'd died before he had the chance to make real sense of the situation.
"Fuck me. Shit—shit—shit. Shit!"
He'd dropped his phone, panicking. Her face was beautiful, and lifeless, and he lifted her up and placed her against the car before scrambling for his phone again. And as he was frantically searching for a street sign with which to direct the ambulance, he suddenly heard fast footsteps fading away from him. He'd turned with panic to find that woman running away at such a speed that he knew it would have been a waste of time to try and catch her. He had to finish explaining to the person on the other line that he would no longer be needing assistance. A mauve flat sat on the cold ground not far from where Loki had laid her out. He'd picked it up, noted the eight and a half marked on the bottom, and threw it in the backseat. For shit he'd find that woman again, right? But if he did, he'd have had evidence of her escape. The detective cursed and grumbled, got back into his car to head back to the park, and by the time he got there, he stopped and laughed. And laughed so much that he couldn't control himself. She'd faked it. She'd faked her way out of arrest…
When the detective returns to his desk, keys are still sprayed everywhere from his outburst the previous day, and he trudges carelessly into the pile of consonants the custodian had carefully swept into a solitary pile beside his rolling chair. He texts Franca back mindlessly, responding to something she was asking, telling her he'd call on his break. When he receives a promising call from forensics, he hopes it isn't really the end of the line on the case. He can't have failed. And much to the detective's relief, it wasn't over. When he ends up finding Jones, it's a turning point for the entire situation. And the moment he finds that little girl, takes a shot to the head, he knows he never failed…
She folds every shirt and tucks them all away, the scent of detergent tumbling into her face as she pulls more of his clothes from the drier. She'd even made an honest attempt to clean the place up, less to make him happy, more because she likes the floors clean. She'd been living with David for two months now, and it still doesn't feel like home. It feels like a deserted island most of the time. When he is around, and he's actually present, that's when it feels like home to her. Only when she lies beneath the heaviness of his exhaustion does she feel like she's home at all. Sitting in front of the TV alone, eating the food she went to all the trouble to make, watching the plate she'd set aside for him grow colder, Franca stops focusing on the movie and reminisces mindlessly. She remembers how they met. It was gray and cold, and he was like a little night in the overcast sun, all in black, a tight-lipped expression—the kind where you can tell a person is biting their back teeth—and he looked angry when she tried to nudge him away from that tree. She'd thought he looked like someone you shouldn't mess with, so she knew she'd be wiser not to make it too difficult for him. She knew she could have been getting herself into trouble going there, but she wanted to have a story to tell her coworkers come Monday.
"I'm going to need you to stop moving," he'd said, pausing to look her in the eyes while she struggled. Her gaze fell on the tattoo on his neck, and as he fidgeted with the lock on her shackles, she noticed a few inked into his fingers, too. If she hadn't known any better, if his badge wasn't dangling by his crotch with such a shimmer, she'd have thought the detective to be some kind of hoodlum. At the same time, there was something erotic about him that she couldn’t quite place, and when his hands made contact with her skin while he cuffed her, her heart skipped a beat…She laughs to herself, having sunk deeper into the chair at the kitchen table, throwing her feet up across it. She finds herself laughing uncontrollably...She'd never faked a seizure before, but had turned out to be a pretty good actress. She felt so dumb, but he fell for it. He'd pulled over so fast that it knocked her to the floor of the car, yet she never came out of the act, not until he had her lying on the cold cement, checking for a pulse. It was only when she heard him turn away and start pacing frantically on the phone that Franca had opened her eyes. She figured it was then or never. And while the detective was distracted, she ran so fast that she lost a shoe during take-off. She never turned around for it, that would have been stupid.
It came as a surprise to her when she ran into the detective a second time. She was sitting in her favourite Indian restaurant, alone, on Valentine's Day. She hated that holiday. It was shallow and simple, and meant nothing about love. She didn't want to be surrounded by her girlfriends who would tell their horror stories about ex-boyfriends, one-night-stands, or how much they despised men. Franca just wanted to be alone and drown in deep fried bliss for a day. She'd thought it was a rather pleasant way to spend a Friday night, honestly, not that the previous weekend hadn't been just as riveting. Her heart jumped a moment and she'd laughed quietly about how easy it was to sneak her way out of arrest. She'd never been in trouble with the cops before, and had never even met one. She was so lost in naan and kofta that when someone dropped a mauve shoe on her table, she damn near screamed. She recognized her own shoe before she recognized the detective.
Franca had looked around the nearly empty restaurant. A few minutes prior, she had noticed someone sitting by a window in the corner, back turned, but she hadn't paid as much attention as to realize that it was the same detective who tried to arrest her seven days earlier. Her heart skipped a beat and as he stared down at her, she couldn't help beginning to feel…scared. Was he going to arrest her right there? It wouldn't have been too embarrassing. No one else was around. It had just been the two of them, eating alone, each on their own holiday date. Detective Loki had smiled. Franca had sat up straight and stared at her mauve shoe, sitting on the table.
"You know, those are my favourite shoes. I thought I'd never see it again," she'd said coolly, hiding the genuine panic she'd felt with him standing right there, his badge flashing in her face. Loki hadn't noticed her, either, at first. But when he did, he went straight out to his car, picked up the shoe, and brought it in. Part of him really wanted to arrest her right then and there—just for making it out of his clutches the first time. But little had Franca known that the longer he stared down at her, the more he wished to know the secrets behind her amber-eyed grin.
"It's like…Cinderella," he said, pulling the chair at the opposite end of the table back and making himself comfortable. He was leaning in towards her, like he knew her. Anyone who would have stood across the room to watch them would've thought they were any old couple on a date.
"I could arrest you, lady. But I'm feeling nice today, since I just solved a really bad homicide case."
"So, if you hadn't solved that case," she'd said, her voice faltering slightly as she eyed the tattoo on his neck. She suddenly wanted to hear the story behind it. She eyed the letters tattooed into his pale fingers where they sat on the tabletop, folded neatly.
"Then I’d be going downtown right now?"
He grinned. And it was a sexy grin. There was so much fire in it that it nearly burned her. When Franca reached for the shoe, he grabbed it.
"I've never just let anybody go like that," he'd said. She got nervous again.
"Maybe there's a first time for everything," she'd responded.
His eyes looked her up and down, and she didn't quite like it, but she did. It wasn't like she hadn't gotten herself dressed up without realizing it. She liked to make men drool, shoot them down, and being that it had been a hallmark day to drool over anyone, she wasn't really surprised to see him checking her out. She'd scoffed.
"I told you, I'm feeling nice today. So I'll cut you the slack."
"Give me my shoe, then," she responded, tugging at it. He only held tighter.
He'd laughed.
"Hey, come on…go out with me, and I'll forget all about that stunt you pulled—just one date. What have you got to lose?"
"My freedom, apparently. You're disgusting," she said, but she couldn't help smiling.
"I'm David. David Loki."
He'd offered his hand to shake, and it was surprisingly warm when she took it. He let her have her shoe, and she left in his car. It was an ugly, rainy day. She had taken the train to the restaurant, before it started raining, so Franca was thankful to have had a ride, at the very least. The more he started asking about her, the more she talked. Ask a woman about herself, she'll talk. The detective had seemed intrigued, he looked less like a dark cloud and his blue eyes were more like the sun shining off the sea. She was an environmental biologist. Normally she'd have taken a less extreme approach to protecting the environment, but a friend had convinced her to go to that protest at the park. She didn't exactly think it would turn out the way it had, until she volunteered to be the one to get chained. She hadn't known why she'd done it. She knew it wasn't really going to work.
After they sat awkwardly in the theatre, surrounded by couples (some of them sucking each other's faces off), Franca had felt even more nervous. He'd gone quiet after simply asking her whether she liked the movie. It was a comedy, and she'd really enjoyed Loki's laugh. When he pulled the door of his car open for her to take her home, her heart was skipping beats again. And when he walked her to her doorstep and made her feel more safe than anyone had in a while, she'd kissed him…
When she wakes up at last on the couch, the phone ringing off the hook, she realizes that David hadn't come home. She was getting tired of this. She wasn't going to stay around for it much longer. In fact, during her business trip, she'd thought about leaving him several times. Part of it was due to the fight they'd had the day before she left, and the other part was because she'd been feeling ignored. The way he fucked her a little over a day ago felt more removed than what she normally liked. Was there someone else? Was he just distracted by work? He hadn't told her much of the details of the case he'd been working on. She just knew it was starting to drive him crazy. Franca grumbles and picks the phone up, closing her eyes again. She hopes to hear Loki's voice, but instead it's his boss, talking about how David got shot, and asking whether she'd been to see him in the hospital.
She drives with tear-filled eyes, and hates herself for even contemplating leaving him. His only fault was being distant from her. So far as she knew, he'd never cheated. The way that he was dedicated to his work, there was no way he'd have had time to mess around like that. If anything, he got suspicious of her every now and then, and that stung like a bee. She was head over heels with him and he had the nerve to think she'd fuck around on him? By the time she stops at the hospital, her face is wet from sobbing. She rushes up to the secretary, muttering his name. The lady keeps telling her to try and calm down, she can't understand a word she's saying.
"My boyfriend…was—shot—in—the—head," she says, growing impatient, trembling. She could barely bring herself to say it at all. She gives his name and another nurse leads her to the room. She continues to tremble anxiously, until the nurse stops at a door, and Loki saunters out at the same time, bumping right into Franca. He steadies her shoulders, and she stares up at him wide-eyed. The nurse kindly interrupts to ask why he's up.
"I'm fine," he explains calmly, "Someone else went to get the doctor to discharge me."
The nurse excuses herself and finally his full attention is on Franca. She's shaking her head, her eyes still leaking, unsure whether she'd heard his boss correctly.
"They—they said you got shot in the head," she says, unable to stop tracing her hands over his cheeks, his chest, as if she can't believe he's really real. She whimpers aloud.
"I thought you were going to be a vegetable," she sobs. To her utter surprise, the detective laughs. He pulls her into the room and out of sight as her crying intensifies. He sits Franca on the bed and she glares at him.
"It's not funny," she spits between sobs, wiping her eyes. Loki stands before her and crosses his arms. He doesn't stop smiling.
"Fuck you, David. Fuck you," she grumbles, "You said you were coming home last night, remember?"
His eyes pinch shut tightly, and he pulls a hand down his face. She stares at the bandage at his hairline. He has a few stitches and some bruising, but she can tell he's otherwise okay.
"Did I?" he asks.
Franca reaches for a tissue box on the nightstand and wipes her eyes and nose. She stands, not facing him. She jumps slightly when she feels his arms entwine her waist.
"I solved the case…Everybody thought it was over, that I fucked up."
The last thing she wants to hear about is his work. He'd completely neglected her. She starts to pull away from him, tearing his arms from around her waist.
"Can you please, for once, not be all about your fucking job, David? I got that call from your boss this morning, and I thought you were fucking dead," she says, as angrily as she can manage. His smile had been replaced by a grim line.
"It's like you don't even goddamn see me anymore. You don't even remember that you told me you were coming home last night—?"
"Hey—"
"No, fucking listen to me—"
"Hey," he says louder, cutting her off.
"You can't just come home for one night a week anymore—?"
"Hey—you have no idea what the fuck I've been dealing with, Franca," he shouts. She freezes. He'd yelled at her before, but not so harshly as now.
"People's lives depend on my job—"
"Don't be so fucking dramatic, David—"
"I'm a cop, Franca! People's lives depend on me. There are two families out there right now that I just reunited with their children. If I had taken a break, those little girls would have died! They were missing for days—do you have any idea what that means?"
"Get out of my face," she whispers, starting past him. He'd gotten closer to her in his tirade. The detective only blocks her path. Franca closes her eyes.
"No—listen to me. People's lives depend on what I do. What I do! Everyone else gave the fuck up, but I put the pieces of the puzzle together! I did it! I've just had a hell of a night, and the last thing I need is you coming in here to scream at me because I missed dinner. Just stop it, Franca!"
When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself seated on the bed. She wonders at what point this managed to happen. Her blood is boiling. Loki's shoulders heave angrily as he stares down at her. An angry tear escapes her eye.
"You have no idea what I do every day when I'm gone. You have no idea the shit that I've fucking seen. I have told you what this job requires of me. I am sorry that I'm not enough for you—that I have to work, but how dare you come in here, after I've just been shot, and talk to me like that."
"…I thought I was never going to see you again," she breathes.
He calms down a little bit, takes a step back. And then she stands up and starts for the door. The moment she had done so, a concerned handful of nurses stand there peering in. Loki's voice had gotten pretty loud. He sighs exasperatedly.
"Franca."
She doesn't spare him another glance, but walks herself out of the hospital and back to her car.