Work Text:
Sometimes you can't sleep.
Sometimes, you sit up on the edge of your bed with your calm, grey room around you, all of your things around you, your blankets warm with the desire for rest around you. You stare out your wide picture window at the city--cities--laid out along the hills and canyons like a quilt woven of light, right up to the edge of the ocean with its own clusters of oil rig lights, and on to dark infinity.
Sometimes, you just look out and wish you could sleep, even if all you'll have are nightmares, because then maybe, perhaps, you won't be full of people screaming.
Sometimes, you drive to a shady gun club you know, which is open pretty much 24/7, and fire round after round into nothing, trying to drown the voices out.
Sometimes, it's your dad. Sometimes, it's the other men who hurt your mom. Sometimes it's those men. Always, always, it is your mom.
*
You're--you and John; you are--first-on-scene for LA's first homicide of the year, though by the state of the body, you guess it's more likely one of last year's last dozen.
You didn't sleep last night. You find yourself crouching under an overpass, a few feet from the body, watching the lights of the approaching coroner's van play over ragged flesh.
You're glad the body is face-down--an extra layer of anonymity; faceless, sexless; you don't want to meet this person yet. You hate it every time you witness this moment in someone else's life--the instant of discovery. The instant you are known to be dead.
"Sherman, get up," John calls from the car, he's standing with the coroner and her assistant, standing in the open door of the squad car.
The coroner and her assistant look at you with raised eyebrows and amused expressions. John probably said something about fucking rookies; he probably said something about how if you're not puking over torn-up bodies, you're staring at them up-close and personal.
"Now, boot," he shouts, and you stand and walk to him, to them, feeling like unoiled machinery. Maybe a gun.
When the coroners roll the body, you look away, aware of John's eyes on you.
The coroner sighs. "Multiple GSW. First homicide of the year. Congratulations, Cooper."
You're automatically keying your radio when you hear John say, "Looks more like the last of last year, doc."
You turn away to hide your smile as you tell dispatch you need detectives at your location.
*
Michelle rolls her eyes when you tell her about the DB.
"You are so fucking lucky," she says, shaking her head.
"Yeah, well," you say, and her family was as bad as your dad in most ways, so you don't say anything about luck. "I'd rather you were getting all the fifteen-year-olds who got shot in the head and stuffed in a culvert last year, believe me."
She comes up from beside you and straddles you on the couch, looping her arms around your neck. "You're just the sweetest, baby," she breathes, smiling. "I love how you only want the best for me." You laugh and topple her sideways. You don't like having anyone on top of you, even if you like whoever it is.
*
It's been a long week of broken sleep and no sleep. Bukowski and Pound and Sebold fill the hours with a foreign kind of life and misery.
You drink coffee and sometimes disgusting stuff in cans with lightning bolts on them, and you're grateful you're young, because if you were John's age, you totally couldn't pull this off.
Just look at him--by turns exhausted and manic with detox. It hurts to watch, but that's what you do. You watch, and when it's over, when you wake up, you call 9-1-1.
You don't think about what you'll do when you are John's age; you don't think about the stretch of years between now and then, either. There are a lot of reasons why you don't think about that.
*
You talk to Chloe on the phone every other day or so, depending on your shifts and her hangovers and hours at the magazine where she's a PA. You talk to Olivia twice a week--more if she's fighting with Ward or breaking up with Ridge or freaking out about something her mom said or your dad said or some bullshit at some club.
You talk to your mom when you cook with her, a weekend night if you can, a weekday lunch if you can't. Your mom knows how to keep herself busy with her children out of the house: book clubs, charities, community gardening, painting classes for kids at a Y somewhere; she won't tell you where, which means it's probably a neighbourhood your dad would forbid. You just hope she's being careful.
You talk about work, a bit, and you listen a lot, and you give advice where it's asked. You don't tell Chloe to go back to school and quit partying. You don't tell Olivia to dump all of her losers, including her parents, and figure out what she actually wants to do with her life. You don't tell your mom you're not your dad.
You don't tell anyone you can't sleep, when you're not sleeping. You've made a good life out of being the guy nobody worries about.
*
It's been a bad week of sitting up for hours after you get home from work, because Michelle's shifts are opposite yours right now; you don't know why, but you don't have nightmares when there's someone sleeping beside you. Probably even your subconscious is just too polite to wake them up. Sometimes you still have insomnia, but that's normal. Being a cop who can't sleep sometimes is normal. Nightmares about your mother being attacked while you drift in and out of consciousness, mouth full of your own blood and broken teeth--those aren't, really.
You don't want to tell anyone you're sleeping with about what happened when you were a kid, so you're glad you don't have nightmares if someone's next to you.
Daisy might have known a little about it; she was in Chloe's grade at Chloe's school, and Chloe used to write about what happened, often, obliquely, as if describing something in her peripheral vision. Makes sense, since she wasn't really there; for the last thirteen years you've been glad for that, too.
Mostly people assumed Chloe was writing about your dad, anyway, and that's fine with you. There's not a big difference between what your dad did, over years, and what those men did in a few hours, one night.
*
The sun is almost down, slanting gold and carnelian across your bedroom. Your belly is full of macaroni and cheese and tomatoes and broccoli from the garden. You're reading a Choose-Your-Own Adventure about Aztec treasure and trying not to think about what your mom taught you about Montezuma and the conquistadors on Columbus Day last fall.
You hear the doorbell and your belly, your neck, your hands on the cover of your book go tense. Your dad has been by after dinner three times in the last two weeks. You don't want to listen to him yell at your mom any more. When he finally left, you'd been so happy to think you'd never have to listen to it again. You decide: when it starts tonight, you'll go down the hall to your mom's room and use her private phone to call 9-1-1. You know your dad is afraid of the police, no matter what names he calls them when he's angry.
There are no voices for a while, and you're just--you've barely relaxed your grip on your book, barely started reading again; you're barely believing someone came by for some reason other than to bother your family, when you hear a man shouting. Not your dad. Not your dad. Some other man is in your family's house, yelling at your mom; and then she screams.
You're in the hallway, your book fallen open on the floor, you're going to Chloe's room, you're listening to your mother crying and the voices of more than one man--not your dad; not your dad; you don't know what to do if it's not your dad.
Chloe is sitting on her bed in her nightie, hair around her shoulders in the same blood-orange light by which you were just reading, stuffed German Shepherd in her lap, her eyes as big as the moon.
"Is it Daddy?" she whispers; you shake your head and put your finger over your lips. She does the same; you have a universal code for silence.
"Hide under the bed and don't come out until I come back," you say, and she nods and drops down, slips under the edge of her Barbie coverlet like a GI Joe commando.
You close her door and creep to the staircase. You clutch the banister with both hands and go down with both feet on one step at a time. You're halfway down and staring at the black, fence-like slats of the men silhouetted in the bright-lit living room entrance, when you think you should have brought your baseball bat from your room.
There is this sound, like the sound of a body blow in an action movie, and as you come off the last stair, your bare feet leaving carpet and meeting freezing tile, as you run towards and push through the men standing like a fence of black between you and your mom, you realize that's because he's punching her. A man is crouched over her where she's half-on, half-off the couch, and he's punching those sounds of meat hitting meat and her screams and sobs out of her.
Your throat feels on fire and raw, like when you had tonsilitis, and you can't really see, except that you're pulling his arm, which was reaching back before he punched her again. His skin is hot and slick with sweat and furry with hair and he has a tattoo of an angry tiger's face on his forearm.
"What the fuck," the man says. There is a stunned silence, which isn't really silence, just quiet in the absence of those sounds, filled with harsh breathing and your mother's sobbing. And then you look up from the man's arm and see her face, meet her eyes, and she cries, "No, Ben, no, don't--"
You're crying for her too, so close to her, you can smell her perfume under the smell of grown-up men like Silvio, your gardener, when he comes in for lemonade while he eats his lunch and speaks Spanish with you and Chloe, and a half-familiar smell like change from the bottom of the front pocket of the shorts you haven't worn since last summer.
And then there is a dark shape in front of your face, and then there is nothing but red pain and old pennies in your mouth, the men's legs moving in front of you, and your mother crying, for a very long time.
Until: motionless dark, and real, yawning silence.
You wake, heart pounding in your ears and throat and stomach, your hands twisted in the sheets so hard they've come untucked from the corner of your bed.
"Ben?" Michelle asks, confused and sleepy.
"I'm fine," you say, deliberately relaxing your fingers.
"What's wrong?" she says, rolling towards you, putting her arm around your waist, below where you're pressing your hands to your cramping stomach.
"Nothing," you say. "Just a bad dream; it's okay." You pat her arm and squeeze her warm, dry, smooth skin.
She makes an unhappy, sympathetic noise. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't really remember," you lie, and close your eyes tight.
She hums understandingly and settles her head near your shoulder, and soon she's sleeping again.
You've never had a nightmare with someone else in the bed, not even when you and your mom first got home from the hospital and you and Chloe and your mom all tucked up together in your mom's big canopied bed every night, careful of the cast on her arm and the wire holding your jaw shut.
You didn't sleep then; you don't sleep now.
*
In the morning--later in the morning, anyway--there's no hiding it. You stare disgustedly at yourself in your bathroom cabinet's mirror: your bloodshot eyes and the bruised-looking flush around them, the pallor of the rest of your face. You open the mirrored door and take out your toothbrush.
You're already done eating when Michelle gets to the kitchen for breakfast. She frowns and presses her fingers around your eyes and across your forehead. She rubs gently at your temples and your third eye like your mom did when you were really little and got headaches from reading too much, sitting too close to the TV watching nature shows, squinting at puzzle pieces, refusing to run away when your dad was yelling and breaking things.
"What are you doing?" you ask, half laughing, stepping away from her hands.
"It works," she says, shrugging, wearing one of your undershirts and her gym shorts. You're already dressed to leave: clean uniform in your bag by the door. "My mom's a bit of a hippie," she adds.
You laugh entirely. "Yeah, mine too," you say. "She used to do that when I got headaches as a kid." Michelle is smiling and about to ask about your headaches, but you have to go. "I'm late," you say, and kiss her quickly, and you're gone.
You don't usually let people stay in your house when you're not there, even your family, even people you're sleeping with, even though it doesn't matter whether you're home or not--your house is not safe. No house is safe. Michelle is different, though, and it's not just the obvious similarities between your lives.
You know Michelle would call 9-1-1 before she tried to help you.
*
"Do you think it's true--the whole 'you are what you eat' thing?" John asks, handing you the shotgun and leading the way to your car. His car, he'd say, you're just a guest in it, but he doesn't get to make asshole comebacks to things you don't say out loud. Most of the time.
"What?" you say.
"You have shit on a stick for breakfast? 'Cause that's what you look like." You roll your eyes and get in the car. "No binge-drinking on work nights, frat boy."
"Not funny, sir," you say, slotting the shotgun in place, because you're obviously supposed to react, and it's not like you can deny being in a fraternity.
"Aw, boot, you're breaking my heart," he says. Your seatbelts click in at the same time.
*
The onions are caramelizing and the pastry is becoming slowly golden in the oven when your mom puts down her wine glass and takes your hand across the kitchen island. You let your other hand, the one with the knife in it, rest on the cutting board, and raise your eyebrows.
She smiles an awkward half-smile at you and squeezes her thumb down over your knuckles. "The district attorney called me today," she says, her voice soft and odd--apologetic.
"Yeah?" you say.
"She wanted to let me know that Danny Doherty--"
The name makes you let go of the knife and lean back, away from her. You close the hand your mom is holding into a fist around him, around his face in the line-up when you identified him, around his stiff suit in the courtroom during his sentencing.
"Sweetheart," she says, concerned. She puts her free hand over your fist and you realize you're probably hurting her. You let go.
"I'm sorry," you say; your voice sounds a mile away in your own ears. "What about him?"
She frowns: sad creases in her forehead and around her eyes and mouth. You know those lines were formed years ago, before you could have done anything about them--you know those lines are part of her life and that she loves them like any other part of her, because she loves that she has lived her life, but still. Those lines are sad, and they hurt to see.
"He was granted parole last week," she says.
You flinch, hard. She covers your hand again, but you pull away. "The DA said he'd do the full fifteen--"
She shakes her head, mouth pursing. "That was twelve years and two DAs ago, Ben."
Your jaw clenches so tight you can feel your teeth shifting--the implants, and the ones you grew yourself. "Where is he?" you ask, forcing your face to relax.
She's staring at you across the counter, eyes wide. You haven't talked about this in a while--she's probably surprised by your reaction, by how upset you are. You take a deep breath, eyes closed. "Mom--"
"Promise me you won't do anything," she says, and the darkness behind your eyelids becomes tight and red-edged.
"He's here," you grit out. You open your eyes on her wide-eyed face. You know she's scared, you know how rigidly she's controlling herself; you've seen her face like this before. You've never seen it when you're the only other person in the room.
"Promise me, Ben," she says again.
"Mom, I'm a cop, I can't make promises when my job--" when this is why you wanted this job, when you were ten, why you looked up at the paramedics and the cops and decided you wanted to be the one with the gun, not the one with the bandages. She tilts her head, eyes watering, and squeezes your hand so hard.
"Baby, if you see him at work, in the unlikely event it comes to that," she says, voice thick and loving and sad, "I know you'll do the right thing. "
You close your eyes again and bow your head. What does that mean?
*
SOMETHING WITH MICHELLE. ESCALATING PARANOIA.
*
John pushes you ahead of him, around the corner, away from Diaz and Mayhew and the allegeds. Your heart is still pounding from the chase. You keep your eyes down--you don't want to see his face, and you don't want him to see yours.
"What the fuck?" he asks, when you're well away.
"I'm sorry," you say, and you put your hands up placatingly.
"No," he says. "What the fuck."
"I'm sorry," you say. He shakes his head and comes closer; you step back and back again until you're against a wall and he doesn't stop until he's so close he has to lean down to look into your face.
"Sherman. What--the--fuck," he says, quiet and calm.
"I'm--" you say, and his hand on your chest, pushing you gently, steadily into the wall, stops you.
"Shut up," he says, even though you're not saying anything. "You got a month left, and if you don't tell me what the fuck is going on, you're done today. So start talking."
You wince and it wells up in your throat: Danny Doherty, your mom, the insomnia, Michelle. You keep your eyes down and your mouth shut and he just keeps staring at you.
"You been sleeping at all, boo?" he asks, finally.
You shake your head.
He waits.
"One," you say, and clear your throat. "One of the guys who beat up my mom got parole a couple weeks ago." Beat her up. For all you sometimes feel like it's the only thing you ever tell people about your life, you never tell anyone the whole story. You look up at him and he's got his blank face on.
He nods, once, very slowly. "Here?"
You nod back.
"How long?" he asks.
"Two years."
He huffs out one of his short, humourless laughs. "He won't make it," he says, as if that should reassure you.
"That's what I'm afraid of," you say.
"You worried we'll be on the call?"
You nod again. You can feel the miserable frown on your face and the blush creeping up behind it; you feel like a kid, caught out having strong emotions--any emotions.
"We're out, Coop!" Diaz calls from around the corner.
John looks over his shoulder and raises his hand and calls back, "Thanks, Diz! 'Night!"
"My mom says she knows I'll do the right thing," you say to his badge, getting it out while he's distracted, like maybe he won't notice. "But I don't know what that is." You just keep hearing his voice in your head: every once in a while. "Every once in a while we get to take a bad guy off the street for good."
His gaze snaps back to you, freezing and frozen.
"God's work," you say, and your mouth twists; you're an atheist.
"If we're on the call," he says, leaning down again, eyes flicking between yours, "you will get him on the ground and hook him up. If he's shooting people, you will neutralize the threat and put him on the ground. If he's shooting me, you will put a bullet in his head because that's your job; do you understand?"
You nod, mesmerized, but you can't really believe it, that you'd be able to exercise that kind of self-control. You didn't even think before you shot the guy who shot Dewey or hit the guy who killed Stella; you think if she'd been dead when you got there, you might've shot him too. Right through the window.
"I am your goddamn training officer, and if you can shoot somebody for fucking Dewey, you can sure as shit shoot someone for me." He's laughing, a little, on the inside in that way he has, at you and at Dewey and at himself, so you force yourself to smile.
"Yes, sir," you say.
He claps you on the shoulder, hard; you sway, but you don't stagger, and you follow when he walks away, out from behind the Dumpster, back to full sunlight and the four hours left on your watch.
*
Try to go out with friends--meet up with Chloe? STUFF. LIFE.
*
Heading out of the locker room, you nod at Chickie where she's standing at booking, beef-running-to-flab mountain of white dude beside her in cuffs.
She nods back with a smile, and you flick your eyes over her guy. He's bent over his paperwork, hands cuffed in front of him and snapped to the countertop so he can write. The inside of his right forearm is tattooed with a tiger's fading, roaring face. You stare at his profile: his high brow, saggy eyes, crooked nose, bristly jowls, and his enormous chin. You're breathing deeper; your heart is pounding. You're frozen on the free side of the bars.
"What's up?" Chickie asks, and you shake your head.
"Long day," you say without taking your eyes off Danny Doherty.
He glances at you, looks you up and down, and sneers, "What the fuck you looking at, pig?"
You inhale hard. Chickie smacks him in the back of the head and snaps, "Shut the fuck up, asshole. You think you might be in enough trouble for one day?" She shakes her head at you, like, can you believe this shit?
You push a smirk on to your face and shake your head back, shrugging, your palms and the back of your neck prickling with adrenaline sweat. No, you can't. You cannot believe this shit.
*
TALK TO CHICKIE. She saw Doherty's sheet, and when you tell her he was one of the guys who attacked your mom, she knows exactly what you mean.
It takes you a minute to figure out why her eyes are full of tears, why her hand is over her mouth, why she's putting her free arm around your shoulders and pulling you into a hug, her chin pressing above your ear. Suddenly, you understand that you've told her everything. No one since the shrinks you had in high school has known all of what happened, all at once. You didn't realize you were telling her everything.
"It's okay," she chants in a wet whisper, as you freeze and then sag against her, eyes closed. "It's okay."
[[[A breeze kicks up across the parking lot; you only know you're crying because you feel the chill of the tears on your face.]]] TOO MUCH???
*
DRIVE TO MOM'S AND TELL HER IMMEDIATELY. She is relieved; she'd been afraid he would come looking for her; you're faced with how completely differently the attack changed her life from how it changed yours--how this is so much worse for her than it could ever be for you. She deals with never really being safe differently from how you do.
"You can't save me, sweetheart; it already happened."
*
CALL CHLOE FROM MOM'S DRIVEWAY. Leave a voicemail; you haven't talked to her in a while; you saw a union-exempt job posting for the communications department at work, doing recruiting promotions and stuff. You think she should check it out. You hope she's keeping safe and you love her and you'd like her to call you tomorrow before you start work at noon--maybe get a drink this weekend?--and you wish her a good night.
*
GO HOME. Michelle texts you to see if you want to meet up when she's off in an hour; you tell her you need to catch up on some sleep. Maybe tomorrow night?
*
Sometimes, you can't sleep; sometimes, you don't sleep. Sometimes, you can.
Tonight, you do.
End.