In a bar...

[captain_fucking_magic]

Harry's having a fairly good day, as these things go. He's taking a break from work, and has absconded with Perry's laptop to the bar, where he is typing up a blog post detailing their last case. Or at least, what he's allowed to blog about. Perry still insists on checking these things over before Harry posts them (confidentiality and all that, which fine. Harry can work with that), but he's got pretty good at knowing which bits to leave out or alter slightly to keep Perry in business.

And besides. It's kind of fun, being like Dr Watson. Only, you know. Without the doctor part.

Comments

[myeuh_muh]

"Does that mean I'd get to shoot you?" A thought strikes her.

"Wait, I'm not wearing like, heels and a sparkly leotard. You can wear that. I'll shoot you, but I'm at least wearing pants."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Nah, this is 2006," Harry says. "Spangly jumpsuits are so over, unless you're in Vegas. Then even the magicians wear sequins."

[myeuh_muh]

"Can I have like, a sparkly tuxedo? We could have matching ones and be the fabulous version of Penn and Teller."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Sure, if you want," Harry says. "Go with silver, though. Gold's a bit too glam right now."

He turns his attention back to his writing.

"What's the word for that area of a car where, like, it doesn't have a trunk, but just a kind of space behind the back seat? You know what I'm talking about?"

[myeuh_muh]

"Uh... Good question. I guess the trunk?" Darcy thinks about this really hard. "Yeah, I think it's the trunk. You could say luggage rack if there's like, one of those sort of clippy folding things."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Huh. All right."

He goes back to typing.

"We found, like, all this coke in this car last week. It was insane. It had all, like, spilled out everywhere and got on me, which sucked."

For reasons.

[myeuh_muh]

"Uhuh."

Darcy is judging a little. Funny, she wouldn't have pegged him as the type.

"You could have pretended it was like, confectioner's sugar."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Yeah, but what good would that have done?" he asks. "It was kind of evidence."

He's just a tad oblivious right now. But of course Darcy made the same leap the cop did.

Of course.

[myeuh_muh]

Darcy gives him a bit of a look. Staring into Harry's ultimately guileless face (and noting that he wouldn't know what a guile was, or how he'd lost it) she's forced to admit, maybe, just maybe, he's telling the truth.

"I dunno. I usually just sort of brush it off and hope no one notices."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Yeah, well. That's what we tried. Who knew the cops in LA actually come when you call them, though."

Not Harry. Especially since they seemed to be completely absent last Christmas.

"I mean, we're not technically supposed to touch anything that might be real evidence, because we're not cops, but we didn't know it was in there until after it went everywhere."

[myeuh_muh]

"Wait, you mean that actually happened? Like, for real?"

You mean you don't just have an active imagination and serious dedication to a role-playing blog?

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Yeah," Harry says slowly. "My boss is a detective. That's how I met him, actually. I was supposed to be getting detective lessons for a movie role that I didn't actually get." And there's no bitterness there. Nope. "Then there was this dead chick in a lake and some asshole with a serious hard-on for old detective movies.

"I got shot. It kinda sucked."

[myeuh_muh]

"...No wait, really?" Darcy frowns at him. "For someone who writes like you do you suck at story-telling. Tell it properly."

[captain_fucking_magic]

"What, really?"

He's surprised anyone actually wants to hear it, considering his blog gets all of about three hits a month.

[myeuh_muh]

"Well, yes. Either you're making it up, and your story will not hold up, or you'll tell a good story."

Well, it's not that simple but whatever. Darcy waves a rat over.

"I'd like chai tea please. Want one?"

[captain_fucking_magic]

"Uh. OK."

Whether that's for the tea or the story is unclear.

He tells her, though. Tells her pretty much everything. The toy shop in the East Village, the detective lessons, getting completely whacked on Demerol.

When it comes down to it, it was a pretty insane four days.

"I even have some of his cards, but I'm not allowed to say that they're mine," he says. He hands her one of them, which is just your basic business card for someone called Perry van Shrike.

"I can't technically help him with the cases though. Mostly, I just pay the bills, file the papers. Translate for him, because what kind of jackass lives in LA and doesn't speak Spanish?"

[myeuh_muh]

Darcy leans forward as he speaks. It's kind of disjointed, like someone telling a joke but not remembering it all.

"You know what's weird about this story? You never once went to the police like 'Hey so these guys pulled my finger off.'"

[captain_fucking_magic]

"I only saw them, like, once. The whole time," Harry says. "They were probably too busy beating up some black guy for trying to unlock his own car. I don't know."

[myeuh_muh]

"The whole time? Even when you were like, dangling from the dead chick? Jeez... To be honest I'm amazed you gave way before her arm did."

Oh okay that thought was kind of gross.

[captain_fucking_magic]

"I had just been shot," Harry reminds her. "Which ain't fun. Like. At all.

"You think it'll be cool and get a neat scar or something, but it's just months of physical therapy and an arm that kinda goes numb sometimes if you hold it wrong."

[myeuh_muh]

"Ew." Darcy makes a mental note to avoid getting shot. "You didn't get like, any sort of cool scar at all? You know, one you can show to impressionable girls or something?"

Is that a thing people still do?

[captain_fucking_magic]

"No. It doesn't really look like anything. I thought it would be all, like in the war movies where they dig the bullet out of the guy's leg? But they don't do that. They just stitch you up and send you home with an outrageous fucking bill."

[myeuh_muh]

"Oh." And when this doesn't seem like enough. "I fell out of a tree when I was a kid and got a big cut on my stomach. I told people it was where they cut out my identical twin sister till Mom found out and made me stop."

[captain_fucking_magic]

Harry laughs at that, sort of amused by the mental image.

"What, seriously?" he asks. "Why'd she make you stop?"

[myeuh_muh]

"Because the reason it was so ragged and not like Charlie Seller's appendectomy scar was because she'd cut it out of me with the big kitchen knife."

Darcy has the decency to look shamed.

"You know that moment when you can't not say what you're about to say?"