All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Unless they're Jack McCoy, in which case they belong to Dick Wolf and L&O. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. All the Little Deaths Luna
What it was, was hot. Hot in that wet, claustrophobic way that only July could be, and only in New York. Jack McCoy wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his wrist. He was trailing down the block after this kid in a white Armani shirt. Why he was following the kid was a long story he didn't want to think too hard about.
He was drunk, drunk enough that the lights of the city whirled and whorled around him like a fingerprint on fire. The kid was drunk, too, but it didn't make him loud or giggly; he plodded down the street with heavy steps, dark hair tousled on his forehead, a sad, sad smile in his bright blue eyes. Barely out of his twenties. Jack was pretty sure he'd never been that young, himself.
"Up or down?" the kid said, over his shoulder. His voice squeaked a little.
"Up or down what?"
"Town. Town." Sam--the kid had said his name was Sam--stopped walking and stared at him. His face was a little blurred, just shy of perfect. "Where," he said slowly. "Do. You. Live?"
"Oh." Jack shrugged. His collar clung to the back of his neck. "86th and, uh, Third."
The kid nodded his head. He looked around like he'd forgotten where he was going, put his fingers up to his forehead. With another nod, he turned. "Subway," he said.
Jack kept following him. He almost glowed in the dark. All kinds of women used to glow like points of light to Jack, their beauty burning just under translucent skin. Blacked out, this summer. Not like this boy, too bright to look at directly.
Why he was following the kid was similar to why a moth followed a lit match.
They crossed the street. The blackness of the pavement shimmered underfoot. Jack thought he smelled burnt rubber, sick and poisonous. He thought he heard a sheet of glass shattering. It passed when he stepped up onto the sidewalk again, and then they were descending into the subway station. His foot skidded on the last step, and he caught himself with a hand against Sam's shoulder. Sam looked at him. Blinked his long eyelashes, twice. Said: "Hmmm." And nothing more.
They walked the length of the platform, linked that way. The fabric of the shirt was so thin it might have dissolved under Jack's touch. Four or five other people were standing around, waiting for the last train on a Tuesday night. It was hotter underground, hot as a holding cell, but he felt Sam tremble. Jack had to lean his head down close, cheek to cheek, to hear his voice.
"Are you married?"
Jack drew back, amused. "No."
A single worry line wrote itself across Sam's brow. His eyes had the shine of trapped tears. He rubbed them, and when he lowered his hand it brushed Jack's hip. "I guess that's not what I wanted to know."
Even a deep breath didn't draw enough oxygen from the air. Jack exhaled, slipped two fingers into the shirt collar. "I'm divorced," he said. It seemed to satisfy Sam's curiosity, and he let his shoulder bump into Jack's chest. The top of his head was level with Jack's. He sniffed and smelled vodka instead of vanilla shampoo, skin cream, pressed powder.
Burnt rubber. The shriek of glass and metal tearing flesh?
No. The train was pulling in. They stepped apart and got into the last car; no one else was inside. Sam dropped into a seat, sprawling loose. Jack stood beside him, barely touching the handrail even when the train lurched to life. The kid smelled of vodka, yes, and bar smoke and, improbably, summer fruit. Sunlight. Jack squinted down at him. "You're not where I'm from."
Sam shrugged. "California." He moved a hand unsteadily through the air, drawing an invisible map. "By way, um, of Washington. Used to work for Congressman Dalton."
There might have been a slur in his voice on the word 'Congressman.' "I hate politics," Jack said.
"Dalton," Sam repeated. "And." He worked his own hand under his collar, scratching along his trapezium muscles. He glanced down at the scuffed floor, or at himself, and he began to laugh. Jack didn't say anything. He knew how it was when something was funny and you'd never be able to explain why.
All at once the laugh died and he looked up at Jack again. He lifted a hand and held it against Jack's stomach, fingertips testing the polo shirt like some exotic surface. "I can't believe it," he said. "You've done this less than I have."
It might or might not have been true. Jack opened his mouth to speak and the train ground to a halt. The doors opened. If anyone had boarded, they would have seen them that way, motionless as statues sweating alcohol and salt, a young man with his hand hovering just above the buckle of an older man's belt. No one boarded. Jack swayed on his feet as the train moved; his hips rocked forward involuntarily. And Sam's fingers twinkled on the buckle.
Lights flew through the glossy black outside the window like speeding traffic. Jack kept his eyes on them, his hands locked around the silver bar above his head. He was drunk, and shaking, and so hot, and that was why he did not resist the kid's touch, lips, tongue.
The train rocked on its rails, gave them a steady rhythm. It made Jack dizzy. The alcohol in his veins was burning, blue flames flickering just at the corners of his vision. Sam's mouth, it was like fucking into a fever. Again, again, a hand firm on the back of his thigh, and Jack could not, he could not help but close his eyes. Biting his lip and groaning anyway, the wet sound and the smell of sex filling the empty space in the car. A dozen women danced in the blue fire, all the women who had done this for him before. He could remember the exact color of their lipstick. He could remember Claire's lips, naked, chapped, dry, the last time. He tasted blood, again.
One of his hands slid off the railing and plunged into all that dark hair. He was going to come and he said so, into the yowl of the train bulleting down the dark tunnel, the grind of metal on metal. Into a fever.
Sam pushed him away, lightly, and wiped his mouth on his expensive sleeve.
Jack found himself seated, staring into blank fluorescent light. On the subway. Christ. He buttoned himself up and looked across the car at Sam. Sam was looking at his hands, on his knees, and shaking his head from side to side.
The train stopped. It must have stopped--he didn't know how many times. Jack craned his neck and peered through the grimy window at the grimy platform, the sign tiled into the wall. They were one shy of his stop. He cleared his throat.
Sam stopped shaking his head and his damp eyelashes lifted. "You're divorced," he said, in his small, almost-squeaky voice.
That, Jack supposed, was all the post-coital languor you got when you weren't with a woman. He closed his eyes halfway, let them go out of focus, so everything looked like lightning and thunderhead. He flicked his tongue over his cut lip and thought of his ex-wife and how sick she'd be at the sight of him. "For years," he said.
"Did you. Do you--" Sam kept stopping himself. He'd probably have shut up if he were sober. If he were sober, he wouldn't have been on the train. As it was, he seemed incapable of finishing a sentence. "Did you ever just *want*--and you couldn't make him--her--feel it, the same way--and you couldn't make yourself stop?"
A chill syringed into Jack's veins. Weak-kneed, he pushed himself up from the seat and moved to the doors, stood with his hands spread against their brushed steel. His face was only an inch from the window, from the shimmer of black like hot asphalt.
"No," he said.
"Oh," Sam said, "huh." And then, softly, "I don't believe you."
Jack raised his eyebrows and spun around. Sam was standing up, with that sad blue-eyed smile on his face. Red spots showed on his cheekbones. He stumbled as the train jolted, began to slow down, but his chin came back up sharply and sure.
Behind Jack the doors hissed, opened. He planted one foot on the platform. Abruptly, he turned back, jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "This is me," he said, and didn't look back again.
After the subway, the night air seemed cool, though it hung heavy with all the day's steam. Jack stepped into the street against a red light. Brakes whined and someone swore, and he threw a glance into the blazing oncoming headlights, as Claire must have done at the end. The sudden end to everything, all her effort and desire.
He couldn't make himself stop.
He snorted to get the burnt rubber smell out of his nose and crossed unharmed to the far curb.
Why the kid followed him was a story he never knew.