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For reasons that are nothing short of miraculous, it’s actually a quiet night at Detroit Investigative Services—until Wilson’s perp arrives.
She sits at the rickety table with a stubborn set to her jaw and flecks of paint clinging to the tips of her nails. The newly opened record on Connor’s tablet lists her as North Durand, part-time community college student, full-time social activist, although she refuses to list the protests she’s been involved in. That’s telling enough. Wilson had stopped him at the door to the repurposed interrogation room and warned him that she’d been extremely reluctant to give out any personal information, much less admit any relation to the client. “Then again,” she’d added, “that’s what we’ve got you for. Go get ’em, Negotiator.”
One time. Connor told the agency one time about his dreams of being a hostage negotiator—after copious amounts of caffeine, at that—and they haven’t let it go since.
He supposes it has something to do with his age. Being the youngest detective at the agency means he’s subject to more than a bit of friendly ribbing on a daily basis, as well as being saddled with the tasks that no one else wants. Tonight, judging by Wilson’s self-satisfied smirk, that task is questioning a young vandal on behalf of the client. He doesn’t mind it all that much, but when his coworkers are loudly making weekend plans in the room adjacent—well, that might be just a little on the nose.
Nevertheless, Connor’s job is to find out if North Durand did what she did, and he’s never been one to do things half-assed. He lets the door swing shut behind him, and only then does she look up from studying the table’s mahogany surface. She’s white, feminine-presenting and identifying, 5’5”. Conventionally attractive, Connor notes, although it’s not like he’d know much about that. If her dark vest and beanie are any indication, this isn’t her first time doling out personal retribution.
She also lights up the second she lays eyes on Connor, which is… unexpected, to say the least.
“Can I have my one phone call?” she says.
Connor blinks. “That’s…”
“I know my rights,” says North Durand, with a surprising lack of defensiveness in her voice. “Can I just use my phone call, real quick? It’ll be two minutes. I have someone who can pick me up.”
Standard procedure flashes and blurs in front of Connor’s eyes. Sometimes having a near-eidetic memory is useful; other times, when he’s trying his best to improvise, it’s a tad stressful for his tastes. “This isn't a precinct,” he says. “You're free to contact anyone you want, but we haven't found you guilty of—”
“Okay,” North interrupts, “but I did it. Definitely. Malicious destruction of private property, that’s what the guy said. How much is that going to be? Fines and shit, right?”
Numbers. There’s something Connor can latch onto in this whirlwind of information. “The car was a 2037 M-OP X9,” he says, automatically. “Damage was aesthetic and minimal, and the client is asking seven hundred for reimbursement and repair, if he doesn't choose to press charges. But that’s not a decision I would make without consulting a—”
North shakes her head. “Nope. Seven hundred. Sounds perfect. Can I have my phone call now?”
This, Connor decides, must be what whiplash feels like. He wonders briefly if she's a coworker's attempt at hazing, and he’s just completely oblivious. “Yes,” he says, hesitantly, “but we'd like to collect some information before you go. If you’re alright with that, then…”
Trailing off isn’t his style, but he’s become very quickly accustomed to letting this girl interrupt him. Of course, this is the one time she doesn’t—she just stares at him expectantly. “Then you're welcome to call your contact,” Connor finishes, and nods to the door. “Your phone's on the shelf in the hall.”
He takes her outside and draws a few strange looks from the secretaries standing at the water cooler, but thankfully, there aren’t any offhand comments. Connor watches as North scrolls her contacts, then rocks back on the balls of her feet as the phone trills at her ear.
“Markus!” she says, when the ringing breaks off. “Listen, the guy hired a PI. Right? So I'm at DIS and I need you to pick me up. Don’t ask questions. Dress nice.”
She hangs up, cutting off what sounds like a muffled protest on the other end. Connor hopes he doesn’t look too much like a deer in the headlights when she turns to face him, but something tells him his efforts to be pokerfaced are futile at this point.
“That was Markus,” she says, gesturing vaguely to the phone. “Markus Manfred, Carl Manfred’s son. Do you know him?”
The name Manfred spawns a host of headlines and event listings in Connor’s mind. He narrows it to Markus Manfred and one stands out in his mind, as bright and clear as if he’d seen it the day preceding—MANFRED SON DOES MURAL FOR ANTI-FASCIST RALLY. “He’s an activist?”
“Activist and a painter, like his dad.” North glances over her shoulder as he leads her back to the interrogation room, like she’s watching him for some sort of reaction. “Do you like art at all?”
Connor hasn’t the faintest idea. Since he was hired at the agency, art hasn’t exactly been a priority. “I suppose so,” is what he settles on.
“You’d like Markus’s stuff. Everyone does.” She takes a seat and watches him meaningfully. “We met at Pride a couple years ago. He was really funny and smart and interesting to talk to, and we’ve been ride or die ever since. Loyal, too,” she adds. “Not just anyone would drop everything to come get me like he is.”
Granted, it didn't sound like she’d given this Markus much choice. Connor clears his throat and pushes any irrelevant musings out of his head. All strange behavior aside, he’s just extracted a confession in record time, so there’s that. At least he’s attempting to live up to his nickname.
Confession, of course, is putting it loosely. She’d been caught red-handed at the scene, carving the beginnings of what would have been an obscenity into the side of the client's X9. The ticket, as Connor’s mentor would say, is figuring out the why of the situation. Good detectives try to understand dissatisfaction at its roots, and no amount of menial assignments or night shifts will discourage him from attempting to do so.
"The client is a Brett Sadler," he says. "He believed he was being tailed and targeted by rogue agents of justice—"
North scoffs.
"—his words," Connor finishes. "Do you know him?"
She rolls her eyes and folds her arms. “Know is generous. He trails people in his car and says horrible things when they’re out on the street. He followed a friend of mine for three blocks, just shouting at him. Josh wouldn’t do anything about it,” she adds. “He’s too nice for that. But I’m not.”
She sits back, letting her words ruminate, then says, “Markus probably wouldn’t approve of my methods. He’s more of a direct confrontation guy, you know? Facing things head on. He's not afraid of anything, all about righting wrongs, the whole thing. I think you two could have a lot in common.”
Connor flips his stylus between his fingers and looks down at the tablet. There are definitely ways to respond to her without pretending as if she’s not bringing up Markus every few seconds, but he’s too burnt out to consider the possibilities. “So you were looking for Sadler."
“His car. He parks in a public garage,” says North. “It wasn’t that hard.”
If Connor believed in such a thing, he would call what had happened to her a matter of bad luck. Wilson is off hours this late; it was pure coincidence that he'd stopped in to charge his Vespa at the same time she had been hard at work. “Then you were keying his car as... a rogue agent of justice."
North drums her nails against the table. They’re acrylic, Connor notes, and surprisingly well-kept. “I keyed his car because I wanted to show him that people won’t take his harassment lying down. You can’t talk shit and expect you won't get hit, especially if you’re a middle-aged white guy in a cheap luxury car. A Tesla? He was asking for it. So, sure, I'm a rogue agent, and yeah, it was a little justice.”
“Vigilante justice,” Connor corrects, drily. “And I don't see what keying his car has to do with putting a stop to his activities."
"Oh, yeah," says North, "I was gonna slash his tires. Best for last, you know."
He arches an eyebrow, but she doesn't blink. “Anyway. That's everything you need to know, right?”
It is. If Connor didn't know any better, he'd say it isn't the first time North Durand has been on the wrong end of a private investigation. She straightens up at his affirmation, and if it were possible to verbally shift gears, that would be exactly what she does. “Great. So you’re going to keep an eye on me until my friend gets here, right?”
“We have a waiting room,” says Connor. “You're welcome to pay now if you have the means.
A smile tugs at North’s lips. It wouldn’t be Connor’s first reaction to the phrase pay now, but then again, she’s proven herself not to be the average perpetrator. “Sure,” she says, and practically springs to her feet. “Markus is gonna take care of it. It sounds cheesy, but he's an actual philanthropist, you know? I don’t know what the city would do without him.”
She goes on as Connor escorts her through the door. There’s a different cluster of late-nighters at the water cooler, now, but they give him the same what-the-fuck-is-Anderson-doing-now glare that he’s exhaustively familiar with. At this point in the evening, Connor doesn’t blame them. “He’s always busy, what with his art gallery and making speeches and everything. I always tell him he needs to get out more. Try dating or something. You know what I mean, right?”
“What,” says Connor, distractedly, fishing for something to embellish the sign-out sheet. “Dating?”
“Yeah,” comes the casual reply. “Like, are you single, or…”
Just as Connor grasps at the pencil stub in his pocket, he fumbles and drops it. His mouth opens, then closes without having made a sound. “Am I…”
“Single,” North repeats. “I mean, I’m sorry if I thought wrong, I just assumed a private detective or whatever wouldn’t have much downtime on his hands.”
Usually, when Connor asks a clarifying question, it’s because he’s floundering in the wake of someone else’s sarcasm. It just goes to shows how far removed tonight has been from every other day of his life. “You’re asking if I’m… single.”
North nods, and Connor decides that if this is a hazing attempt, he’s going to have words with them about their choice of approach. “I’m not in a relationship,” he says, and finally gets ahold of the stub to scrawl ND and open the door for North. “But I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I was just wondering,” comes the airy reply. She sweeps through without any prompting and cracks her knuckles, then leans forward, straining to see down the hall. “You can’t see the door from here, can you?”
“No, but I can let you know when your friend is here.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and actually sounds like she means it. “You’ll know him when you see him, anyway. He’s pretty hard to miss.”
She’s not wrong.
Connor is retrieving some packages from the mailroom when a gust of cool air sweeps through the front hall. He cranes over the threshold and is immediately grateful for the room’s sudden drop in temperature, because the most beautiful man he’s ever seen is standing on the mat. Tiny droplets of water streak his face and mingle with his dark freckles like stars, and he pops the high collar of his jacket, lifting a small flurry of rainwater into the air. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, he then immediately shoots an apologetic glance skyward, pursing his mouth in a line that doesn’t have any right to be as perfect as it is. He’s guilty, Connor thinks, followed immediately by he’s considerate, and how does that have any place in his roster of objective observations?
The man catches his eye and offers a soft smile to their unflappable receptionist, who suddenly looks more flustered than Connor has ever seen her. “Hi,” he says. “Markus Manfred, I’m here to pick up a friend of mine.”
Well, shit.
North’s erratic behavior is starting to make a troubling amount of sense.
“Mr. Manfred,” says Connor, and immediately regrets opening his mouth, because his knees go weak the instant Markus looks up. He swallows and holds out a hand, because as unprofessional as he might be feeling right now, that’s not going to stop him from keeping up the facade. “Detective Anderson. I closed Brett Sadler's case—North Durand, she's your friend?"
“That’s her.” Markus crosses the floor to take Connor’s hand, and a flood of new stimuli hits Connor like a sledgehammer. Markus’s palms are cool—from the rain, he suspects—and worn with calluses. Artist’s hands. He has a tiny lisp that smoothes over the edges of his sentences and makes them fluid. His right eye is a vibrant blue; his left, a vivid green. Heterochromia iridum: a difference in coloration of the iris. Incredibly rare and, Connor thinks, incredibly striking.
“Nice to… meet you,” he manages, and hopes fervently that none of his coworkers are within earshot, because if even one of them catches him fumbling, they’ll never let him live it down. “If you’ll follow me, we can get your payment processed. If you want to cover damages, of course.”
Markus drops his hand, and Connor realizes with a rush of embarrassment that he’s been clinging to it all this time. “Of course,” he says, and then, “That guy really hired a PI, huh?”
"We serve the client," says Connor, without thinking. Markus's expression folds just slightly, and he suddenly feels the need to clarify as he shows Markus to the desk. "We don't... pick and choose, rather. Regardless of our own personal feelings on the matter."
Even Markus's scrutiny is beautiful. "Personal feelings," he echoes.
"Yes," says Connor. "On a man exercising unchecked privilege to terrorize the undeserving, for instance."
His coworkers have called them manifestos, monologues, other derisive M-words and a reminder to take it easy, kid, we're not superheroes. Markus looks at him as if he could be. He says, "Well said," and then, "I suppose the DIS knows what it's doing after all."
There’s something about this man that just radiates warmth. Connor’s never met anyone quite like him. He tries to focus on bringing up the charge, but it’s a little difficult to do so when Markus is right there, watching him with those hypnotic eyes, making him feel like a second-day rookie with enough technical savvy to operate a toaster. “It’s alright,” he says. “It was good of you to come out here, what with how late it is.”
And now he’s making small talk, as if all of this isn’t out of character enough.
Markus smiles again. It’s not flirting, Connor tells himself, resolutely; it’s common courtesy, and nothing more. “It’s good of you to understand. And I was up anyway, so really, it wasn’t that much trouble. I’m used to her getting into it,” he adds, and drags a hand across the back of his neck. “She means well, and I owe her a lot."
The charge blinks to life in front of him, and he puts his hand flat on the desk to confirm it. Markus’s knuckles are tinged a reddish-gold; faded, which suggests a persistent formula, and without the telltale metallic sheen of an M-OP vehicle. He’d been painting. Connor is filled with a sudden, juvenile desire to ask about it.
Instead, he accepts the payment and gestures to the hall adjacent. “She’s right over here.”
He doesn’t even have to look over his shoulder—he can feel the receptionist’s eyes on them as he shows Markus to the waiting room. So much for keeping his coworkers in the dark. North is cross-legged in a chair, playing some game on her phone, but she jumps up as soon as they appear in the doorway. “Hi, Markus,” she says, without a single iota of guilt in her voice. “Thanks.”
“Josh is going to have an aneurysm,” says Markus, but his tone is light. He puts a gentle hand on her shoulder as they walk back to the entry hall and says, “Thank you, Detective, for letting me come by. Hopefully you won’t be seeing either of us anytime soon.”
North rolls her eyes, this time hard enough to make Connor’s own temples twinge. “You know,” she says, giving Markus a look that couldn’t be more pointed if it tried, “it’s very possible that Brett won't learn his lesson. And if he doesn't, and I have to go after him again, it would be great to have Detective Anderson’s number just to check in, wouldn’t it? Just to call and make sure some VIP client hasn't blown a gasket?"
Markus blinks. He looks as if he’s struggling for words, and for once, Connor can relate. “Um, that would be…”
“Great,” says North, slowly. “It would be great, right, Markus?”
“Right,” Markus blurts. He’s not exactly the picture of composure anymore, but it’s beautiful in a different way—authentic, Connor thinks. “If Detective Anderson is okay with that, I mean.”
Detective Anderson is, in fact, very okay with that. “Sure,” says Connor, and accepts Markus’s phone with what he hopes isn’t an extremely conspicuous blush creeping up the back of his neck. The receptionist is still watching them, and he’s not sure if the expression on her face is jealousy or delight. He types in his number without dropping the phone, which all things considered is an achievement for the evening, and hands it over. North observes the proceedings without even attempting to hide her smirk.
“Well,” she says, once Markus has pocketed his phone again. “I think now we can go, right, Markus?”
“Right,” says Markus, again. He still looks a little dazed, but he seems to regain his bearings and offers Connor another life-ruining smile, and now, without a doubt, Connor knows his blush is showing. He’ll have to bribe the receptionist with fresh coffee grounds for a month to keep this under wraps. “It was really nice to meet you, Detective.”
“It was nice to meet you too,” Connor echoes, as North takes Markus by the arm and starts to pull him towards the door. His heart is racing and all he can do is stare, and any other day, he’d consider that a problem.
This, Connor decides, must be what a crush feels like.
He doesn’t mind it all that much.