Film Noir

It was dark that night, the kind of darkness that you could slice through with a machete. It wasn't raining, a change for this neighbourhood, but the streets and cobbled gleamed as if they'd been polished with the fat of a slaughtered sacrificial rams.

I'd just been at the precinct, making sure that those hoodlums I took down were well under lock and key and that they were crying to their momma's in their only phone call home, when I suddenly knew that there was something big going down on the other side of my patch. Call it instinct. Call it the hand of a higher power. I knew that I needed out of those poky prison cells and into the night before something went real wrong.

The door to my office was open and the room wreathed in cigar smoke. As the haze lifted I saw him...golden eyes hidden behind those smoked glass lenses, long legs from here to hell and a smile that could crack the heart of the stoniest Death Eater.

He slinked over, tongue licking at those sinful lips, and smirked.

"Hey sweet cheeks, you don't mind, do ya?"

"What you doin' here, Remi? I thought you were doing time in Sing Sing for those concrete boots they found on Sirius Black."

"There ain't a cell strong enough to keep this wolf, Severus, sweetheart." And with that he curled himself onto my desk, swigging at the JD in the decanter as if it were root beer.

"They'll be after you. And when they catch you, I'll be there watching you do the sit down dance in Old Smoky."

"Now, there ain't no need for that, is there? Just 'cos you didn't want to get in my slacks don't make me the target for your..."

Drawing my trusty .22 from my holster I shut him up then in the only way I knew how...

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Always knew that boy'd be trouble. Even we were kids living in good old Michigan state, I knew he'd be running on the other side of the law as soon as he was old enough to steal his poppa's Colt. Course the kid was clever, came off so good against the background of filth and sin, but I know him well enough to see inside him he had a heart that would never bleed and a body that would never quit. Kinda ironic that he was the first guy I busted, all them years ago.

He killed a guy. I took him down. Course, he was let out due to the damned liberal judge who took one look at those sweet gold eyes and thought that it couldn't have been a boy as innocent as him. Always played on his looks, played with the best, played with the Mob and Christ he damned well won.

Remus Lupin. Pretty boy. Killer for profit and with less soul than a vampire.

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I never really wanted to be a cop, because in this town if you're a cop your life ain't worth a shit. One look at that shiny badge on your lapel, and you're target practice for the nearest slimeball, and if they can't get you? The drink will.

Cops drink here. JD on the rocks, the detective's greatest ally. Just the sting in your throat as you choke down shot after shot makes you forget you may be rubbed out the next day, makes you forget your kids are running around with guys that ain't worth spitting on, makes you forget you're wife is getting it on with a window cleaner or a plumber or whatever the bastard does. Police work ain't all roses, it's tough and it'll tear you down if you let it.

It took me down but I managed to survive. Just.

The agency is kinda the same thing, except we don't operate exactly on the right side of the law. We do what we have to, if we have to. We find kids who've run away and been sucked into the underworld, kids who's momma weeps with pain when she realises her good little girl is now a crack whore who peddles it for more dope on the street corner. We take out lovers of wives and husbands and it's kinda ironic how many of the guys from the precinct come to me.

I'm the best. Severus Snape. The kinda guy your eyes flick over and you forget instantly. Inconsequential. I'm a John Doe figure with a heart of steel and a mind that could shatter diamond. Hard. The work hardens you, and when you're an ex-cop making it as a private dick, you've gotta be tough or you'll just sink. In this world, there ain't love for a guy who serves justice; the bullet scars in my shoulder prove that. Couldn't tell you how many times I've almost been wiped out.

It's worse when you see guys you love, good men with loving families and bright eyes, eager to try and clamp down on the shit-stink of crime, get their ticket. You just stand there as they fall to their knees, life leaking onto the sidewalk in a puddle of blood and bone fragments, as the low-down fuck who killed them squeals off in whatever auto he's fingered from the nearest parking lot. When you see good being overwhelmed by evil, friends dying because they just wanted to make this world a safer place for their kids, it makes you think if you're on the right side.

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Me and Lupin, we go way back. Course, the force and no one knows what went down between us two, and I mean no one. See, at heart I'm still a cop, and I do get those little twinges in my heart when I gotta do something illegal. And what me and the kind did? That was illegal. Sinfully illegal.

It was 1929, just before the Crash, and we'd just hit sweet sixteen. It was the kind of idyllic summer that made you realise that there is a God, the kind of summer that is sizzling white-heat, lazy days drinking Coca-Cola with a little bit of your old daddy's moonshine thrown in for good luck and laying in a hammock with nothing to do but just watch the world go past and talk with your buddies. The summer that, when you reach the age where you know that there ain't nothing left apart from bitterness and the metallic taste of nostalgia, you wanna just step back in time and be right there again.

I didn't know that a guy could feel like that about another guy. I thought the world was all pretty broads in silk stockings and the soft swell of creamy breasts against flimsy summer shirts. It was, until I felt a hand crawling up my thigh and a pair of cola-tasting lips against mine, and then I knew that there are some guys in this world who ain't built for loving dames.

I'd never thought anyone real beautiful before. Sure, there were girls who were cute and sassy and kinda sexy, but I hadn't seen anyone who was beautiful. And he was. And he still is, the bastard. It ain't fair that the scum of this world should be so goddamn seductive. It ain't fair that they have hair the colour of sunlight on the barrel of a sawn-off, and eyes that were the same shade as honey, a body built for sinning and a mind as twisted as the St Valentine's Day Massacre. And for those two years before I went to college to get me a life outside Hicksville, me and him were just that. Me and him. Being together in secret, fucking in secret, being in love in secret...

Jesus. I think I need a drink. Been off the Jack for four damned years and the thought of him just makes me wanna break open a new bottle and drink until I can't see no more. Yeah. I'm a fool, but who ain't in the business of love? You get hung up on the special guy or gal in your life, and you either screw together, you get screwed up, or you get screwed over. Live is just one giant fuck, and if you're lucky, you're gonna keep coming.

Thirteen years, and a gallon of shit has happened in that thirteen years. Thirteen years and I ain't gotten over the kid with the blond hair and the liquid eyes. That angel who fell. Remus. The guy who burgled my heart and replaced it with a steel-caged seething mass of hatred and bitterness. Oh for Chrissakes I'll just say the fuckin' words. The guy I still love. He kills guys, he maims and murders his way through this city, and I still love him.

And then, of all the offices of all the private dicks in this barren and syphilitic town, he had to walk into mine.

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The door to my office is open and the room wreathed in cigar smoke. As the haze lifts I see him...golden eyes hidden behind those smoked glass lenses, long legs from here to hell and a smile that could crack the heart of the stoniest Death Eater.

He slinks over, tongue licking at those sinful lips, and smirks.

"Hey sweet cheeks, you don't mind, do ya?"

"What you doin' here, Remi? I thought you were doing time in Sing Sing for those concrete boots they found on Sirius Black."

"There ain't a cell strong enough to keep this wolf, Severus, sweetheart." And with that he curls himself onto my desk, swigging at the JD in the decanter as if it were root beer.

"They'll be after you. And when they catch you, I'll be there watching you do the sit down dance in Old Smoky."

"Now, there ain't no need for that, is there? Just 'cos you don't want to get in my slacks any more don't make me the target for your..."

I shut him up then in the only way I know how. With my mouth on his. He don't resist; he never did when we were doing this thirteen years ago and he ain't forgotten that. I can taste it in the eagerness of his tongue and the hardness of his cock against mine.

And then, the bastard pushes me away, that crooked smile on his face and those golden eyes molten with some kinda emotion.

"Severus, what took you so long?" he whispers, voice cracking, and then he pulls me back to him, back to his hot and needy mouth and his clinging arms.

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JD and cigars, two guys all wrapped around each other and seated in a battered leather armchair, the blond's head resting against the shoulder of the darker man.

"I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know,"

Severus Snape suppresses a tiny smile. " You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere. 'Specially here." And with that his fingers catch Remus under the chin, pulling the criminal's mouth towards his own narrow lips for a searing, claiming kiss.

Film Noir. While this whole world seems like it's being directed by the Big Guy in the heavens, sometimes, somewhere, the little guys truly win.