The music didn't just play, never merely sounded--it pulsed, it throbbed, it vibrated. It made the body move unconsciously and drowned any other sounds.
Leaning over to his companion's ear, Bayliss had to shout to be heard.
"You really come here a lot?"
Chris Rawls laughed, more visibly than audibly. "Only when I'm in the mood," he admitted, so close to Tim's ear that his lips brushed it roughly. He grabbed Tim's hand and pulled him towards the dance floor.
Bayliss shook his head vehemently and looked around at the crowds of men in the room, many of them tightly packed together in the spaces between the tables. He pulled Chris close to speak to him again.
"Uh uh, no way, I don't dance!"
"Everybody dances," shouted Chris. "We'll just see if you dance well."
"All right, all right," he muttered, his words lost as the moved closer to the music. Picking up the rhythm of Chris' movements as his lover held him close, they melted into the mass of writhing bodies on the dance floor. His lips fell against Chris' ear. "But next time I get to pick the place. I'm thinking dinner, I'm thinking artwork..."
Chris shut him up with a kiss. "It was my choice tonight and I chose here. The rest of you doesn't seem to have a problem with that." Tim's hand tangled in his hair as they kissed, their bodies still moving together to the rhythm of the music.
Finally, sweat beginning to drip from their bodies, Tim begged off the dance floor and pulled Chris away, sitting down in the first seat he found. "I need a drink," he mouthed and Chris nodded, pushing his way through to the bar to grab them something cold.
Tim's eyes scanned the room again, accustomed now to the dim lighting, to the thin haze of smoke that hung over it. His eyes stopped dead and rested on a familiar form, talking and laughing at the edge of the dance floor. He watched for a long while until those dark eyes looked up and spotted him, then flicked away as the other man moved through the crowd of people, losing himself.
Tim felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up, saw Chris handing him a beer. "Thanks," he said, feeling Chris' arm come around him as he sat down. The position was as comfortable to him now as it had been awkward the first time they had touched.
"Something wrong?"
"No, no," Tim assured him. "Everything's fine." He leaned back into the embrace and enjoyed it while he could in the relative safety of the bar. Slowly he sipped at the beer, holding the icy bottle against his forehead for a moment.
"You looked like you saw a ghost there for a second," said Chris, as intimately as was possible in the din.
"No not a ghost," he replied, though the words went unheard. There was a brief silence between them as they sat there together and just watched.
"I need to use the can," said Chris, nipping at Tim's ear lightly. "I'll be right back."
Tim turned to him. "I'll be here," he said, his smile lost as he pressed his face up against Chris' to speak. The other man nodded and wove his way through the crowd again, disappearing on the other side.
"Bayliss, can we talk?"
The voice coming from so close behind him was not unexpected. He nodded and turned so the other man could hear him. "Not here," he said. "Out back." He got up and led them through, past the dance floor and down the back stairs to the deserted lower landing. For a brief moment he looked wistfully back up at the bar. "I'd kill for a smoke."
"I thought you quit."
"I did," replied Bayliss. "Years ago. Still crave 'em though."
"I didn't expect to see you here."
"Well, that makes two of us, Paul," said Bayliss calmly.
Falsone shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, looking around them nervously. "I gotta ask you," he began, "no, I gotta beg you, please don't tell anyone you saw me here."
Tim nodded. "I wouldn't have done that anyway," he said. "There's a code that goes along with these places; you should know that as well as me."
"Cop to cop, Tim, you know it goes deeper than that." Taking one look at Falsone's desperate face, Tim knew it ran deeper still.
"You okay?"
"Nobody knows, Tim," he said. "Nobody."
"I'm not gonna question your decision to stay in the closet," he assured him. "I'm no judge of how you spend your spare time."
"Yeah, maybe you aren't," he scoffed. "But a lot of people think they are."
"What can I say, Falsone?" said Tim, his voice as even as it ever got. "You set yourself up as a judge, you set yourself up to be judged."
"Don't throw that back at me."
"I'm not throwing anything," said Tim. "I'm just telling you what I see. Just telling you what me, in my life, have learned."
"I never hurt anybody."
"We all hurt people. It's just a matter of whether we do it on purpose or whether we do it by accident or whether we do it because we're being stupid."
"Now what's that supposed to mean?" The fear and desperation turned into a flash of indignation that Bayliss should have been expecting.
"Sometimes I just say what I'm thinking, Paul," he said. "It's not always about you. If you think that was about you, then maybe you oughta start thinking harder about why, you know?"
"I didn't come out here for an etiquette lesson."
"And I didn't come out here to give you one." Bayliss looked up at the door again, hearing the music faintly, seeing the thin wisp of smoke coming through the crack at the top of it. "Damn I could use a cigarette."
"Look, I'll lay it out for you," said Falsone, his voice becoming strangely naked again. "It's my son." Bayliss nodded. "If Janine knew...I'd never see him again."
"Seems like Janine keeps coming up with more and more excuses to keep Daniel from you," said Bayliss, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
"I don't know why she does it. I love my son. I do right by him."
"I know you love him," said Bayliss. "Who doesn't love their kid?" His hands gripped the railing in front of him, looking over the deserted back alley, over the sea of lights that was Baltimore at night. "You think Janine loves him?"
"She's his mother, isn't she?"
"But that's not what I asked," said Bayliss, turning towards him with more animation than he'd shown throughout the rest of the conversation. "Do you think she loves him?"
"Yeah, I do."
"And do you think Daniel loves you?"
Paul smiled. "I know he does. You should see him when I go visit, that smile that just lights up his whole face..."
"So why do you keep thinking that she's gonna keep him from you every chance she gets?"
"Because that's what she does, Tim, that's what she's done ever since she got custody over him. Every since she got that...that power over me." Falsone gestured helplessly, his frustration showing in every twitch of his body. "She exerts it is what she does."
"Uh huh," said Tim. "So you don't think she has any problem with you being gay, per se, she's just gonna use it to exert more power over you?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's it exactly."
"I won't tell her, Paul."
"Thank you. Danny, he means everything to me."
Tim smiled. "Then I promise not to tell Daniel either." He paused. "He's gonna find out someday...you can't keep it from him forever."
"When he's old enough to understand, I'll tell him," said Falsone quietly. "I'll tell him everything. Maybe even by then I'll have someone to be with."
Tim snorted. "Not if you keep hanging around this sort of place."
They both looked up suddenly as they heard the door above them open, heard the music spill out.
"Oh, hey, Chris," said Tim, his face lighting up as he saw his lover. "Sorry for taking off on you like that; I had to step out for a minute."
"No problem," he replied. "Larry told me where to find you." He looked from one man to the other. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's fine. I'm just gonna be another couple of minutes, okay?"
"Sure," said Chris, giving him a smile and a wave. "I'll just wait for you inside." The door shut again and Tim turned back to the other detective.
"That your friend?" asked Falsone.
"My lover," corrected Tim.
"I heard the rumors about you," he replied. "The whole squad was talking. I was gonna ask, you know, but I never got around to it."
"You've gotta learn," said Bayliss, "that sometimes you need to push until you get the answers you want, and sometimes you just have to let things lie."
"I don't need advice on being a detective from you, Bayliss. I hold my own. And a detective's gotta work with the facts. He can't just let things lie."
"I wasn't talking about being a detective," said Tim. "I was talking about life. I was talking about relationships. You're a good man, Paul, and I can *see* that, deep inside you, but you try too hard. You push and you push and you try to prove yourself and you don't have to do that."
"Why are we even talkin' about this?"
"Because we can," said Tim. "Maybe because I've had a couple of beers and I feel like talking. It's just talk. It's just stuff to think about."
"I'm a good detective," he said. "I do my job."
"You know, I really think that you believe that," said Tim. "You're right. You do a good job as a detective. But that isn't all there is to being part of a squad--you gotta integrate, you gotta find your place. You become loyal to your coworkers. Homicide isn't an easy place to be."
"Are you saying I ain't loyal? Are you saying I can't cut it?"
"I think you'll do fine," said Tim, surprising the both of them. "I'm just saying that you have a chip on your shoulder a mile wide, and you've got a lot to learn."
"Yeah, well thanks for the advice," said Falsone, pushing past him towards the stairs back up.
"Paul?"
"What?"
"Just think about it, would you?"
Falsone paused, then nodded. "I will," he said. "Thanks for not ratting me out about...you know...being here and everything."
"You have nothing to worry about," said Tim. "I'll see you Monday, all right?"
"Yeah, see you then."
Bayliss listened to the door close above him as he stared out over the alley for a moment longer, still craving that forbidden cigarette. Finally he pushed himself back and stretched, then climbed the stairs again, making his way to his lover and nudging this little interlude out of his mind, for now.