Deceit

[sideways]

Title: Deceit
Rating: G
Genre: Modern
Wordcount: 1274 
Remarks: Andrew is mine; Patience belongs to a friend. This wasn't really written with a wider audience in mind, so some things I didn't go into - such as Patience's twin sister being an addict - are meant to provide subtler shadings in her thoughts.

There was the clank of ceramic as it was dumped unceremoniously into the sink, a few seconds of running water, and then Andrew’s head poked out of the doorway to the kitchen. “Really?”

Patience cupped her hands tighter around her mug, savouring the small warmth that still remained in its near-emptiness. It had once felt discourteous to expect him to make a cup of coffee when that was exactly what he spent most of every day doing, but he had been quick to insist that it was a task he genuinely liked to do, and even quicker to cheerfully pluck teaspoons and sugar out of her hands should she try to ignore him. As there was no denying he far outstripped her in the fine field of bean brewing, she’d finally relented and resigned herself to enjoying the benefits of a having barista for a boyfriend.

“Well, there was no conclusive proof.” Which meant she probably shouldn’t be spilling her suspicions to her civilian barista boyfriend, even if a little voice in the back of her mind pointed out that he likely heard wilder cop gossip at the café on a daily basis. She silently apologised to any law enforcements gods that might be hovering disapprovingly nearby, just to be safe.

“Uh huh,” Andrew said. He held one palm out flat as he stepped further into the room, squinting down at it while the other flipped the pages of the imaginary book it held. “With the use of my growing fluency in police-ese and my don’t-let-the-lawyers-get-me to English dictionary, I’m going to guess that’s a yes.”

“Yes,” she replied dryly. “She wouldn’t meet my eyes, she couldn’t even begin to look at Greg, and she was wearing a sweater in a house that was obviously well-heated. I’m fairly certain she was lying.”

He moved forward the last few steps and flopped into his seat at the table, letting one leg curl beneath the chair. The other knee was pulled up to his chest so he could prop his chin on it and frown at her from his hunch-backed position. “Weird.”

“It’s sad,” Patience agreed softly. A three letter word for a much more long-lived problem. She considered herself to be a pragmatic individual, evidenced by a career in the force stretching past five years; she knew others who buckled as each ideal was steadily shredded in the face of reality, had witnessed one or two crash hard, and she had no intention of wandering down that path. She’d long ago learnt to nod her respects to reality and accept that people lied and did dangerous, stupid things, even when they had every reason not to.

That was not to say it couldn’t be wearying sometimes—though a hot dose of caffeine and unapologetic oddball was proving to be a bracing cure she might have to start actively recommending to her co-workers, she mused.

The sound of Andrew’s voice snapped her from her thoughts, and she realised he was choosing to press the topic this evening, rather than let it rest at that sorrowful summary.

“-less sense than it should,” he was saying. As she watched, he tilted his head as if the truth was there before him and he only needed a better angle to see it. “I could understand being frightened if you thought you were all alone in it and weren’t sure you could get to help before he got to you, but you were right at her door. Greg’s no wilting lettuce leaf, and I’m sure you would have bench-pressed her couch to prove your worthiness as city protector if you had to. Why not take the help that was right there? Why lie about it?”

She couldn’t help but smile at his genuine puzzlement. Although she knew this was something quite a lot of people struggled to wrap their heads around, it was oddly easy to read it as disbelief at the idea of lying full-stop. It’s the eyes, the little voice sighed. His mother must have cursed whoever passed on those baby blues.

“It’s complicated,” she said at last, and winced slightly at the triteness of those words. “People in those sorts of situations…they stop thinking about the world in the same terms as you and I.” Or maybe just me, she amended silently. It was hard to know if anyone thought about anything the same way Andrew did. “They start to think that what’s happening to them is normal, and that telling other people about it will just make them seem overdramatic. They might even start to believe they’re at fault for making their partner angry, so they deserve the punishments. After all, the spouses are rarely abusive 24-7. People will fight surprisingly hard to hold onto the hope that everything is alright; that the happy memories are the reality, and the bad times just a mistake.” She sighed. “Lying to others becomes a lot less difficult when you spend so much time lying to yourself.”

Andrew hummed thoughtfully. He seemed to be absorbing the minor lecture with surprising focus. It was not as if he was unintelligent—his perpetual quipping was too articulate for that—but he generally liked to get the scope of things by rapidly firing out questions and interrupting any answers that were, by his standards, taking too long or straying too far from the centre point of what had grabbed his interest.

“When they lie to you, you can’t make an arrest, right? Even if you know they’re lying.”

“Not without some sort of solid evidence. Warrantless arrests are tricky things.”

“So what happens then?”

Patience shrugged as she drained the last of her coffee, the old mixture of frustration and helplessness still simmering close enough to the surface to turn the taste bitter. “All we can do is let them know that there are support systems available. The choice has to be theirs.”

He frowned down at the table, poking at a lone nail resting on its surface, a left-over from some household project. “And that’s it.”

“Our hands are tied, for the time-being at least,” she said, and found her own brows dipping down a little lower when no comment involving duct tape, sailor’s knots, or bondage followed. Andrew delighted in being erratic, but that didn’t mean there were no patterns to be found, and the silence that accompanied his absent herding of the nail was unusual. She lowered the mug carefully. “I didn’t realise you were so interested in this.”

He glanced up at that, eyebrows arching in amusement. “What, your life? If there’s one thing soapies have taught me, it’s that it’s good to care about what your partner gets up to during the day. Mostly to check they’re not cheating on you with their half-brother’s cousin’s husband who is actually your long-lost amnesiac father’s twin sister, but the general message was there.”

The grin he gave her was natural, and the way he draped both arms over the back of the chair as he leaned back in it was familiar, and the glee in his eyes when she chuckled was unmasked. She brushed aside the tiny flicker of something the same way she brushed away that one errant piece of fringe, and asked him how his day had gone.

A fortnight later, when she tilted his chin to better see the black eye and his gaze flitted to her briefly before drifting sideways to where his sister was huddled in silent, trembling shock as she watched her husband and abuser of six years being led away, Patience thought she really ought to have known better.