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captain-kit-sniles · 3 months ago

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"We all have our vices."

In which Actor is slightly too late for his cue. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 TW: drinking, smoking, cursing, blood, canon-referenced violence Pages: 26 - Words: 9,500

[Requests: OPEN]

The manor itself looked like any other house that belonged to a millionaire socialite. The driveway that meandered up the hill was only marred by your fresh tire tracks in the gravel, and the pristine courtyard looked as though it had barely finished being implemented. The single thing that gave away someone actually living there was the lights shining from the windows out into the darkness. It was also the only reason you knew where you were going; the moon was mostly covered by the clouds, but it was as though a barrier prevented any light from puncturing the sense of unease that swirled around the place.

You were no stranger to homes like this. Although, you were no friend to them either, and that left you reigning in your grimace as you cut the ignition and opened the door of your car. Nighttime air flooded in, assuming the shape you’d left behind, and you stopped just long enough for some of the other cop cars to park up beside yours. Normally, for a crime like this, the Los Angeles police department would spare one or two officers and a detective to bring up the rear, but this time was different, and the reason why was no secret. A famous actor was dead.

Mark I. Plier was dead.

And you and the rest of the people who accompanied you had been shipped off to find out why.

You marched to the front door while everyone else got themselves ready with their equipment. It didn’t take more than a second for the door to open once you’d knocked, but that was to be expected. Most people were on edge with a dead body in the same building as them, and the man who stood before you exemplified that perfectly.

“Please, come in, detective,” he said with a shaking voice, and he stood to the side to allow you in.

Shooting a glance around the foyer, you asked, “And you are?”

The room was spacious, wide enough for your team to file in with room to spare, presumably expensive, and held little clue as to what else was hidden in the manor. It was much like the courtyard, with all its fanciful decorations and statues that made you instantly dislike anyone you encountered – their house filled with chintz, undoubtably like the owner.

“Benjamin Blackadder, detective, I was the one to—” The man coughed and looked away from you, “—I called it in.”

You redirected your attention to him in turn. Of course, a millionaire manor would be incomplete without a dutiful butler, because what self-respecting aristocrat could function otherwise. But you supposed you were being spiteful. The aristocrat was dead, and his employee had found the body. Sometimes you forgot that sensitivity was part of the job.

“Alright, Mr. Blackadder, can you direct me to him?”

“Of course, detective.”

He kept saying your title as though you were going to forget who you were, but you kept your mouth shut. With a nod of his head, he set off towards one of the staircases – because there were multiple staircases that you could see from where you were standing and you wanted to scoff at that but, again, sensitivity – and you made a motion for the rest of the team to stay behind and look around. Nothing could be ruled out yet, so getting as big a picture as possible early on was top priority, second only to actually seeing the body, of course. That was where you were headed, trailing behind Benjamin and trying to keep your mind off the frivolous décor scattered around.

On the first step, you prompted him, “Can you describe the events leading up to finding him?”

“Yes, well.” Although his sentence was barely begun, he trailed off, as if caught up in the memory. You didn’t push him, not yet. He seemed the fragile sort, and it wouldn’t do to lose your only witness this early on. He managed to pick himself back up after a second, saying, “The Master has not been well for the last few months. He hasn’t been eating, taking care of himself… I don’t think he’s been sleeping, but he’s locked himself in his bedroom for so long that I wouldn’t know for certain.”

“When was the last time you saw him in person?”

He paused at the turn of the stairs. “That would be… three days ago, detective.”

“Thank you. Please, continue.”

He walked as he talked, which was your favorite kind of talking. “I was understandably concerned this morning when I went to bring him some kind of breakfast – he never eats it, but I still take it to him, on the off chance that he is hungry, I wouldn’t want the only time he is willing to eat be the one time I don’t come, you see, and then he would stop eating indefinitely—”

You cut him off with a sharp, “Mr. Blackadder.” You might have been gentler, should have been gentler, but he looked like he was going to pass out if you didn’t stop him.

He looked bashfully to the ground. “Yes, detective, I apologize.”

It was at that moment that you reached the landing. The hallway itself was paved with a red carpet down the center, gold trimmed and clean. At certain points before the turning, you noticed tables with the same kind of flower set upon them. You passed them by, the bunched up, purple and pink petals that looked too big to fit comfortably into their vases, and you motioned for Benjamin to continue.

“I knocked on his bedroom door to let him know that I was there. I received no answer, like normal. However, this time, I noticed that the door had some give, and I was able to open it.” He took a deep breath in and then pushed it out again. “The second I saw him, I ran to the phone and, ah, you are aware of the rest.”

He was right, you did know the rest. It had been you he had called in a frantic state. He hadn’t introduced himself and the most you got out of him was the address before he hastily hung up, but that was enough for you to get to where you needed to be.

“Did you do anything after calling the police?”

“No, detective.”

With that, he stopped at a door a few rooms away from the next staircase. From his wide-eyed staring, you guessed that the body was inside and felt pity well up in your gut. He didn’t need to be there for the examination, and, from the paleness of his skin, it was probably better for his health that he wasn’t.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Blackadder. Please, go back to the front room. My team will ask you more questions if you are able to answer them, and I’ll begin the investigation.”

He left with a mutter of, “Of course, detective.” He kept his gaze directed steadfastly away from the room as he scuttled back to where you had come from, which left you alone, standing with your fingers wrapped around the brass handle.

You pushed it open with a huff. You never liked dealing with witnesses, especially when they were close to the victim. Whenever you were able, you tried to pass that duty over to another officer, even though you knew that it was part of your job to console people who were affected by the case. If you weren’t so good at the rest of your duties, you were sure you would have been written up by then, or worse.

Resolving to get this over and done with, you stepped into the room and were immediately greeted by the welcoming sight of a dead body face up on the sheets, stabbed directly through the heart with a steak knife, blood pooling around the midsection into the cloth below.

At least identifying the cause of death wouldn’t be an issue. Sometimes Mark wondered if the void was a real place, or whether it was just where his mind put him while he dealt with his business, like a dream state or a fantasy world that he conjured up to process the fact that he was dead. Maybe it was some form of a purgatory, the storage for souls before they were drafted into whatever afterlife they deserved. Maybe that was all there was once the heart stopped beating and the lungs stopped breathing.

On any other occasion, the philosophical dilemmas stopped there, and he attended to the real reason he was there in the first place – obviously, he hadn’t plunged metal into his chest because a black box was the best environment for coming up with inane theories. However, despite him having been there for an hour or so already, everything was just the same as when he had appeared there.

Bleak and pointless.

“Hello?” he called out into the darkness. He was completely alone, not even an echo acting as company.

His eyebrows furrowed, and his mouth twisted itself into a frown.

“The one time I don’t want to be here, and you’ve decided to keep me, have you?”

Again, no response.

Mark wasn’t a man known for his patience. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Anyone who had ever worked with him before had tales to tell of his arguments over scripts or costumes, and none of them recalled his inevitable, victorious, painstakingly smug smirk with affection. Trying to wait him out was like waiting for a river to change its direction – time consuming and utterly pointless. He acted much the same in this situation, but the only difference was that he was getting no reaction, and it was getting on his nerves.

“I can’t exactly fulfil our deal if I’m stuck here, now, can I?”

Mark felt his heart beat once in his chest, and then beat a second time. There was no clock in the void, just the vague feeling of something passing, whether it was time or air, he didn’t know, but he felt it sifting through his fingers. He couldn’t catch it, hold it still so that he could examine it, and that left him in the dark.

He didn’t like it.

“Fine, fine,” he spat, spite overtaking any idea of being nice to the thing that was keeping him there, “be that way. Throw a tantrum because of one little fight.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he glanced around. He’d never had to wait so long before. He didn’t know what else to do to pass the possibly-not-time, and boredom was something he couldn’t abide. Unconsciously, his fingers started tapping against the fabric of his robe, but not even the soft patter comforted him.

“What a creative punishment.”

His final words drifting out into the darkness, he took one step, sighed, and then kept on walking, one foot at a time without a destination more complicated than ‘forward’.

As mentioned before, there was no clock in the void – no way to accurately measure the time, or how much of it Mark lost in his wanderings. Eventually, it became automatic, and everything moved much faster, and yet nothing changed. The river wasn’t changing, no matter how long he sat by it, and the darkness stayed as out of reach as it had been the first time he had found himself there.

But hadn’t he been looking for that? A break. Just a break. From the stress of everything he had gained – and then, when he lost it all, from the strain of its absence. It was constant fear and confusion, and he had searched for a brief respite. An escape from life. And he had found it, hadn’t it? It wasn’t what he thought it would be, but he had found it and gorged himself on the peace and quiet.

He hadn’t asked for the loneliness.

Normally, it wasn’t so lonely in the void. It wasn’t human, he didn’t know exactly what it was, but a voice was there to comfort him and ask for his thoughts when no one else did. It wasn’t loud when it spoke to him, it showed up as a simple whisper next to his ear, as if something drawn from inside. It offered him ideas, which sometimes expanded on those he’d already kicked around and sometimes seemed to come from thin air. In times like those, he wondered what its true nature was, though he never got far before he was brought back to the matter at hand.

He supposed that was why the silence had such an effect on him. The hush of the manor wasn’t so different to the hush of the void. It was carrying over from the life he was trying to take a break from, and, if something so simple as that could leak through, what else could? What demons would he face where he once thought himself safe? The motivations, the actions, the consequences. Nothing that he could fight on his own, and nothing he could flee from.

He'd have no other option.

And he wasn’t prepared to consider it yet.

So, Mark did the thing that he did best.

He served his friends up on a silver platter to the thing, pledging to follow through with the voice’s demands. It didn’t speak to him during that moment – that torturously, devastatingly lonely and long moment – but he knew what it wanted. He wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t a stranger to the voice. It had tried to persuade him in the past, it had told him it would be better to have witnesses, but he always pushed it to the side and said he’d consider it. But who was he kidding? The only thing he had to consider was how long he’d try to hold out, and then how long the guilt would last before it turned to determination.

Those beats of regret were getting shorter and shorter. Humanity slipped away from him like the grains of sand in an hourglass. With every hour, he fell deeper and deeper and deeper into the darkness, coating himself with the stuff and clinging to it to blur lines and muddle edges. After long enough, he would forget he was ever above it.

And when the voice finally granted him freedom, took the reins off his bridle, he fell through the floor or shot through the ceiling, returned to the land of the living and that little bit more prepared to do what was necessary in the future – and slightly hazy on what could be deemed ‘necessary’. You’d seen many corpses in your line of work – it was literally in the job description – but you’d never been surprised. The only thing to make you raise an eyebrow had been a semi-failed double-suicide, only because you couldn’t work out the physics of it all. Your tolerance for, for lack of a better term, creepy shit was sky high after spending so long surrounded by dead bodies.

But never had you seen a dead body stop being so dead after all.

With your yelp of, “Oh, fuck off!” came your stumbling backwards, tripping over the edge of the rug, the one stained with the blood of the carcass that was sitting up straight on the bed that he’d died on. You caught yourself before you fell, eyes darting along the moving not-corpse, hands drawing up and away from the sheets, eyes blinking like a deer stepping into the sun for the first time or a man waking up from a hangover.

“Be quiet.” His voice was rough, sandpaper along a wooden board, splinters falling into his throat. Mark, the man whose death you had been sent to investigate, gripped the handle of the steak knife and pulled, sending forth a gush of crimson the same shade as his robe that may or may not have started that color.

Your shock morphed into survival instinct, keeping you rooted to the spot. “The hell do you mean be quiet!?”

“I mean—” His other hand, the one not holding the thing that had been jammed into his heart not three seconds ago, reached up to drag over his eyes, “—your yelling is giving me a headache.”

“You’re dead!”

He looked at you like you were the mad one. You. Not him. Not the animated corpse, who, apparently, thought being dead was overrated. “I’m obviously not.”

Getting over your momentary paralysis, you stormed over to the edge of the bed to grip Mark’s arm. He jutted forward when you tugged it further out, two fingers poised over where his pulse should have been.

Nothing.

“Ah, yes, that.” He wrenched his arm away from you. “It’s nothing.”

You blinked once, twice, a third time, just to make sure this wasn’t a dream you would wake up from in a cold sweat.

“Oh, okay then, I guess I’ll just be on my way.”

Despite your overly sarcastic tone, he didn’t pick up on it, or he was just that nonchalant about the situation you were in. Instead, he got to his feet and started towards you. “Very good, very good,” he muttered as he laid a hand on your shoulder blade to guide you firmly in the direction of the door. “Off you go. Thank you so much for visiting.”

The drip-drip-drip of his blood splattering against the floor made you duck away from him. Mark sent you a disapproving look, like a parent about to reprimand their child for not listening to their sound logic.

“That was sarcastic,” you said.

“Well, you wouldn’t mind explaining why you deserve to be here then?”

You stared at him in disbelief while he circled the walls, peering into closet and drawer alike for something not so bloodstained. He could feel your gaze burning on his back when he turned, and he could see it when he glanced over his shoulder.

You answered, as blunt as you could make your tone, “I’m a detective.”

A sound of victory escaped him as he pulled away from a rack with a robe similar to the one that he currently wore – he had company, albeit unwanted, and getting undressed in front of a stranger was too far, even in this state. He draped it over his arm before spinning on his heel to look at you.

“And that means what to me, exactly?”

“I’m investigating your death.”

How the dead managed to get on your nerves quicker than the living, you had no idea, but maybe Mark was just the exception, some kind of master at pissing people off, especially when he gestured up and down his body.

“I’m not dead.”

“You were.”

He hummed, with such a patronizing tone that you wanted him to go back to the way he was when you met. “Yes, past tense, thank you. I’m not dead anymore.”

“But you were.”

“Not anymore.”

“But you were.”

“Etcetera, etcetera.”

Your muscles tightened and your shoulders raised as he began waltzing towards you, and you moved back to a comfortable distance from where he deposited the robe on his bed, right beside the stain that was infesting deeper into the sheets. You just couldn’t understand how little he cared. That was the worst thing about this; he made it seem like this was completely normal, like he had done this hundreds of times before, like you were the one in the wrong for not adhering to etiquette that you should have known about.

The way that he stared at you like you were a bug he couldn’t be bothered to get rid of pulled your mouth into a grimace.

“Who called you here?” he asked.

“Your butler, Benjamin Blackadder.”

“Right, well, you can inform him that I am perfectly healthy—” A drop of red ran like a tear from the corner of his mouth, “—and that there is no need to worry about my state.”

Your attention flitted between him wiping that blood away and the saturated spot on his chest. In response, noticing the evidence against his case, Mark stepped closer to you and tried again to escort you to the door at a much faster pace.

“Oh, and also tell him to call for Abe next time. It would make this whole mess easier on me.”

The latter part was said well under his breath, but that wasn’t the part you wanted to focus on anyway. No, you were more interested in his relationship to Abe. You knew who he was, and so you had an inkling as to why he would call on him. A detective like you meant an institution and that meant a formal investigation into his death – exactly what you believed he wanted to avoid – but Abe? He wasn’t a legal detective, he was, in reality, a private investigator, and a P.I like him was very good at keeping his mouth shut and palm open.

You, not so much.

Spinning around and pushing back a smirk at his huff, you responded, “No.”

“No?”

And even slower, this time, “No.”

Mark stopped completely still on the wooden floor so that, for a brief moment, you wondered if he was still breathing, but then his irises trailed up from your legs, to your torso, to your neck, to your face, stopping where you were forced to make eye contact.

“Okay, detective.”

Your heart stuttered in your chest.

“Let’s play a little game, if you’re so intent on staying put.”

He put one foot forward, posed just so, as if he were a statue on the edge of toppling over and crashing onto the ground.

“I give you a scenario, and you tell me what to do. Simple enough.”

Against your better judgement, you nodded, and you immediately regretted it when he shifted his weight onto that foot, closer to breaking apart.

“Perfect.” A cat’s grin spread over his mouth as he spoke, “As you keep telling me, I died. Skin gray, eyes glossy, rigor-mortis might have even set in, lucky me. But here’s the catch; I wake up. Not here, but I do wake up. In a dark place, no walls, no ceiling, no floor. The way I normally get out hasn’t shown up yet.”

The words fell out of his mouth, pulled from a script and dropped carefully, practiced, into the real world. Every sentence came with a step closer to you. Slow. Intentional. Not an inch away from where he meant to land, until you were face to face. His grin felt less like a cat and more like a tiger.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, arms folding behind his back.

The only response you were able to offer, the only one you were able to muster, was a firm, “I don’t understand.” You tried to keep the shakiness out of your voice but found you were only able to share it throughout your entire body.

“Come now, detective,” he purred, “you’re supposed to be good at finding the answer with minimal information.”

“You’re insane.”

“Is that your final answer?”

Half of you wanted to say that it was, but the other half of you was smarter than that, even if it was true. You paused to collect your thoughts, crossing your arms and hoping something would come to you. Riddles had never been your strong suit – especially when it was some pedantic or, worse, philosophical answer – but the look in Mark’s eye, that shimmer of curiosity for your response that swallowed some of the coldness, made you think this was more than a riddle.

So, after taking a deep breath to prepare yourself for the plunge, you said, “You wait.”

It was a test. Mark was testing you. You didn’t know what he had expected, but, apparently, your answer was not satisfactory.

“That’s it?” he scoffed, “I’m supposed to wait?”

“Yep.”

“Until what?”

Another breath. “Until whatever you expect to happen, happens.”

This time, he took a second to dwell on what you’d said. His gaze flickered downwards, searching for something that he didn’t seem to find.

“And what if it doesn’t?”

You were quicker on the draw now, having familiarized yourself with your ideas, and you responded, “You talk.”

“About what?”

“Anything.” You shrugged, and you had to look away from the man in front of you; he looked almost at a loss for words. Maybe you were just bad at explaining, made it sound too simple, but you couldn’t help it. You continued to talk regardless of if it made sense to him. “Helps to stop you going mad from the environment you might be trapped in.”

“And what if it doesn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Help.” He was looking at you. You felt it, the crawl of his eyes towards your own. They were the windows to the soul, and you didn’t like the thought of him getting a front row seat to that. There was a foot between you, and you wanted to make it a mile, but your boots weighed you down and kept you under the water.

“What if I go mad?”

“Did you?”

“You tell me.”

Frantic knocking on the door made you flinch – a panic that made you miss Mark doing the same – and it took you a moment to remember where you were. A crime scene, or what used to be one, which technically still was one, that might have continued to be one, depending on what route you wanted to pursue.

“Detective?” The butler’s voice seemed to cut through the tension, giving you ample space to step back from Mark. “Is everything alright?”

He adopted that grin once more; it dove over his mouth like a wave, and he gestured to the door just as fluidly.

You didn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes. You supposed it was natural for an actor to switch from one persona to the next. He had all but scared the living daylights out of you, intimidated you with a gaping wound in his chest like something crawled out of the grave, but there he was, smug and victorious in the little battle he’d forced you into.

“Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

You stomped over to the door, spite burning your footprints into the planks, and pulled at the handle to reveal Benjamin looking just as fearful as he did the first time you saw him. He was wringing a glove between his hands, the other of the pair sticking out of his pocket. He’d end up losing it like that.

“Everything is fine, Mr. Blackadder,” you said, opening the door wider so that the still-breathing master of the house was visible. “He’s not dead.”

You didn’t think he heard you, more concerned with sliding past you and rushing towards Mark. Not that you really cared. In fact, you preferred it over the dutiful house-servant stereotype he had seemingly perfected, and it allowed you to march out of the bedroom and down the hallway without any of that sappy ‘thank-god-you’re-alive’ nonsense. Normally, that was reserved for hospitals, but this was… a strange situation.

The only duty left on your plate, therefore, was figuring out how to tell your team that the corpse was distinctly no longer a corpse. Or so you had thought. Upon arriving back at the station that day and informing the chief of police that Mark was alive and well, you oh-so-foolishly assumed that you could bypass the normal procedures. The most you expected to do was catalogue the incident on a sheet that would be stuffed into a file, which would then be stuffed into a cabinet, which would then be stuffed into a section of the archives never to be touched again. You were wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, you were wrong.

It took you two weeks to deal with the paperwork. Fourteen days, because your higher-ups, people who understood how anything worked, knew that a stab to the heart was a pretty surefire way to end up dead. You were sent running in circles, trying to justify what you had seen and what you were trying to tell them. If seeing a man rising from the dead hadn’t pushed you over the edge, convincing other people of it did the trick.

That led you to where you were now; sitting at your desk, filling out paperwork, and cursing the name of your partner who was probably enjoying his day off on the beach with his family. You spent a lot of time in your office, more than you did at your apartment, but it was slowly morphing into a cage with the key held just out of your reach.

It might have been bearable alone, and yet fate decided you needed to suffer more because the comments of your colleagues wormed their way into your brain and set up shop there. You’d made a mistake. You! What was the point of holing yourself up at your desk when you weren’t able to tell when someone was dead or not? Every moment you were in the hallway, you were subject to glances ranging from pitying to condescending to absolutely entertained. You’d become the village fool, and each scratch of the pen reminded you of your situation up until the very final flourish of your signature.

You let your chair take your weight, and, even though the wooden skeleton wasn’t the most comfortable thing, a tired form of bliss washed over you. You were done, and you could put the whole thing behind you. Soon, you’d be working on another murder and be able to forget everything. You hoped somebody died soon.

Somewhere, the finger of a monkey’s paw curled, and the shrill squeal of the office’s phone to pierced the silence.

You pushed your hands against your spine to hear it crack before lazily shuffling towards the source of the noise. Bringing the receiver to your ear, you ran your gaze across the skyline of the city between slits of the window’s blinds.

Seconds later, you wondered if the fall would be enough to kill you, or whether it would just be a mild inconvenience like everything else in your life.

Benjamin Blackadder, just the man you didn’t want to hear, filled you in on the situation that seemed painfully familiar to the one you were trying to escape from. He told you Mark was dead, but the idea had you stifling a laugh, not out of any amusement but out of hatred for dramatic irony.

All that escaped you was a groan.

You knew you had to go. He was calling the office phone, after all, so you had a job to do. And who was to say you couldn’t be wrong about this? If he was actually dead – as you hoped, however unsympathetically, he was – then it was just another day at the office, and refusing to attend to the investigation was a crime in and of itself.

Feeling the thud of your head against the wall, you said, “We’ll be right over.”

“Wait!”

Inches away from hanging up, you stopped and drew the receiver close again.

Benjamin hesitated for a second before continuing, “The master requested that I keep all contact with the public to a minimum, so- well, would it trouble you terribly to only bring yourself?”

Not only was he testing your patience, but he was also testing your loyalty to your job. There was no way in hell you would be allowed to go on your own – setting aside the fact that it was against policy, this was also a high-profile case that you were just caught completely screwing up. An actor, ‘dead’ for the second time, was not something to be taken lightly. There were a million and one reasons why you should have rejected the request, called in the rest of the department and issued a formal investigation from the city of Los Angeles.

“Not at all, sir.”

Except you were also a spiteful bastard, so, with gritted teeth, you pulled the blinds fully shut and snatched your keys off the desk.

“I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

The actual drive only took half an hour, but you arrived exactly when you said you would only because you took the liberty of cursing out various concepts and colleagues for ten minutes. A lot of it was under your breath, a lot of it was directed at Mark, and a lot of it was done on the road outside the manor. If Benjamin wanted you to be happy about doing this, he should have offered to pay you.

Though, you supposed there was only one thing on his mind. Before you were even able to consider knocking, the front door was pulled open, and the butler himself was gesturing you inside.

“Thank you for coming out here so late, detective,” he said.

You nodded in response, taking a moment to look him over. His speech was much more put together than it had been the last time you had seen him, but, other than that, he appeared very much the same. He was still decked out in his uniform, despite it being nearly eight o’clock at night, and his eyes flitted from you to the grounds to the staircase like a moth caught in a jar.

The door creaked as Benjamin closed it behind you.

“He’s upstairs.”

You didn’t say anything after that, and, in fact, you didn’t need to; while you started in the direction of Mark’s room, he stayed behind with a firm stare locked onto the darkness outside. You supposed he was making sure you hadn’t brought anyone else with you. The guy seemed really keen on following his master’s orders.

You rolled your eyes at the thought, and, in a few moments of internally mocking the dynamic, you wound up in front of Mark’s door. You didn’t bother knocking, simply pushing the door open and letting it fall shut behind you.

Electric lights bathed the room in a glow too kind for the subject. The room hadn’t changed in the weeks passed, but what was more surprising was the position of Mark’s body, which was no more than a thread’s width away from where you had found him last time. The only difference was that there was no steak knife buried in his chest, though the cause of death wasn’t particularly a mystery. What you initially assumed were makeup stains was, as you realized when you got closer, the smudged remains of berries. Deadly nightshade, adding his dilated pupils into the mix of symptoms and the likelihood of him getting his hands on them.

For a brief moment, you wondered if you had actually been wrong. You wondered if you had been too pessimistic, too hasty in your reluctance. You wondered if Mark was actually dead.

Those thoughts were scrapped the moment focus welled in his eyes and a sharp intake of breath made you step back.

No, you were right. Why did you even bother to doubt yourself?

The second the two of you made eye contact, your annoyance transferred over to him, prompting a deep, world-weary groan.

“Oh, come on!” he hissed into the air.

You reigned in your own bitterness, instead choosing to settle into the armchair until Benjamin came to collect you. After all, you were tired, and you wanted at least a minute of rest before you were sent back to the station – no doubt to repeat your poor excuse for a Sisyphean punishment and get laughed at by your colleagues again. Oh, you couldn’t wait.

Letting your eyelids drift closed, you listened to the sounds of Mark in the ensuite bathroom. You guessed that he was getting rid of the excess poison in his mouth, but you didn’t know what damage it could cause that was worth than the death he’d already undergone. Maybe it just tasted bad, you didn’t know because you didn’t exactly have a habit of killing yourself for fun.

You opened one eye to glare at Mark as he emerged from the bathroom.

He was the first to speak, though, tone disgruntled and mouth warped into a grimace.

“You’re not Abe.”

“And I thought I was the detective here.”

“Very funny.”

A smirk dragged itself across your mouth. You thought you were.

The chair was oddly comfortable, pillows fluffed and blanket cushioning your head, and you found yourself nestling further into it while you stared Mark down across from you. He stood by the bed with his arms crossed, the picture of disapproval, but his opinion wasn’t one you valued at this moment.

“Why did you come?” he asked after a – blissful – second of silence.

“Mr. Blackadder called, asked me to check you out again.”

Why he called the police and not a doctor was beyond you. Why he called you in particular was even further beyond you.

“But you knew I was fine.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

He raised an eyebrow at you, a silent prompt for an explanation.

You carded a hand through your hair. What you wouldn’t do for a nap right about now – but, no, you were here, wondering how someone could be so oblivious. “It’s not everyday someone obviously dead just decides not to be dead anymore,” you said with less spite that you wanted to translate.

“Isn’t it?”

The sheets rustled as Mark dropped himself into a sitting position, sudden enough that you barely caught his humorless smile before his back was turned to you.

“No. It isn’t,” you answered. “And I have no idea how you think it’s normal.”

With your comment hanging between you, the weight of your pack of cigarettes dragged your trench coat down, and, to alleviate that, you fished it out of the pocket you’d shoved it in.

You absentmindedly peeled back the cardboard and pulled one of the sticks out as you asked, “How many times so far?”

Despite being a blunt person by nature, it was as though your mouth refused to say the word ‘died’ outright. You barely managed to get the question out at all.

A moment of silence followed, making you wonder if you had gone too far. You had no reason to ask, so he had no reason to answer. It only made sense that he would keep it to yourself and some part of you wished he would, if only to save yourself from facing the truth about his situation.

“Thirty-seven.” Mark’s voice came out completely blank. “Not including tonight.”

Your wolf-whistle was followed by his quiet chuckle.

“Damn.” Any formality was out of the window by that time, and you felt it was the most appropriate reaction available to you. “Who did Benjamin call before?”

“He didn’t call anyone.” He huffed as he spread his hands back across the sheets. “He didn’t notice.”

The cigarette secured between your lips, you stopped with your hand poised to flick the top of your lighter. “Didn’t notice that the body of the master was rotting in his bed?”

A light scoff came out with sourness before he corrected, “I never rotted. My body’s intact, except for all the… leftover marks. I always come back after a few hours.”

“You didn’t before.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Without knowing what to say to that, you simply lit the end of the stick and watched down the bridge of your nose as orange consumed up the white. It was slow, left a trail of ash and glimmering embers in its wake, but it did the job.

Inhale. Exhale.

“I don’t know how you can stomach those.”

Your focus flickered back to Mark, who had twisted his torso around to watch you.

“You choose to kill yourself quickly,” you said, pocketing your lighter, “some people choose to do it slowly. Plus, it takes the edge off.”

And when your entire understanding of life and existence was under threat, you needed it. You needed something to distract you. You needed something that meant you didn’t have to consider the ramifications of reality and could continue on in ignorance like you had been for decades.

Watching you, Mark felt something stir in his heart. It was unfamiliar to him, and he had a hard time giving it a name, but the closest concept he could handle was a strange form of sympathy. He had never planned to share this experience with anyone, much less a stranger who was just doing their job. Roping you into everything was a mistake that he didn’t know how to correct.

In any other situation, he would have assumed a certain role that he kept just for the people who found out things they shouldn’t have, the one he had almost ran through with you. He would pat their shoulder, talk them down from the edge, and brush them out of his life like dust on the floor – but you were different. Difficult. You weren’t panicking like he had expected you to. Of course, you were dazed, and the calm was no doubt a mask, but there you were, sitting in the chair in his room instead of one in an asylum’s waiting room.

He didn’t know what to do with you.

Mark’s attention floated to the floor, and yours followed in turn.

What were you supposed to do? Mark was going to keep killing himself, Benjamin was going to keep calling, and where did that leave you? Answering those calls? For how long? Until you gave up, quit, snapped, went the same way as Mark without the return ticket?

You opened your mouth to ask, but the thud of a fist against wood broke the silence first.

“Detective,” Benjamin’s voice seeped through the splinters, “have- have you come to a conclusion?”

Your legs felt stiff as you rose from the chair. Mark was facing the direction of the door, but the haziness that blanketed his eyes told you that he was looking anywhere else.

The butler looked just as frantic as before, but your patience had worn thin. A single press and it would cut like piano wire.

You left the door open and leaned against the frame. “You want the cause, the time, or my home number so you can call me the next time this happens at midnight?”

“What?”

Not a second later was Benjamin in the room, yourself having stepped to the side. It wasn’t your place to stop him fussing over Mark, nor was it the funnier option; there wasn’t any evidence that Mark had been dead, so he was quick to dance around him, tugging at his arms to check him over for possible injuries.

“Do you need me to write down Abe’s number again?” Mark asked with the tone of a disapproving parent.

You laughed under your breath at the irony, taking the cigarette from your lips. A spray of smoke escaped through the gap before you replaced it, stepped out of the room, and let the door fall closed behind you. It wasn’t long until you were stepping through another door, landing you on the steps outside.

The stark contrast between the glamorous manor and the sprawling darkness had you relaxing your shoulders, or maybe that was the nicotine taking effect. Regardless, you felt better. Less stressed. Moon stifled by the clouds, you tried to retrace your steps back to your car. The crunch of the gravel beneath your boots was the only thing that grounded you to reality – the night was completely noiseless, the lights of the manor were fading away, and you were alone.

You stopped at the hood of the car, not getting in quite yet. An inhale of smoke. Exhale.

There wasn’t much you could do. At least, not at that moment.

Embers of light spat out from the end of the cigarette as it hit the concrete, dead on impact, while you slipped into the driver’s seat with a sigh. “You owe me fifteen cents for gas, you know.”

You hadn’t had enough time to get your hopes up before being called back in to the manor. This time, barely a week had passed, and Benjamin hadn’t gotten through all of his speech before you were grabbing your coat and keys and practically throwing yourself into your car. It had been right before you were set to clock out, too, which meant that you felt poking Mark’s cheek an annoying number of times was warranted.

Bruises littered his skin, reddish marks pooling like paint on a palette, with some areas swelled so much so that there might have been broken bones. You had a moment to inspect what was visible before a deep groan flooded out of him. You weren’t certain whether it was pain or annoyance, but you still stepped back to give him space.

“How’d you do this one?” you wondered aloud. The other two methods were easy to guess, but trying to inflict blunt force trauma was difficult without throwing yourself around the room. Mark had ended up where he always did, laid out on the edge of his bed, so either he had flawless aim or there was someone else involved.

He answered your question as he propped himself up, “I hired someone.”

Despite the evidence in front of you, that surprised you, and he appeared to pick up on that.

“I get killed,” he started to explain, “and they get a hefty sum of money and bragging rights that they killed an actor.”

“I think one of those is more persuasive than the other.”

You waited while he rearranged himself. Unlike the last times, the cause of death would heal on its own, no removal of knife or spitting of poison necessary, and that left him sitting in front of you as you stared him down.

Dragging a hand down his face, pulling with it a curl of hair, he muttered, “You didn’t have to come.”

He was right. You didn’t have to. It was pretty obvious by now that dying didn’t mean the same thing to him as it did others, and, as long as he was breathing by the time the sun came up, you’d be off the hook for investigating him. You always complained about it on the way over and felt drained when you stepped back out the front door. Everything pointed to you staying at the office, or, hell, going back to your apartment as you were supposed to do.

And yet, there you were, with your hands hooked into your pockets and a small, spiteful smile on your lips. Some part of you said it was just for Benjamin’s sake, but, while he had genuinely sounded on the brink of a heart-attack on the phone, you knew that wasn’t the biggest reason. Although, you also knew you would never admit the truth.

Instead, you started to stroll back to the armchair you had missed so much, saying, “But I get a hefty pay cheque worth a fifth of my rent and bragging rights that I saw a dead actor.”

You could practically hear Mark roll his eyes, but he still turned to face you once he had adjusted his arm back into its natural position. His silent wince brought you back to the matter at hand.

“So, you’ve been stabbed, poisoned, and beaten to death—” You sunk into the hold of the cushions, “—What’s next on your reverse bucket list?”

“I’m not doing this for fun.”

“Then what are you doing this for?”

He levelled you with a stare. “Personal reasons.”

You got the hint – touchy subject – and you put a hand up in a lazy form of surrender.

Mark’s gaze drifted to the window next to you, the crimson curtains pulled shut to block out the moonlight. They hadn’t been opened in months, and the windows even longer since, granting the room a claustrophobic touch despite the minimal decoration. Smoke from a week ago still haunted the air.

It all felt like too much of a risk.

“Where’d your hitman run off to?” you asked, beckoning his attention once more.

“You don’t need to arrest him.”

“Well, technically, I do. Attempted murder is still a crime.”

His head lolled back, creaking like the old house itself, before he responded, “He’ll be long gone by now. He knows how to get out of tough situations with the police.”

Your eyebrows raised at that. It was awfully bold to admit that to a detective’s face – but, then again, what were you going to do? Both of you knew you weren’t going to report it, because then you’d have to admit to investigating the last ‘death’ as well. The very concept of drudging up the paperwork and filling out exactly the same things over and over again had given you pause when you’d returned to the office, and a moment’s hesitation was all you needed to forget that duty altogether. Nobody had gone with you, and Benjamin had contacted you directly, so what was the harm in keeping it to yourself? None, or so you’d convinced yourself as you started work on another case.

In theory, you supposed you were meant to be regretting that decision. In practice, you utterly despised paperwork.

You let Mark keep talking without interruption.

“I’ve used him before. The first couple times, I couldn’t stomach slitting my own throat, and I couldn’t tell Benjamin to do it, so I asked around. People thought it was a publicity stunt. It wasn’t, obviously, but it would have been a damn good one.” A dim laugh was quickly smothered by his hand. “Some responded just to see if it were real. The man I have now was one of the only ones to take it seriously.”

“There were others?”

“He’s good at getting out. The others weren’t.”

The business of paid murder wasn’t a forgiving one, as could be expected, and you’d heard of a lot of people willing to endure a lot of pain for not a lot of gain. They were dragged through the station and interrogated until they gave up every bit of information they had on other criminals, which was why it was a shock to hear the ease at which he found these people.

You laid an arm across the side of the chair, getting comfortable in the spot, as you asked, “If you used him at the start, why bring him back now?”

“I thought going a different way…” he trailed off, his gaze following suit, before he swallowed and finished, “would change things.”

“No luck?”

Mark shrugged lightly, a simple motion that failed to disguise how much he cared. Whatever he tried to make different was important, and, while you wanted to comfort him, you couldn’t help if you didn’t know what it was. He didn’t seem keen to share.

Your eyes followed him as he rose from the edge of the bed and traipsed towards a drink cart that had been stashed against one of the walls. You might have been glad to see a new addition to the room had it not been decorated with bottles of alcohol.

With the whiskey decanter in one hand and a lowball glass in the other, he chuckled lowly. “We all have our vices.”

The packet of cigarettes seemed to get heavier.

But that wasn’t the problem – ignoring someone’s explicit reference to a crime was one thing, but partaking in one yourself? That was dangerous. In the depths of prohibition, getting caught with a drink in hand was the same as a blood-stained knife.

You stared at Mark, doubtful and hesitant, a look that he caught. In the space of a huff from him, he was holding another glass of whiskey, accompanied by ice, and walking in your direction.

Bolder and bolder.

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

That was your policy, wasn’t it? Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Internally cursing yourself, you gripped the whiskey and brought it down to your chest, while Mark settled himself down at the chair near his vanity.

You hadn’t had a sip of alcohol in years, even before the new law was instated. There was something about the loss of control that made you turn up your nose whenever it was offered to you. You didn’t care about understanding the things around you – case in point, you were sitting with a possibly-immortal-possibly-dead actor and knew little more than his name and address – but when it came to yourself, your mind and body, you didn’t like losing that control.

You wondered why you took the whiskey from Mark even as you lifted it to your lips and took a sip. Harsh. Rich. Somewhat smoky. Condensation gathered on the outside of the glass.

“Do you normally drink after you die?”

“No. It makes healing the cuts harder.” The ice chinked as he swirled his lowball in one hand. “The first thirty-seven times were with a knife. The blunt-force trauma means that I don’t have to worry about my blood thinning.”

Back when he had first started, drinking was a habit he found hard to break. There was normally something in his system – wine, whiskey, one of the innumerable other bottles in the cellar – and that led to a messier cleanup than he liked. He had to change that, stop drinking until he was semi-healed, or else he’d get himself found out.

After that first night you were called in, Benjamin had locked away the knife block, so he couldn’t go that route even if he wanted to.

His thoughts flashed to his butler, and his mouth moved faster than his mind could keep up with.

“Benjamin doesn’t know I die.”

A second went by. Mark stared at the wall. You stared at Mark.

“No?”

“He thinks I get close to the edge but manage to pull through, that, in his panic, he just misses my pulse when he checks and doesn’t realize that I’m still barely alive.” His words were speeding up, some molding together and forcing him to stop to breath. “He called a friend of mine the night you were first called and told him that I’d nearly died but that I would recover.”

“You friend doesn’t know either?” You sat forward in your seat, balancing your forearms on your thighs. The layers of your trench coat dripped down the frame.

“I tried to tell him once. He thought I was making a joke, and a distasteful one at that. I mean, who would believe me?” The fogginess of reminiscing faded as he drew his focus to you. In a more muted voice, he said, “I’m surprised you did.”

The moment was bordering on somber, but you found yourself wanting to bring it back. Talking was nice. The subject was obviously less desirable, but you didn’t want to push him into anything worse than the obvious.

You cracked a smile, meeting his eyes. “Well, you know, when someone comes back to life right in front of you, it takes a lot more effort to convince yourself it’s not real.”

Hoping that the joke didn’t fall flat was the most you could do at that moment, besides taking another sip of the whiskey. You weren’t natural ‘funny’ – most of what garnered a laugh was sarcasm at someone else’s expense – but the second that you see a small grin sketch itself across Mark’s mouth, you feel a hint of pride wash over you.

“So that’s what it is? Effort?” You were used to his bleak tone, even more to his annoyance, but amusement was something you preferred.

“Sure, I mean—” You shifted to sit up straighter, “—I work ten hours a day, more with overtime, I don’t have the time to care about this kind of stuff. You might somehow be immortal, but unless that magic trick is going to put my rent up, I’ll believe whatever you want me to believe.”

“You’re insane.”

This one was a laugh that the two of you shared, filling the air and dancing along the cracks of the plaster and diving into the wooden floorboards. In the dark of the night, it was warm, welcoming, a pleasant interlude to the dismal tragedy you had become involved in – like the clown shoved between Cassio and Desdemona.

Nevertheless, it was but an interlude, and the scene ended with a knock at the door. Perfect timing.

You started to suspect that Benjamin had a timer set to check up on you, but, nevertheless, you threw back the remainder of your whiskey and swept your coat out from under you.

“That’s my cue,” you said. You were tempted to tell him not to do anything stupid again, but you weren’t an idiot. “Same time next week?”

Mark rolled his eyes, putting up an image of being so offended by your comment, but you caught sight of his smile right before Benjamin bounded in, ready and willing to mother-hen him until he was sick of it.

What you did not catch, however, were Mark’s eyes trailing after you as you strode down the hallway, hands in your pockets and boots leaving vague prints on the rug. A poltergeist waltzing through the land of the living, the only evidence ash and the faint smell of smoke.

[*shoves this into your hands and runs off*-- No, but seriously, I came up with this idea so long ago, but it was just meant to be a little thing inspired by one line (that isn't even in this anymore), and now there is a 51 page script that is predicted to be 120 pages in total and so will definitely be going on ao3 at some point. But, y'know, what can you do? As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed]

#BITING BITING BITING AAAOAUGHRHRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRHHRGRRGRGR #THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD IM AAAAAOUOUOUOOOOOOUUUUGGHGHGHHGHGGHHHHH <- howling #no one look at me I'm so very very normal about this era of actor. I'm so normal.#actor mark #fic

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