Chapter 18

“Piper still hasn’t responded to my messages. We have to get in touch with them this morning,” Charles says on Saturday. They’re at the office, despite the fact that it’s a weekend. “Don’t we?”

Julian hums a little. “At some point, yes. It’s still early. They’ll probably text you back soon.”

Suddenly he’s at Charles’ side, poking his finger at Charles’ laptop. “Try and look up the English department’s attrition rates, will you? I meant to ask you before.”

Charles swallows. His heartbeat increases, very much without his permission, at Julian’s proximity.

“Is that something I’m going to be able to find online?” he asks, opening the search page anyway.

“I don’t know,” Julian says. “Hang on—try ‘retention,’ not ‘attrition.’”

“Oh, right. Of course.” Charles types it in. Julian has never voluntarily remained in such close proximity to Charles before. Well. Except for when they were kissing.

Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about kissing Julian when they’re this close to each other. Or, more terrifyingly, maybe he should.

“There’s a report online. Something about being transparent in their goals to help first generation students…okay, here.” Charles pulls up a PDF. “Student population demographics…breakdown by major…okay, here. Freshman retention rate is seventy-eight percent. Seven points higher than the national average.”

Julian frowns. “That’s not very helpful. Can you find it by department?”

Charles hums and scrolls. “It’s not on the chart here. That’s pretty specific info. Maybe we’ll need to ask someone from the university…oh, hang on.”

There’s an appendix: the number of graduating seniors and people obtaining PhDs from each department.

“Three English PhDs every year, give or take.”

Julian leans closer to look at the small print. Charles’ heart flips.

“That’s not very many,” Julian says. “Piper said the incoming cohort this year is likely to have twelve students. And they’ll admit more than that.”

“It’s normal for some people to drop out. After getting their Master’s, or without finishing their dissertation.” Charles has a mad impulse to tell Julian about the panic attack that led to his own premature departure from his M.A. program, but that’s too close to home for comfort—much too much to do with the same sort of romanticizing he’s pretty sure he’s been doing to Julian. He thinks of his ex-girlfriend from that time, who’d had to tell him she wasn’t Wordsworth’s Lucy, a mute muse from a daydream, but a real person who had things to do besides read aloud Romantic poetry in bed and fulfill his Shelley fantasies. He shakes off the memory, returning to the numbers on the screen. “But that’s a pretty steep attrition rate.”

Julian nods. “Well, that accords with what we’ve heard about the conflict amongst the grad students.” He studies the appendix for another moment and then cocks his head. For a vertiginous second, Charles is dizzily disoriented—that movement is so thoroughly Young Sherlock, so familiar from years and years ago. He swallows his heart back down and refocuses on now and here. On the case. On the numbers on the screen. On Julian’s pale hair, stray strands making escape attempts from his attempt at combing them neatly down. On the thin crease at the corner of his eye.

“This number seems low, too.” His gaze is intent on the screen as he clicks back through the PDF. “Yes. Look at this chart of majors declared by undergrads by the end of their sophomore year. There are way, way more English majors declaring than graduating.”

“People do switch majors a lot,” Charles ventures doubtfully.

“Not that much. That’s got to be…what, forty percent of people declaring English majors who actually graduate with them?”

Charles leans in and looks. His eyebrows rise. “That’s a big gap. Wow. That department really does have something messed up going on.”

“Do you think the undergraduates pick up on the conflict between their professors?”

Charles nods. “Maybe the professors are too caught up in it to pay much attention to their undergrads. Or maybe the undergrads end up as pawns—maybe their advisors try to dictate what classes they should take and what they should study based on their own priorities.”

Julian shakes his head. “Surely all this isn’t worth it.”

“You mean all the fighting and students leaving?”

“And the threats. And Jack’s murder. All for—what? An academic disagreement?”

Charles considers. “Easier to say from our perspective,” he says finally.

“Maybe so.”    

Suddenly it is impossible to ignore that they are inches away from each other, and that they are alone, and that they have kissed each other. The tension is stretched between them, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, lines of energy, tugging. Charles thinks: Holmes/Watson, rated Explicit, dom/sub undertones, rimming. He thinks: Julian is not a fictional character. He thinks: You will hurt him. And then he surges forward and kisses the detective again.

It’s just that—Julian makes this little noise. In his throat. When Charles’ mouth hits his. It’s a perfect little noise, a heartbreaking little noise, one that Charles has never heard before. It’s over in a second, but Charles chases that noise, chases it into Julian’s mouth, down his throat, chases it with his tongue and lips and hands at Julian’s waist, wants to hear it again, wants to catch it. Julian kisses him back. Julian kisses him back with his eyes closed. Julian, Charles thinks, maybe doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with kissing.

The kiss feels illicit and breathless and secret and not allowed. It feels like Charles never feels—like he’s breaking the rules. It feels like a fucking secret entrance to a magical realm, like in Brideshead Revisited: that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

                   Julian’s mouth is so warm.

       Charles breaks off the kiss. He is about to pull away, to murmur some sort of apology. But Julian looks dazed and—and happy.

Charles’ mouth, the traitor, curls up in a soft smile.

Piper shows up an hour later.

They stare at the note Julian found in Jack’s locker: SHUT UP AND GET OUT—OR ELSE BE SILENCED.

“Did Lu get one of these?” they ask, voice strained.

“Almost certainly, I’d say,” Julian answers. “It matches the scrap of paper we found in the pipe under your sink.”

He’s gone shy again. Reserved, like before, eyes hovering somewhere only in the general proximity of Piper’s face. Charles thinks he is imagining the tiny flush of pink along his cheekbones, but maybe he isn’t.

“So I really was right.,” Piper says. “She—she really was forced out. She didn’t just leave.”

Julian is quiet, so Charles says, gently, “It seems like it.”

“I was right,” Piper says, and then bursts into tears. They cover their face with their hands. “Sorry, sorry.”

Julian twitches with nervousness, hovering, and his eyes meet Charles’. Charles grabs a tissue box from the desk and puts a hand on Piper’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he says. “Don’t apologize. It’s all right.”

Charles doesn’t really think he’s all that good at dealing with people who are crying, but Julian looks like he’s totally at a loss, so Charles rubs Piper’s back a couple times and then says, “I know, Piper. It’s a lot to take in.”

“I’m relieved!” Piper looks up at Charles, face streaked with tears. They look stricken. “I’m relieved that she didn’t just leave without saying goodbye!” They dash the tears from their eyes with a sleeve. “How fucked up is that?”

“It’s all right—”

“No, it isn’t! I should have been hoping she was okay, that she hadn’t been threatened or pushed out or hurt, god, whoever sent that killed Jack, but I’m—relieved that she wouldn’t leave me like that…” They bury their face in their hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get it together. Just…” They take a deep shuddering breath. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize.” Charles and Piper both look, surprised, at Julian. His voice is quiet, but he speaks with conviction. “There’s no need, Piper. People feel all sorts of complicated things when they find things out about their loved ones that they weren’t expecting. Believe me, I have seen much worse.”

Piper breathes, steadying themself. “Well. Thanks.” They take another deep breath, blowing their nose. “It’s just—it’s not your job to do emotional labor for me. I know that. And I don’t like crying in front of people I don’t know.”

Charles sees Julian blink at the phrase “emotional labor.” He’s only vaguely familiar with it himself. He knows where Piper is coming from—caring about Lu and Piper and all of it, on an emotional level, is a kind of unacknowledged work—but it hadn’t even occurred to him to resent that fact that he has been taking on a lot of feelings about the case. In fact, he has felt guilty for doing so, like it isn’t his place. The idea that Piper might appreciate him caring about Lu breaks over him, strange and sharp.

“Crying seems like a pretty normal reaction to what you’ve just found out,” Charles says.

Piper smiles shakily. “Fair point.” They breathe in. “So, what does this mean? What happens next?”

“We need to take seriously the fact that in all likelihood, the person who killed Jack and threatened Lu are one and the same, and that they are connected to the English department,” says Julian. “Probably a member of the English department. Student or faculty, or possibly staff.”

Piper shakes their slowly. “That’s just…so hard to accept. God.”

Charles feels a chill run up his spine, for the first time truly recognizing Piper’s situation. This latest development means that there’s no way that everything happening has been some perfect storm of chance and misinterpretation and bad timing. Someone is behind it all, someone specific and real, and Piper knows that person.

“This means…” Piper hesitates. “This also means that the police are searching for the wrong person. That homeless man—he didn’t do it.”

Julian drums his fingers on the desk. “That’s true.”

Charles watches him; he can almost see his brain working.

“We could tell them about the threatening note,” he says eventually. “I don’t know if they’ll take it seriously; the five orange seeds are a little…baroque for their sensibilities, based on what I know of the Pittsburgh police. But if they did, they might open up an investigation into the English department. And they may be enough evidence now for them to take a missing persons report seriously.”

Piper swallows. “About Lu, you mean.”

“Yes. They have more resources than we do. I don’t know that people are any more likely to open up to them than to us, but they have access to information and options that we don’t.”

“Fuck,” Piper says. They rub their hands over their face. “That’s…not what I want to do.”

“Are you sure?” Julian asks quietly.

Charles looks at Piper, unsure what decision he should want Piper to make. He knows what he does want Piper to do, though. And he gets what he wants.

“I’m sure.” Piper bites their lip. “I know that might sound really stupid—like, I know she’s in danger, for real, I am taking this seriously, but—but that’s the thing, right? If she’s in danger, and she’s in hiding, we can keep whatever we find out a secret. But if there’s a notice out for people to be looking for her, if there’s all this attention drawn to her absence, it’ll be easier for the person who threatened her to find her. And that could be really, really bad. Plus I don’t…I don’t want the police all over the department any more than they already are, and neither does anyone else—and, god, they’d get in touch with Lu’s family and Lu hates her family, they’d swoop in with their money and their privilege and cause all sorts of trouble—”

“Piper,” Charles interjects. “It’s okay. Take a deep breath.”

Piper does. “The man they’re looking for—”

“If they find him,” Julian says, “we’ll tell the police what we found.”

Piper nods. “Yeah. Good. Okay.”

“Okay? We’ll keep this between us for now?”

For a second, Piper seems to hesitate. “Yeah,” they say. “Just between us.”