Bishop relaxed, which was the only reason Kit knew he had tensed in the first place. The forced relaxation was familiar. “Same reason I quit the force.”
Hypocritically, Kit wanted more details. Like he could compensate for relinquishing fragments of his own past by stealing Bishop’s. “Tell me.”
“My partner was a man named Archie Calvin,” Bishop answered, already putting Kit’s half-truths to shame. “He was a veteran on the force, but he was happy to mentor the new kid. We worked well together.”
Kit leaned more of his weight against Bishop. This time he felt Bishop tensing, and he took perverse comfort in not being the only one upset in the room. Except simultaneously, he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Bishop in this story.
Even though it clearly already had.
“I loved my job for years,” Bishop said. “Archie taught me how to be a cop. He was supportive whenever I got promoted, and he was the first to pat me on the back wherever I won awards.”
“Did you win a lot of awards?” Kit asked.
Bishop snorted. “An embarrassing amount. Some guys might have gotten resentful, but not Archie. He had his place on the team. I was growing into mine.”
Silence followed. Kit took a leaf from Bishop’s book and waited, patient.
“Then I found out he was abusing his authority on his solo shifts,” Bishop said eventually. “I was off-duty one night, and I ran into Archie outside a club. He was with this drunk girl, and it didn’t seem right. She was too out of it. She was trying to get away.”
Kit’s stomach twisted. “Fuck, Bishop.”
“She was twenty, and Archie had her terrified that he’d throw her in prison for having a fake ID. But Archie could make that go away, as long as she…”
Kit didn’t need Bishop to finish that sentence. He touched Bishop’s leg, an inadequate gesture of comfort. “She told you that?”
“Archie told me himself,” Bishop said, his voice rough. “He didn’t think I’d have a problem with it. I was one of the guys. Part of the club. He didn’t even think he was doing anything wrong. He had the power, so why not use it? It wasn’t a crime to Archie. It was a perk of the job.”
“Fuck,” Kit muttered, sick and furious.
Bishop shrugged against him, forcibly relaxing again. “It’s selfish, but that’s the main reason I turned him in. Not to protect people, but to protect my own self-image. Because I refused to be the kind of man who would tolerate that.”
“That doesn’t sound selfish to me. You still risked losing a lot, reporting him.” Kit understood that far better than most people.
“Nothing that mattered in the end.” Bishop gave a humorless laugh. “Want to know an organization’s true measure? Become inconvenient to them.”
His anger was harder to hide now. Clearly, Bishop hated SCPD as a whole even more than he hated his ex-partner.
“I got Archie convicted, but it was harder than it should have been,” Bishop said. “Too many nice guys tried to get in my way, because they were so concerned about my career, or what this meant for the community. There was no fixing the poison from the inside, so I got out.”
“So you could become a vigilante PI,” Kit said.
“Pretty specific moral line, I know.” Bishop rubbed Kit’s shoulder slowly, like he wasn’t really thinking about it. “There was a point when I thought Archie was going to walk free. I couldn’t live with knowing he was out there hurting more vulnerable people. I decided if I failed to put him in prison, I would kill him.”
“Makes sense to me.” Kit chewed his lip. “Though, we’ve already established I’m a very specific judge of character.”
Bishop laughed again, warmer this time. “You’re better than I thought, kid.”
“Yeah, I only hang out with therightkind of murderer.” Kit poked Bishop’s thigh, in lieu of grabbing him again like he kind of wanted to. “Seriously, um. Thanks for sharing. You didn’t have to. But I like understanding you better.”
Again, the hypocrisy. How fucked up was it, that this horrible story helped drag Kit out of his panic?
Or maybe that was just Bishop’s presence, warm and reassuring next to him, no matter the circumstances.
Bishop rubbed Kit’s arm again, like he didn’t realize how the touch tingled through Kit’s nerves. “Someday you’ll feel safeenough to tell me the rest of your story,” Bishop said quietly. “You’re strong, kid. But it’s okay to break sometimes.”
Kit twisted around under Bishop’s arm, searching Bishop’s face for pity. He didn’t find any. Just the usual rough stubble, and the usual intense interest. Like Kit was a puzzle. Kit had mistaken that interest for attraction before, the night he failed to seduce…
Bishop’s eyes dropped to Kit’s lips. Maybe Kit wasn’t mistaken after all.
