Chapter Text
It began with a night like any other: Magnus Burnsides, Private Investigator, paced the floor of his office mindlessly, cigarette in hand, trying to busy himself with something other than overdue paperwork and scores and bets from the most recent ballgame. He flicked ash onto the floor (even though he was renting, and he shouldn’t) and a stray ember narrowly avoided the leg of his freshly-pressed tan slacks, but landed on the toe of his wingtip. He sighed as he flicked the orange fleck onto the floor, and stepped on it for good measure.
Business had been slow; mind-numbingly so, at times. He wished he could prevent the tragedies that lined every newspaper that crossed his desk, but clients had to ask for his help first. He’d gone into detective work years ago, after losing his wife to a crime he wished, every day, he could have stopped. At night he slept restlessly. His dreams and nightmares alike were filled with the memory of her, perhaps trying to preserve itself where it was being otherwise smothered in work and smoke and drink. When he was awake, sober, he could only see the memory of photographs on a desk, black and white lessening the shock of blood and a red bandana on crumbled stone.
He pulled himself abruptly from the thought, staring out the slats of the blinds at the neon lights outside his window. The pink, blue, and green halos glowed in the misting nighttime rain.
Since her death, he’d found himself lonely. The ebb and flow of files on his desk filled his days, weeks, sometimes months at a time. Bad news was the hardest to give. Most days, he tried to stay distant from the tears shed, from the circumstances that felt so very familiar. He remembered being the one on other other side of the desk and how much it hurt to hear the words nobody should have to hear from a detective. A stranger.
Magnus Burnsides was caught between two wants: being the detective that was needed, and being the detective that he had needed. Most days, the former won out. But every once in awhile he slipped into a spiral of his own grief, took cases gratis that he couldn’t afford to take, cried when he closed the door.
His fingers fiddled with the buttons at his wrists before getting them undone one at a time and rolling up the sleeves to his elbows. In a sense, he was glad business had been slow; the less people who needed a private investigator, the better. But, he also needed work to put food on the table, to support more than the alcohol and gambling that he’d chosen to indulge in on the worst days. He reached into his desk drawer, lingering for just a moment over a dog-eared photograph of Julia. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to frame it again. It felt morbid to keep her smiling there on his desk. Instead, he found his half-empty bottle of whiskey and his glass and set them down to pour himself a drink.
As he took a burning sip from the glass, a slender shadow appeared in the light from the frosted glass of the doorway. He took another sip and placed the drink down on a long-closed file on his desk.
With a gentle click of the doorknob, in walked a rain-soaked vision in a white blouse and a black pencil skirt, blonde hair drenched and clinging to the sides of his face. The coat he’d been wearing was inside out and tucked beneath his arm, which he promptly righted and hung on the coatrack by the door. Pink fur. As he turned, Magnus could see his makeup running in purplish-black streaks down his cheeks.
Magnus rose from his seat, waiting for the stranger to break the silence.
“I’m hoping you could help me,” the stranger sniffed, then turned to find Magnus standing there, bathed in the faint glow of neon through the blinds. His tearful demeanor lifted slightly as he took in the sight of the private investigator. “Wh-- why are you just sitting here in the dark, my fella?”
Magnus reached down and pulled the bronze chain of his desk lamp, giving the light a bit more room. “Headache,” he said, tugging habitually on his shoulder holster to avoid the stranger’s gaze.
“Right, sure.” He fiddled with the string of pearls draped around his neck, hesitating once more. “I.. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I don’t really have much of a choice.”
“Well, let’s not waste time then. We could start with a name?”
The stranger wiped sticky strands of hair from his face and behind his ear, where matching pearl earrings lined the lobes. “Taako.”
“Have a seat, Taako,” Magnus obliged, motioning to the wooden chair on the opposite side of the desk. He sat in his own and hesitated at the amber glass of whiskey between them. “Can I pour you one?”
“Usually I couldn’t say no to such a handsome offer, but now might not be the best time. I’m already enough of a mess.” Taako slipped his hand into his expensive-looking bag and removed a tin of cigarettes, long and hand-rolled. “Smoke?”
Magnus accepted the offer from the two slender fingers into his own, solid and sturdy in contrast. He lit the cigarette, then held the flame out to the blonde.
As his client exhaled and clouded the space between them with smoke, Magnus spoke once more. “What can I do for you?”
Taako looked as if he were about to cry once more. His bottom lip, painted a messy merlot, trembled for just a moment before a serene calm washed over his face. The cigarette found his mouth once more and he took a long drag. “My sister,” he said, voice as cold and hard as stone. “My twin, Lup. She’s been missing for days.”
I'm sorry to hear that, he wanted to say. Or to reach out and touch his free hand. Instead, he said nothing and pursued his lips. He thought of his wife.
“How long?” Magnus asked.
Taako took a deep breath in. “Four days. And listen, I know what you're thinking, but I know her. She would have checked in by now, she's not someone to just up and…”
Magnus waved a hand and cigarette smoke trailed lazily up from beside him. “I understand. I'm not saying any of that. What can you tell me about her?”
He listened intently as Taako described his sister (identical to him with her hair cropped short) and the circumstances in which she'd disappeared (she went out to meet a “friend” for dinner and never came home). Magnus stopped him. “A friend? Do you know what friend?”
Taako finished the cigarette and stamped it out in the ashtray, teeth gritted between his parted lips. “I don't-- I don't know. She didn't say, but she usually does say, so I feel like it was someone-- I can't just point a finger on a feeling.”
“Is there any way for you to find out who she'd been planning to meet?”
“I’ll try to see. I… I dunno. My gut is saying Lucretia, her ex.”
Magnus paused for a moment, put out his cigarette, then reached for his notebook and pen. He jotted down in his messy scroll, Lucretia. “I'll look into it.”
“Swing by the cafe this weekend. It's probably a good place to start anyway.”
Magnus leaned back and cocked a brow, first at the unsolicited work advice, then at the 3 buttons undone of his blouse.
“Don't get any big ideas,” Taako said sharply, then smirked, his mood lifting just a little for the first time since he’d walked into the office. “You can get a little one, though.”
Brushing off the flirtation with a bemused smirk, Magnus brought their attention back to the task at hand. The spoke briefly about payment, time, and when they would meet next: in a few days, once he'd gotten the investigation underway. Taako offered him another cigarette which he declined, opting to stick with just his whiskey instead. Magnus watched as Taako draped himself over the wooden chair and smoked the new cigarette in his hand without much haste. When he was good and ready, Taako stood from the chair and turned towards the door, followed promptly by Magnus who walked him over and helped him into the big pink fur coat on the rack and handed him a small umbrella.
“Just borrow this. It’s too cold to not be wearing a coat just for sake of keeping it dry,” Magnus insisted.
“Thanks. I had an umbrella, a nice big red one, but someone-- well, it was my sister’s anyway and I guess I kind of stole it from her when I needed it, but whatever. She took it with her when she disappeared and I didn’t think to, y’know, buy a replacement…”
Magnus motioned to the umbrella in Taako’s hand. “Keep it, then.”
“Well, thanks,” Taako said. He wiped some of the mascara off his face but ended up smudging it even worse. “So will I get the update, or…?”
“Sure. I'll see you at the cafe. And let's meet again Monday after I see what I can dig up over the weekend.”
“No rest for the wicked, huh?” Taako reached for the door, pearly red nails extended, before stopping to turn to him. “Hey, Detective? Thank you.”
Magnus only smiled as Taako gripped the doorknob, pulled it open, and left.
Taako retreated down the creaky wooden stairwell and out the door to the street outside, opening the umbrella up to shield himself from the rain. He ducked against the wind and turned to walk west towards his apartment.
And walking east, unseen to Taako, a shadow beneath a red umbrella.