Re: [quicklog: micah c, neil d, cris m, louis d]
[Cris couldn't help but wish Micah would shut up. He wanted to slap a hand over the man's offending mouth, lips shaped and parted as Sam's, and make him choke back the goading words in that melding accent soft, overwrought in an attempt to sound like the girl from Jersey. He was doing nothing but digging his own grave, overenthusiastic metal blade to dead earth, turning with each syllable, tilling, and Cris pulled hard on the handcuffs. He jostled the bones against metal, the way you heel a dog at the end of leash.] Stop it. [The Irishman seemed as bent on killing himself as Louis and Neil did on committing (some would argue, justifiable) murder.
He felt bad about the fissure in Louis' voice, the calm cracked with some sense of guilt. He got it, yeah,—and this loss, Sam and Louis' brother, was a canyon yawning that could never be filled—but what Cris couldn't feel bad about was not letting someone kill someone else, no matter how horrible a person their intended victim was. Even with three of them, they had no right to play judge, jury, and executioner beneath the guillotine of the sun that spilled down hot, amplified with the blister of heat from Louis' fingertips.
Of course, they couldn't drag Micah in for something as insipid as questioning. There were no books or rules to play by here, no precinct, no nothing. Maybe there was no judge or jury even.
A wet warmth ringed with black lashes.
Louis' blue eyes waned gold, like a heartbeat quickening, and Cris looked at his partner, his own pupils lost in the quick shift of oil-black. He was the harsh winter of New York in claustrophobic vowels, voice deep and hard.] What are you gonna do, huh, Louis? You gonna unleash a flood on us here? Wash away our sins, our lives, all of it? Eat him inside out with locusts, even wearing Sam's skin like that? You wanna find out what happened to your brother, I get that, asere, I do. I get that we can't just let him go 'n' we sure can't take him in. But—[And here Cris had to pause, to bite blood to his tongue, his own frustration brimming, dark brows more threatening of a storm than the pearling peal of clouds in the sky.]—That stuff you did? That's not human. [He hated himself then, sand itching on his skin and sweat dark beneath his collar. Ash Wednesday and he felt like his soul was nothing, litter to be picked up in some park.] You wanna kill this guy? You... you do it quick and—and you do it human. Got it?
[Cris put a hand to the soft slope of Micah's shoulder to jostle him back to attention.] Is he here? Joey? [He didn't warn the man of what would happen if he planned on walking them into a trap. It was wasted breath and, for once, he knew it.]