Adam's scream tampered off into the distance as the first of the nights rain began to fall. His loose pants and bright shirt were reduced into tones of black and white, still not quite fitting the town's ascetic. His dirty socks were becoming muddy as water fell onto the medieval soil coating them. A man ran out from round the corner of a building, gun raised to the sky and one hand braced against his wide brimmed fedora. His feet pounding on the pavement he ran towards Adam where he stood staring out to the road on the side of the pavement. Hearing the man approach through the lack of vehicles crowding the road, and the light pattering of rain Adam realised how quiet the city seemed to be. Turning towards the man he noticed his brow beaten features, a man with light lines pressed upon his face telling the stories of nights spent like this one running towards screams on the pavement. He had a holster on the inside of his suit jacket by his armpit like a cop at the office in a sitcom or the concealed carry of a private eye. His gun disappeared into it as he approached. As his pace slowed towards a hurried walk his eyes met Adam's, the twin grey orbs meeting Adam's wide dilated pupils with a measure of concern. Adam looked into what he assumed to be a detective gaze and saw some of the hardness that dwelled there, the wieght behind the gaze betraying the man seemed older then he was, that despite his years he lived a life that aged him. It felt as if an actor played the part of the man's life, one ten years older then the mans age. As the detective looked back at Adam he could of sworn he saw a flash p something foreign and vibrant there. The detective not having a word to desrbe the flash of colour he had seen, to acknowdle the flash of hazel fr what it was. He looked down at the mans feet seeing the darkening socks upon his feet and smiling ruefully. He looked back into Adam's dark eyes and as he did Adam saw the levity ease the age off his face, saw a brief moment where the pressure was pushed back by the mirth and essaying the mans true age to far closer to 28-29 then the harsh 36-40. The man kept one hand on his hat as he reached his now empty gun hand forward. Adam shook his grey hand with his own.
'They took my shoes' He lied, because what else was he to do.
The man simply laughed in response 'Let's get you inside before it get's dark, I've got a pair you can borrow-some socks too.' Adam smiled back, the confusion in his eyes and the unsure quirk in his smile going unnoticed or ignored by the other man as he turned and head back the way he came.
'I'm Adam.' he spoke out as he followed the strange man, thinking if the guy was nice enough to give him his shoes he deserved to know his name.
"Al'." The man spun around and told him, walking backwards as he did so. He spun again before picking up the pace. "let's hurry it up a little ay?" he called over his shoulder before breaking into a brisk jog.
Adam followed as best he could, eager to get his feet out of the rain. Adam wondered how it could get darker, considering it looked to be well into the night already, and why that was something to be wary of. He kept jogging down the moonlight streets, his monochrome skin glistening under the powerful streetlights whenever he passed them. His socks were damp, and he shivered. He was eager to get to wherever the man was going.
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The light inside the room was warm, comforting. The rain pattered against the window pane, visible in streaks through the open blinds. On the door outside the office lay the name Al' Halton embossed across glass in what Adam guessed would have been golden letters, if not for the nature of the place he found himself in. The window lay shuttered to give the men privacy, the enclosed room giving Adam a sense of security although the window set into the door didn't appeal to him as the safest design choice. He'd asked Al' to lock the door and he had agreed without argument, asserting that 'guests at this hour tend to be of the less desirable sort.' Now the two men sat in front of the room's small fire place, a pair of leather armchairs and subsequent foot rests somehow not looking out of place in the office. The building he'd found himself in was three to four stories. It had an elevator with three buttons-although Adam wished it didn't- and yet despite it's three floors the size of it felt off somehow, the rooms he had glimpsed through drawn shutters seeming a little too big. This was evidenced by the fact he was sat at a fireplace in the one man offices of a P.I firm with his feet propped up on an antique footrest-and adorned with new socks-before a cracking fire. The desk was large, grandiose if not for the coffee mug stuffed full of pens and the varied sheets spread across it's surface.
Adam swirled the whiskey in his glass-because the private investigator with leather chairs and the nick name on the window would obviously have whiskey- and tried not to ponder too much on the world of cliches he had wondered into.
"Thanks you for the socks, drinks nice too"
"Don't mention it, least I could do for a fella out in the rain clueless as the day he was born. Especially one with such a manly scream. Although I would of left you out there if I known you'd be scared half to death of my elevator.'
Adam grimaced but then smiled chagrined 'I swear the elevator in my building doesn't make half as many noises. Maybe if you had an office somewhere other then this dump heap, entering in wouldn't be so terrifying'
'Don't talk about Berty like that' Al' tapped the side of his chair twice 'last fella that complained about her elevator broke his leg going down the dodgy stairs' Al' laughed and Adam joined in, sharing the comfort of a fire with a complete stranger-an armed one he'd asked to be locked in a room with. Adam took a drink from his diluted whiskey. He spoke again, filling the silence before it stretched with the implications of the turn his life had taken.
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"Why were you out so late anyway?" Adams eyes started out the window as he asked the question, watching as the rain splattered against it in relentless staccato. It was between the wooden blinds he glimpsed true blackness. The impregnable gloom was different in nature to the other black he had seen in this world. The black wasn't visible to his eye, instead it felt like a void drawing in his gaze. The empty expense felt colourless and his vision was drawn further and further into the nothingness-almost as if they were searching for a colour visible to them, a black he could lay eyes upon and affirm to himself existed.
Al's words startled him out of his trance, his jarring voice causing Adam's head to twang over in his direction dramatically.'I just had a feeling to go looking out the streets, I felt like I'd find something out there. You know how the feelings can get, especially when you're on a case, call it a hunch I guess'
Adam sipped from his tumbler, the heat from the whisky beating back the pulling void and allowing his mind to be reminded of Al' fear of the dark. "A hunch ay" He looked back out the window and focused this time on the thin raindrops falling through nothingness. Al' smiled and turned to pour more whiskey into his glass, as soon as moved to do so Adam poured more fluid from his 'hip flask' into the whisky once again. As he took another swallow of the strong liquid he found it's bite dulled a little more, and felt his anxious mind slowing. He didn't worry about where he was, he simply drank and let his glass be filled again. Occasionally he asked Al' questions if he felt the conversation allowed it, trying to pry as much as he politely could. He basked in the glow of the fire. He relaxed, trying to stay composed as he sank into one of Al's chairs. He did his best to keep prying details out of his host about this strange reality, the heavy liquor a balm over his soul. He nodded along to Al's assertions and assumptions and acted as if this place was as much home as where he really hailed from.
He learned about the nature of the case Al was on, the missing woman he was chasing. He learned of the others in the building on cases much the same. He learned about the whisky Al' had given him. He listened to what it was the man shared with him as he sank more passively into the conversation. He learned what it was Al' wished to tell him, realising that Al' in his own way was asking-no expecting Adam to help him. He enjoyed the whisky as he gleaned what deeper information about the world as he could. He realised that Al' had put a lot faith into his 'hunch' and that he was in a world where that word seemingly held a deeper meaning-one with a lot of private eyes. He even learned that the nice glass in the window was recently replaced and was freshly shiny. By the time he had reached halfway through his third half healing half liver poising glass he had resolved himself to help Al', resolved himself to start at least exploring the task set before him.
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Al' opened his mouth to speak and fill the latest silence that had settled comfortably between them, but before he could do so harsh rapping sounded out from his doorframe. His mouth crept down into a frown. Al' burst into action, his movements explosive and quiet. He sprung towards his desk and whispered loudly to Adam as he did so, his voice maintaining it's smooth quality. He vaulted behind his desk and chucked his office gun at the man he'd been sharing his evening with. He hoped his hunch was right and that the man was wiling to help him get to the truth he was seeking, what he was always seeking. He had his concerns about seeing this one through, and the man he'd met was a strange one. Still, a hunch was a hunch and fate was fate. It wasn't like he always worked alone and he remembered one particular partner that had been much stranger then the shoeless man he'd drank with in his office. Things were heating up for Al', and with the time he'd been spending on this case and from the grumblings he been hearing from others recently on their own lacks of progress, he was happy for it.
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'Let's hope the hunch pays off.' Before he registered Al had left behind the comfort of his overstuffed seat Adam heard the quiet words echo from behind the office's stretching desk. He felt Al's eyes surveying his form as he stood up in wild panic. His senses were undiluted by what Al' must have thought to have been strong liquor he'd been mixing in with Al's own whiskey and his feet were spread ready to flee in the opposite direction. Adam thought that the detective must have mistaken his fearful posture for some sort of fighting stance, one that proclaimed him ready for a shootout. He nodded towards Adam 'fore flinging open a draw from his desk and chucking over at Adam a large revolver.
"She's got some buck" he told him in what felt far too loud to have been a whisper as he pulled his own gun from his hostler. Whatever grin was forming on Al's face vanished as he realised that if this guest was going to be letting themselves in as so many often did, then Al' was about to loose the nice glasswork of his window. Al' frowned at the door as he sighted his pistol, and as Adam watched the man's face fall down in response to the potential office crasher he was struck by the fact that the expression on his face was not of a man terrified of a home invasion, but instead the grimace of one seeng his family heirloom be juggled by the hands of a careless nephew. The only thought that crossed his mind as he stood in that brief paused moment, revolver hung awkwardly between his clutching fingers, was how common gunfights must be in this reality for the strange man he met to be more concerned with losing some material object in the fight than his life.
"Doors open" Al' shouted out to the hallway, not letting his worry about the window creep into his words. The handle rattled once as the person on the other side of the door tested the veracity of the statement. Finding it to be false they did not hesitate to smash the window. Al's mind envisioned money leaving his hands as his eyes watched the newly minted glass shattered into a thousand glimerring shards. The countenance of his proud firm punched apart right at the teeth. The mans elbow began to pull back out of the new gap in the door, arm straightening in order to bring his gun to bear. Seeing his precious, recently repaired window scatter outwards form it's frame, Al' lost all remnants of the cool he had been building since the days of the last smashing. "you bas-" Adam didn't hear the end of his sentence as his world erupted with smoke and the cacophony of gunfire.