#yunalystelle

“Perfect,” Alma said and snapped the photo before Cabanela got it into his head to change poses again on her.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from striking another pose right after. However, after a moment of appreciation, Alma glanced away to the trees and distant stand where Jowd had gone to get them some drinks. It was a fine day at the park but growing warmer. Those drinks were going to be appreciated even if there was some excuse in it to get away from the camera.

Ah, there he was. Jowd approached, balancing a cardboard tray.

“Heeere’s the man of the hour!” Cabanela said brightly.

Jowd snorted. “Next to you?”

“You got it, baby,” Cabanela replied with a broad gesture to the grass beside him. “Right here, see.”

“Go on,” Alma prompted. “I haven’t gotten one of you both yet.”

With a small shake of his head, Jowd set down the tray and went to stand next to Cabanela. Cabanela flung an arm around his shoulders and shortly after Jowd’s arm came around his waist.

Alma hesitated, taking the moment to simply absorb the sight. They really were beautiful. It was a wonder to think she was lucky enough to have them both. It was a miracle but that wasn’t something she was about to dwell on this day. After the number of times they’d had to gently nudge Jowd back into the present she wasn’t about to throw herself into a past that no longer existed either.

And this present couldn’t be better.

“Alma?” Jowd asked.

She raised the camera with a smile. “Just enjoying the sight.”

Click click. A couple shots to make sure.

Satisfied they had some good shots, they each took their drinks and set off again. They strolled along the grass feeling the sun’s warmth and sipping their drinks. There wasn’t any particular goal in mind. At some point they would wend their way home. For now, the rest of the afternoon stretched out long and peaceful before them.

And, it seemed their day may go longer as Cabanela suddenly spoke.

“That new restaurant opened not faaar from here. What do you saaay we try it out tonight?”

“Oh, that would be nice,” Alma said.

“One might think you had that planned,” Jowd said looking amused. “But, sure, why not?”

“Then it’s a date.”

“And this wasn’t?” Alma asked.

Cabanela grinned. “Two dates in one, baby!”

“Ever the efficient one,” Jowd said dryly.

They continued their leisurely stroll. A few other people and families were scattered through the park. They would have to bring Kamila again soon, Alma thought, and Amelie too as the girls seemed glued to the hip this summer. Lynne and Missile as well. Make it a full outing.

For all his masks and secrets, Jowd has a way of making his bad mood days everyone’s problem. Cabanela cannot say for certain that their colleagues have noticed, or if they think the genuinely nasty barbs in his jokes are just the way he is, nuance be damned. Then again, those jokers wouldn’t know how to deduce their way out of a paper bag and their opinion is immaterial. He noticed. He knows: when that fake laughter can be heard from his office, and it’s bad and dissonant, it’s a call for help.

And roses, it pains him to admit, are not the answer. Whatever mood-healing powers a bouquet of roses may possess (especially the really big ones! Massive, massive things, Jowd’s worth one of those, of course he is), it’s lost on the, shall we say, limited romantic sensibilities of his dear friend. Cabanela quite likes roses, at that, and is not in the habit of jumping head first into provoking a scathing tirade that’d salt the earth of every greenhouse in a five-miles range, so he spares himself the effort.

Also not an option is the veritably lurid option of sitting next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and telling him things will be – wait for it – okay. Scaaandalous, he knows. Can’t have any of that bawdy optimism around the office on days like this, can we.

So Cabanela joins him in the depths of hopelessness: he struts to his desk and offers to make him a coffee. When Jowd says yes, because the precinct’s coffee-and-donuts instincts are too deeply ingrained for even depression to make a dent in them, Cabanela grabs the old stove-top coffee maker in the break room and gets to work. The old coffee maker, which was already the old coffee maker in the chief’s rookie days, has maintained through the decades the unique characteristic of being virtually unusable: the gasket’s a mess, the lid went missing a long time ago, and anyway it’s been burning its coffee for longer than anyone here remembers. To attempt to make coffee with it is an exercise in mindfulness, despair and the futility of human struggle. Cabanela submits to it regardless. He’s got a point to make. He knows he has Jowd’s attention, in the corner of his eye. Time after time, he experiments with the right amount of coffee that’ll offset whatever unholy alchemical process goes on in there that turns everything into a thick black goop, and with the burner’s heat to go along with it. Time after time, he finds a makeshift lid and dodges the squirts of boiling water that still leak through the ruined gasket (this is the most important step: there’s a coat and therefore an entire reputation at stake here, he is doing this at great personal peril). Time after time, it comes out a thick black mess, regardless. Jowd sniffs the burnt coffee and chuckles. Cabanela throws it out and rings up the cafeteria across the street for two espressos, presenting them to his friend with a 24-carat smile. He thinks he sees a small nod half-hidden by that beard. Worth it. Effort pays off, baby. Don’t you go givin’ up.

He even makes it right, once, by accident, as the old coffee maker answers only to the gods’ whims. In deference to this superhuman accomplishment, Jowd refrains from calling him out on the impossibly smug grin he’s got plastered on his face as he twirls along carrying their two cups. They sip them in silence, side by side, Jowd’s arm stretched out the little bit it takes to cover Cabanela’s shoulders, and pat a silent thank you on his arm.

“It’s a looovely night and here you are lookin’ for all the world like you’ve got that equally lovely moon on your shoulders. What’s eatin’ you, baby?”

Jowd bit back a sigh and glanced at Cabanela. Said moon and the candles illuminating the patio table behind them were all they had for light, and there stood Cabanela in the grass beside him, somehow gleaming under it all despite the absence of his white coat, currently hanging on its customary hook inside. Sometimes it really did feel as though he shone with an inner light, which was most likely nonsense (who could really be sure with the man), but regardless for a passing moment Jowd simply wanted to hold onto that spark. Maybe it would be enough to drown out the gloom that had settled on him through the day, despite, or perhaps because of, the evening plans that waited.

“You’re a detective,” he said instead. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Nope,” Cabanela replied cheerily. “But I’d like to hear it from you.”

For once. The words hung unspoken in the air like a sharp retort. Like a gun pointed his way under a different moon on a different night, Jowd thought.

“At this time I was in a cell,” Jowd said slowly. “All of this was impossible.” Sometimes he wondered if it still should have been. Could he really say he deserved this? Then he had to remind himself of both Alma’s and Cabanela’s words, overly patient, telling him that, yes as a matter of fact he did, and they wouldn’t hear otherwise. Who was he to argue with them?

“Was, baby.” Cabanela said. “And some might say a group of ghosts, containing our fine furry feline friend, and the best Pomeranian there is no less, turnin’ back time and saving the day is an impossibility too, and yet here we aaare.”

Here they were. Jowd faintly smiled at the descriptors. Cabanela had yet to meet Missile in this timeline. Missile wouldn’t be born for another couple years yet. Alma’s birthday had come and gone without incident and a new set of five years stretched out before them, unknown and unpredictable, but one thing wouldn’t change. Jowd knew when the time came, if needed, he would do everything to ensure Missile would make his way home once more. And no doubt the pup and Cabanela would hit it off immediately then too.

Sometime in the space of his thoughts, Cabanela had ditched all pretense of distance and slid in against Jowd, took his arm, and wrapped it around himself like an overlarge scarf. Heavier, and likely clumsier too than that of the finer affair he normally wore. Always one for odd tastes.

“Here we are,” Cabanela repeated. “So, hooow about you stop makin’ like a chicken, quit the brooding act, and be here too?”

“That may be a tall order,” Alma’s voice sounded from behind. She left glasses and wine on the table and approached to join them in the grass where she took Jowd’s other arm. Two of a kind; they both had strange tastes. She kissed his cheek before giving them both a thoughtful stare.

“He is so very good at it after all. We may just have to get the ketchup to complete this image.”

“It’s a shame to let talent go to waste,” Jowd said blandly. “Or ketchup.”

“You don’t need the practice,” Cabanela retorted. “Keep it on that side, would you, baby?”

“I don’t know,” Jowd started, “maybe I—mmph.”

Jowd broke off as Cabanela leaned in to kiss him. That still took some getting used to in this new life of theirs as well. When they first started navigating this new relationship Cabanela had been, well, not shy—Jowd wasn’t certain if Cabanela knew the meaning of the word—but reserved perhaps, and normally that too was a word that fit on him as well as an oversized smock full of stains, but nevertheless there he had been. While it hadn’t lasted naturally, it had been a novelty. That said, this was better, Jowd had to admit.

“What was that?” Alma asked brightly.

“I appear to be outmatched,” Jowd replied.

“Of course. Now, how about that wine and some actual relaxation? Unless you’d prefer the ketchup?”

“Always,” Jowd said with a smirk before sobering. “But, wait.”

Cabanela’s fingers had found their way into his beard and he spoke softly. “We’re not goin’ anywhere, baby. You can be sure of that.”

Jowd pulled them both into a tighter hug. They were here in all their warmth and presence. That cell was nothing more than a memory of a time and place that no longer existed, that never existed here. No more blackened eyes, no more unfillable holes. No more distance and layers of lies.

“We’re always here,” Alma said as if reading his thoughts. Not that she needed to be able to read his thoughts to guess at them.

To her, to both of them, he was an open book it seemed. Had he always been? On some level had he known as much? How many barriers had he placed between himself and Cabanela after all? He shook his head, giving them both a squeeze. They were right as always.

“Well,” Jowd finally said, “how about that wine?”

They couldn’t stay like this all night after all. Well, maybe they could, but Cabanela was another matter, although he did seem content toying with his beard for the present time. At Jowd’s words, however, he spun away, hand lingering over Jowd’s and brushing over Alma.

“You got it, baby!”

Once Cabanela went to fetch the wine, Alma tugged at Jowd’s arm. He got the message and together they sat in the grass. Her fingers walked across his shoulder and gave him a squeeze before she leaned her head on him.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” Jowd found himself saying without hesitation.

Then Cabanela returned and in a swirl of activity their glasses were filled and distributed between them all without spilling a drop while the wine bottle was set delicately aside in the grass. Cabanela settled opposite Alma, once more reclaiming Jowd’s shoulder.

The moon shone down and the stars sparkled across the sky. The candles behind them added their own flickering warmth. There was a slight breeze, but between the pair Jowd only felt warm. He realized he missed something Cabanela said, but Alma’s laugh in return was sweet and the sound alone was enough.