Disclaimers: If they were mine, I'd be more conflicted than
I am now.

Spoilers: The Homicide movie, various Oz through the third
season.

Summary: Tim has a type.

Ratings Note: R.

Author's Note: Don't know where this came from, *just*
remembered that I'd written it in the first place.

Feedback: Always. leytelj@gmail.com

*

Tim knows what he's doing.

More importantly, he knows what he's doing to himself:
prison doesn't allow for an unexamined life. There's just
too much time for that, and too few books in the prison
library. Tim... has had a lot of time to think.

Much of that thought was spared for Frank, and that's
only natural. Sometimes Tim thinks he can pin down the
exact moment he fell in love with the man (on the steps,
in his blue, shameless and proud and unafraid). A lot of
the time he wonders when he's going to fall out.

It's going to be during a visit; he knows that much. Frank
visits him the way some men go to church -- regular and
grudgingly. He has penance written all over his face. It's
in the grey of his hair. (Frank should always be bald)

It's in the black, black eyes that don't so much meet his
own as land glancing blows on Tim's face, Tim's uniform,
Tim's shorn head and careful beard. Frank's visits are
bruising, exhaustive things. Filled with silence and deadly.

In his darker moods, he's sure Frank does this on purpose,
out of some passive-aggressive need to make Tim pay
for... all of it. If not the killing, then the confession. If
not the confession, then for making Frank choose:
friendship or all those carefully held beliefs.

But it's hard to stay mad at Frank, even in his own
distinctly passive and silent way. Truth be told, he wants
to find some way to tell him it's *okay*. To let Frank
know that *he'd* known how it would end. Because
really, Tim had never once believed his confession
would end any other way.

He knows Frank. He *knows* him, and every inch of
that prickly, iron-clad morality. Everything that had
made him fall in love in the first place.

So, no, he understands where his feelings for Said
come from. Another supremely conscious man,
another beautiful Black man who would do anything
but betray his beliefs. Another impossibility.

He'd laugh if it wasn't so damned sad. After all, he's
reasonably sure that he's everything Said hates, from
his ex-career to the color of his skin. Of course, there
are rumors about that. Something about White
women, but Tim isn't sure he believes that. It just
doesn't fit.

Somewhere, deep inside his head, Frank is chewing
him out acidly for profiling without evidence. He asks
his inner Frank if he's supposed to just go up and
*ask* Said about any cases of Jungle Fever he may
or may not be harboring, but imaginary Frank is
quiet.

And really, Em City isn't the place, and prison time
isn't the *time*, but... But.

It's all the time he has, now, and he wouldn't be
himself if he didn't indulge in a little self-torture,
right? His podmate is a quiet man who seems to
define himself by his hair and accessories.

Glasses and neatness? He's trying to be a good boy.
Wild hair and a goatee? Nobody's punk. Clean-shaven
but rumpled? Stoned off his ass.

He'd hit on Tim a couple of times while under the
influence, which was flattering, considering what
he'd heard about the man's relationship with a
certain Nazi fuck, but Tim couldn't quite go there.

"You can call me Said," he'd said, and laughed.

Had he lost something between the outside world
and his personal fishbowl? Was he stripped so bare
that anyone could see? Tim doesn't think he's any
more obvious than before, but then, why had a
squad full of detectives never clued in to his
obsession with his partner?

Tim files the thought away carefully. It's a thought
for the next sleepless night, or maybe just the next
attempt not to jerk off over Said.

And when, exactly, had Frank become the healthy
choice?

(When he grew his hair. When he stopped looking
at you. When you wanted him less.)

Beecher says Tim laughs in his sleep.

Tim is tempted to ask just how much attention
Beecher pays to him after lights out, but asking
questions like that is a good way to wind up on
your knees in a place like this. And Tim...

God, if it was Said. (Allah. *Ha*)

Sometimes Tim wonders if he was always meant
for this. If God had sneezed mid-creation and broken
him someplace important. He thinks he must dream
of things like that. Really, what could be funnier?

(Self-pity is an ugly thing in a grown man.)

And the Frank in his head shaves with an antique
razor, pearl hard and cool against a palm so light
and blameless that Tim wants to reach out and
*touch*. The Frank in his head has the gravel voice of
too many cigarettes and the breath of smoky Irish
whiskey. *Cop* whiskey, and cop sense and sensibilities.

The Frank in his head overlays Said with hallucinatory
approbation.

In the end, though... Frank isn't here, and never will be.

And Tim needs something to get him through the night.

*
End.