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They went to a bar first. Dan could tell Harry hadn't really intended it, his eyes glued to his own stumbling feet as they crossed the road, and perhaps the scotch (and Kool-Aid) in Harry's chambers hadn't been such a good idea. Of course, Dan could hold his liquor; a thousand candle lit dinners and less than perfectly recalled evenings had seen to that. But Harry was the kind of dweeb who stayed in of an evening and probably remembered every single sunset for the past year. Still, if Harry wanted to go to a bar, then a bar it would be. The looming flicker of the neon sign spelling out "pool" made the unconscious jaunt across the street make a lot more sense.
"Don't tell me you've decided to become a professional pool shark again? 'Cause, I gotta tell ya, Harry, not really your forte." Dan placed a heavy but companionable hand on Harry's shoulder as they entered, and Harry looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. "Don't tell me you've forgotten? You. Me. Me saving you from a life of mediocrity?"
"I remember you saying I should shut my beanie little face." Harry shrugged away from Dan's hand, ignoring the pool table and heading for the sparsely populated bar top. Dan followed, more slowly, wondering why exactly he was here. The first drink in Harry's office had been mere courtesy. The man's mother was dead, after all. The event was at some remove, and the person a near stranger, but still. Harry deserved a night off and maybe a nice, companionable drink with a colleague. Beyond that, Dan considered the goings and doings and comfortings of his boss none of his business. Yet here he was, sidling up to the bar seat next to Harry, ordering another scotch, twirling his napkin against the counter top as he watched Harry from the corner of his eye.
"I do admire you, you know," said Dan after the silence had stretched to near breaking. Harry looked up from his drink as if he'd forgotten Dan existed, squinting at him with already blurred eyes. "Don't get me wrong, I think you're a gullible twerp, but hey, someone has to be for guys like me to succeed." He gave his most damning smirk and sipped at his scotch.
"Is that why you're here? To insu-sulate me with faint praise?" Harry tipped the last of his drink back and gazed around vaguely for another one.
"Nah. I'm here to laugh and take pictures when you fall flat on your face. Judge Stone, really, drinking at your age?"
"My age?" Harry glared at what he probably thought was Dan, but turned out to be just left of his head.
"Juvenile delinquency should be discouraged in our magistrates." Dan waited for the explosion. Harry stared at him for a moment, then laughed. A real laugh, not a "ha ha, Dan, you think you're so clever" laugh but a full throated, belly aching kind of laugh. "Okay, now I know you're drunk." Dan leaned back in consternation. Harry leaned forward in mirth.
"Dan, Dan, have I ever told you that I looove your jokes? The, the one with the prostitute, and, and the fish!" He howled, nearly falling off his stool but for Dan's quick reflexes. Dan, having no idea what he was referring to, decided it was time to go.
"Yeah, I'm hilarious. Come on, sir, time to go home. One leg at a time, that's it, there you go, good boy." Harry was off the stool and more or less upright, and Dan took him by the shoulder and shoved him toward the door.
"Ow. Where are we going?"
"Home." Dan held the door open onto city night, pink sky and rushing cars and noise everywhere.
"What home? Which home? Your home?" Harry stumbled over imaginary rocks, and Dan considered very briefly genuinely letting him fall before his instincts kicked in, and he caught his boss under the arms instead.
"You'd better thank me for this in the morning," Dan grumbled, steering Harry toward the corner and attempting to make him look presentable enough for a cab driver to stop for them. "You're going to your home, and I'm going to my home. Capiche?"
"Bene voce," said Harry.
"Um. Okay," said Dan, waving an arm for an approaching cab.
Somehow, in the cab, with Harry slumped against the window, all mirth gone, and a sudden weariness descending on Dan at every flickering passage of neon light, he decided that maybe one destination was better than two. Harry's apartment was closer anyway, and the little twerp owed him for looking after him. Really, it should be the others here, not him. They were the ones who'd started this mess, encouraging Harry's pointless phone call to a dead mother, encouraging a grief that didn't even need to exist. Dan figured Harry had already grieved his mother's loss a long, long time ago. But Harry hadn't invited any of them to share a drink in chambers, and, gee, I wonder why, thought Dan, sarcasm dripping from every thought. Obviously, Harry, fed up with their nagging, had turned to the one colleague he knew who wouldn't care how he felt or what he did.
Except Dan did care, and the concern tickled at the back of his mind all the way up to Harry's apartment, entwined with his annoyance as he deposited Harry on his couch and dropped next to him. The man could be insufferable, but he didn't deserve this. The fact that it was no one's fault made it all the worse. You could blame the post office, maybe, for delivering a letter fifteen years late. Or you could blame the mother. That was always a good bet, Dan thought, dropping his head onto the couch's backrest and feeling a brief twinge at the thought of his own mother. She was alive. He loved her. She loved him. She'd always been there for him. He wanted nothing to do with her. But maybe that wasn't anyone's fault either.
"Why didn't he tell me?" Harry mumbled, drifting in and out of half consciousness.
"Wha? Who?" Dan raised his head, his own maudlin thoughts broken.
"My dad. He must've known she was sick, and he just let me believe she'd left us. Left me." Harry turned onto his side so he was staring unerringly into Dan's eyes. The intensity of his gaze wiping away the drunken haze. Dan wanted to look away, wanted to ask why the hell Harry was asking him, wanted to say something cruel or crass or funny to make Harry stop looking at him as if he had all the answers.
"I don't know, Harry." The simple, most honest answer Dan could think of. The two things he was never any good at, and it was all he had to give.
"Was he ashamed of her? Was he scared I'd end up like her? I know he-" Harry broke off, looked away. "He wasn't very proud of me. Sometimes."
"Is that what you think?" And suddenly Dan knew what, exactly, had put Harry into his uncharacteristic funk all night. "That you'll end up like your mother, shut up in some institution?" In response, Harry pulled a pair of comic glasses from his pocket, slipping the fake cigar part into his mouth and blowing so the eyes turned round and round. It was more than a little disturbing this close, but Dan stopped himself from recoiling. At least it wasn't one of those jack-in-the-box surprises Harry was so fond of. "Oookay," said Dan, "not exactly making your case for sanity here." Harry slid the cigar from his mouth, lips twitching up in the ghost of a familiar grin.
"This was a gift from my mother. Buddy gave it to me." He placed the glasses on the coffee table.
"Oh, come on. So you both like disgusting, gag gifts, so what? Doesn't mean you're going to follow in mother dearest's footsteps."
"Yeah, and my dad never, ever hit me." Harry's face twisted into a sad grimace that might've been a smile in better, more sober lighting. Dan squinted, confused.
"Yeah, that's, that's good. What does that have to do with your mother?"
"She wasn't so lucky. Her parents..." Harry's voice came out small, barely audible, and for one horrifying second Dan thought he was about to cry.
"Oh," said Dan and couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Buddy told me," Harry continued, the words seemingly wrenched out of him. "I don't understand why. I never understand why." He leaned forward, a hand coming up to obscure his eyes, but no sobs followed. Dan breathed a sigh of guilty relief, and leaned forward with him, laying a tentative arm across his shoulders. "It's not fair," Harry breathed into the silence.
"Yeah, well, that's life." He winced at the trite words, but nothing he could say now would make anything better, so it didn't really matter what he said, did it? Harry turned his face toward him, a frown etched across his features, hand dropping to rest against his knee.
"Is that really the best the great district attorney can do? That's life? 'Cause that wasn't my life, and I'll bet it wasn't your life, and it isn't a million other children's lives thank god, so why? Why? Tell me why, Dan, or don't say anything at all!"
"Jesus Christ, sir, I don't know why you're asking me in the first place. I don't know why. Nobody knows! Nobody knows why parents hurt their children or, or children hurt their parents or why the innocents are always the ones who suffer. You know that. After everything we've seen. So don't pretend you're so naive as to actually think there's an answer out there 'cause there isn't." He shook Harry slightly, grip tightening on his shoulder.
"Stop it. Stop making sense." Harry covered his face again, letting out a great sigh. "I'm acting like a child, aren't I?"
"Uh huh. But that's nothing new."
"I just can't help thinking that all of that is a part of me. My grandparents, my mother. What they did to her, what she did to me. I don't really know who I am anymore." He looked up at Dan, lifting his head to focus that same intense gaze on him. "Still think I'm not destined for the loony bin?" Dan swallowed, somehow knowing this question mattered even more than the others.
"You know who else is a part of you?" Dan weighed his words carefully, slowly. Harry frowned in confusion. "Your dad. He's the one who raised you. When you hear that little voice in your head telling you right and wrong, it's his, isn't it? Genetics don't hold a candle to that. Harry, you're probably the sanest most morally decent person I've ever met." At Harry's look of disbelief he grinned. "Besides, you're far too crazy to be insane."
"Well, that's some impeccable logic there, Dan." Harry's lips upturned in a slight smile.
"Trust me, Harry. There aren't any strait jackets or padded rooms in your future."
"You, Dan Fielding, are defending my, Harold T. Stone's, sanity? Right now, small counties in Hell are freezing over." Harry's smile broadened.
"Don't get me wrong, you're still a loon, just not a certifiable loon."
"Nice of you to say," Harry drawled.
"Just getting my suck up quota in for the day, sir." Dan smirked, leaning back against the couch again with crossed arms. Harry followed him, still turned sideways to gaze at Dan's profile, but the intensity was gone. He was just plain old Harry now, chief jokester of the Manhattan courts, tipsy and grinning in his own living room.
"Hey, I'm starving." Harry shot up, stumbled against the coffee table, righted himself with a sheepish glance toward Dan, and swayed into his kitchen, rooting around in the refrigerator. Dan reluctantly got up to follow him, dreading whatever concoction Harry deemed appropriate for a midnight snack. Harry shut the refrigerator in some frustration and took to rooting through the cupboards, finally pulling out a garishly lettered bag. Harry set it triumphantly on the counter, right in front of Dan. "I've been meaning to try this!" he enthused. Before Dan could get a good look at the packaging, other than to catch a glimpse of the word "Chex," Harry tore it open and shoved it at Dan's face. "Here, try it." Dan gave a scoffing laugh, shifting backwards.
"Uh, no, sir. I'd hate to deprive you of first... taste." The smell from the bag was curiously fishy. Harry shrugged and popped a handful of Chex into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
"Wow," he said, eyes lighting up. "You have got to try this, Dan. Come on. Just a taste." He waggled the bag under Dan's nose. "For me? Please? Just a handful, come on-"
"Alright! Just stop waving it around." Dan grabbed a handful and without looking shoved it into his mouth, hoping if it was in his mouth the nauseating smell would stop. Of course, he'd forgotten that smell was a pretty good indicator of taste. "Oh my god, are those anchovies?" he sputtered around his mouthful.
"Yup," said Harry, leaning back with that evil, evil smirk of his. "Awful, isn't it?"
"You-" Dan dived past Harry, spitting the disgusting mix into the sink to Harry's peals of laughter. "You are so dead."
"If I wasn't, you know, your boss, you mean?"
"I think a jury would understand. Extenuating circumstances, couldn't help myself."
"But then you'd have to train up a new judge. And who's as gullible as me, right?" Harry tossed the bag back into the cupboard with a pointed eyebrow raise.
"I'm sorry, Harry, I'll never call you gullible again. Clearly the root of all evil is a better epithet for you. Please tell me you have real food around here somewhere." He needed to get the taste out of his mouth and the twisting feeling in his gut that said it was all worth it for that look on Harry's face.
But when they were back on the couch, hastily made peanut butter sandwiches in front of them, laughter still echoing through the apartment, Dan's gut still insisted that any amount of Chex Mix anchovies were worth the happy mischief dancing in Harry's eyes.