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When we got back, Walt was waiting for us with a man I didn't know. Walt looked even more annoyed with me than he had earlier.
"Where were you?" he asked. "Making me look bad."
"You can call me if you need me," I pointed out, taking my seat. "I went for a run and then we ate." I gestured to Drew. I was too worn out from all the thinking to care as much as usual if Walt was unhappy with me. Anyway, wasn't he always? I hadn't done anything wrong this time. At least, I was pretty sure I hadn't.
"It was my fault," said Drew. "We were catching up, and I suggested a bite to eat."
"Of course you did," muttered Walt coldly.
Drew didn't wince, but he looked like he wanted to. "You take care, Rory," he said, giving me a clap on the shoulder and then walking away, his steps sort of angry.
Did people make a lot of comments like that to him? I hadn't noticed before. Maybe I'd start noticing. But I wasn't going to tell Walt he should quit it, not in front of a stranger.
Walt took a deep breath. "Rory, this is the assessor." He pointed to the man.
"Oh," I said. I got up and went to shake his hand. He let me. "How do you do, sir?"
He had watchful sort of eyes. I should've guessed. He got out his wallet and showed me his ID, so I'd know he was legit. I gave it a careful look and handed it back. Walt was frowning even harder now, the scowl lines looking like they'd be there permanently.
The assessor was Curt Bittern. He was somewhere between my age and Walt's. He was a big shaggy-haired blond guy, almost as big as me, broad-shouldered. He was part shifter, wolf, but probably not enough that he could shift. He was probably faster and stronger than almost any non-shifter, though. He had the sort of look and smell about him, the solid strength of an athlete or a powerful shifter or both.
"I've spoken with your partner," said Curt. "I'd like to speak with you."
Had we been gone that long? Long enough for him to hear Walt's side of things? Yikes.
"Sure."
"Let's go for a walk."
I didn't argue.
Walt was glaring after us as we left.
"Let's hear it," said Curt.
I played dumb. "Hear what?" I asked politely.
"I assume you're ready to dish the dirt on your partner, after his little display back there."
Inwardly, I winced. So he'd noticed Walt's nasty attitude. I guess it would be hard not to. Still, I played dumb.
"It's no secret we're not getting along very well lately. But I don't have dirt to dish."
"He had plenty about you," said Curt.
I didn't say anything.
"Your habits, your lack of self-control," he went on.
"That's not—" I cut myself off.
He glanced at me. "Your other coworkers don't seem to hold such a dim view of you, though."
Dim view. I thought about that. So they didn't think I was dim? That was odd. I didn't strike most people as smart. Mostly because I wasn't.
"Why do you think your partner is the only one who doesn't have anything positive to say about you?"
I shrugged. It was nice to hear that other people did, but I wasn't ready to throw Walt under the bus. This whole assessment thing was kind of my fault in the first place. They could make a judgment without me saying anything unkind.
"And why were you quite glad to check my ID for yourself instead of trusting what your partner already said, that I was the assessor?"
I stopped walking, and he stopped too. I turned to face him. "Oh, that was a test." It seemed unfair. But I guess Curt was the cutthroat type, a go-getter who didn't want to spend ages making up his mind about us. I studied him a moment, looking him in the eye, meeting his gaze, holding it. "Not sure that's fair."
"Never said it was." Great, he was the take-charge, hard-eyed, tough guy type. Wonderful.
I don't like being bossed around. Nobody gets to have power over me, like an alpha. It's different with the captain, because he's actually my boss, and I respect his judgment. But that attitude from this guy? I wasn't having it.
"I suppose Walt has his reasons for anything he said. But I have only your word for what that was, and you seem to have made your mind up about us already." I kept as much dignity in my voice as I could. This was even less fun than I'd expected it to be, so far.
"It wasn't hard," said Curt. "It's all pretty obvious right now."
Obvious. Things always were, to people who weren't me, weren't they? But I wasn't such a pushover.
"I know Walt doesn't like me. I know we've got some issues with our partnership," I acknowledged. "But so far we've done our job, and that counts for something."
"He hasn't," said Curt.
"What?"
Just then, Drew came to join us, walking fast, not quite breaking out into a jog. He stopped, breathing heavily. He looked between us carefully. Then he addressed me. "You all right, Rory?"
"Yes," I said, short and cold, still giving Curt a stern look.
"Just seemed like maybe you'd rather not be interrogated alone," he said, looking at us both carefully, like he was trying to read the situation and didn't like what he saw so far.
"He's not interrogat—" I stopped. That's sort of what it was, even without being in one of the special rooms at the police station.
"Well, close enough." Drew put a hand on my arm. "Why don't we all go somewhere we can sit down? Maybe have a friendly chat instead of...whatever this is?"
Curt looked at him a long moment, and then, to my surprise, he smiled. His face looked entirely different when he smiled. Nice, almost.
"All right," he said.
Somehow or other, we went back to the diner. I'd just eaten, and being mad should definitely have dampened my appetite, but I still ended up ordering fries when the other two ordered their snacks. (Coffee for Drew, a roast beef sandwich for Curt.)
Curt transferred his attention to Drew and asked him questions, which I was grateful for. It gave me time to gather my thoughts, and my temper.
I didn't need to blow this by losing my temper. I wanted to stay here, yes, but there was not going to be any hiding that there was trouble between me and Walt. Everybody knew it. And, if Curt was telling the truth, Walt had already been quite glad to share.
"I'm not really the go-getter type," Drew was saying, his hands wrapped around his coffee mug. "Not the sort they want for that kind of thing." He looked and sounded embarrassed.
Uh oh. What had I missed?
"You'd be surprised," said Curt. "It's not such bad work, generally. I suppose you haven't gotten a good impression so far." He nodded to me.
Drew gave me an embarrassed look. "You couldn't ask for a better shifter officer than Rory," he said. "Or any sort of officer. Did he tell you about the fire?"
"I've been informed about the fire," said Curt.
"That quick thinking and outside the box bravery? That's the kind of thing we need on the force. You can follow procedures till you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, if someone dies because of it, you're not much of a cop. Rory's better than half the guys at the precinct. We all like to think we'd do what he did. But we know we might not have. He didn't even hesitate."
"I don't always think before I do stuff," I admitted. "Sometimes, that's a bad thing."
"And sometimes it isn't," said Drew, still defending me. "Besides, you did think. You assessed the situation and knew people would die if you didn't act fast. There wasn't time for the firefighters to get there. So you didn't wait, you acted. I'm tired of people pretending that makes you a liability. There are plenty of liabilities on the force, but you aren't one of them."
I was touched. "Thanks, Drew."
He gave me a short nod of acknowledgment. His eyes seemed like they were telling me, be brave. I was trying.
I ate some more fries. Curt was watching me now. I could see that taking offense, taking it personally, was the wrong way to go with him. Maybe if I could stay extra bland now, he would back off a little. It shouldn't be a conflict of personalities between us, irritation between shifters and disagreement about their authority or lack of authority. It should just be about solving the problem.
The problem was me and Walt, and what to do about it, finding the least awful outcome for everybody. He cared because it was his job. I cared because it was my life. He might be able to do his job better if I could keep from getting mad at him about it. Even if he couldn't, I'd do better at my part.
Curt didn't look quite as unfriendly as he had, so maybe Drew's words had done the trick and made him see me as more than a fuckup. Or maybe it was eating together that helped. It's hard to stay annoyed with anyone when you have a meal together. At least for us wolves.
"Are you sorry that you chose Walter Francis as your partner?" he asked me. But he didn't seem like he meant to offend me. It sounded more honest than that.
I hesitated. It wasn't something I could lie about, or really even wanted to lie about.
"He's too impatient," I said. "I didn't know he'd be this impatient. Everything I do seems to irritate him, and paperwork is a nightmare. I'm not trying to bug him. But I don't think it should matter so much, if I can sit still or not. If I can read all the big words."
My face felt a little hot admitting that, but, really, he had to have seen my file. I didn't have a top notch education. I'd squeaked by the written tests. I'd had to take one or two of them verbally to pass at all. It was the physical stuff I'd excelled at. I'd thought that would be enough for Walt. It hadn't been.
"I didn't hide who I was," I said. "But he doesn't like who I am. I'm gay, and I'm dumb, and I can't sit still. No, I wouldn't have chosen Walt as my partner if I knew all that at the beginning. But I didn't. And I like it here now. This is a good precinct overall. I have friends here. I'm finally used to my apartment. And my—"
I stopped. I'd almost said my boyfriend lived here. Huh. Did that mean I really did think of Elias as my boyfriend?
I thought about us grocery shopping and him cooking for me. He had to know. We both had to know, on some level. Cooking for your lover had a deeper meaning for shifters. It could mean something extremely serious. But neither one of us had hesitated—him to cook, me to eat, the two of us to share meals with each other whenever possible.
And although I hadn't cooked for him, I'd taken every opportunity I could to feed him. Even some sneaky ones. Like when he was working on his school stuff, and I could 'accidentally' share a meal with him so he wouldn't try to live off toast and tea.
We'd hosted a party together, like a couple, even before we were having sex.
I was the first person he called when he was in trouble. And I'd dropped everything to go and help him, and not been even a little bit annoyed about it.
Weren't we kind of committed to each other, whether we used those words or not?
The point is, he was special to me. And I was special to him—someone he could trust, someone he was willing to make time for. Even when he found me irritating, he didn't look down on me or think I was dumb.
Walt wasn't anything like that. We were less friends now than we had been starting out, when we didn't really know each other, apparently. I'd thought I'd been honest about who I was. Maybe not honest enough.
"I would have picked literally anyone other than Walt if I knew how irritated he'd be with me. And I'm also glad I didn't, because if I hadn't ended up here, I'd never have—have met everybody I met here." I wasn't quite ready to say boyfriend aloud. And besides, he wasn't the only person I was glad I'd met. "I have more friends here than I ever had in my pack. I don't want to go. But I'm not going to stop being gay or dumb or annoying."
There, I'd laid my cards on the table.
Curt nodded, like he accepted them, and didn't judge even one.
Frankly, it was about time. Someone needed to look at this fairly and figure out the answer.