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neveralarchPart Two.
---
Murphy and I were meeting at a bar. I got there early and snagged a booth while I waited. Normally I would've got a beer, but I thought about why I was there and Murphy's last experience with me and drinking, and I just got a soda instead.
Murphy walked in with a scruffy guy with longish golden-brown hair. They spotted me and walked over.
"Hey," I said. "I'm sorry about this, Murphy. I'm just really screwed."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "This is Kincaid."
"Right, your boyfriend." I held out my hand, and Kincaid took it, carefully.
"Sure," he said, glancing at Murphy. "More or less. Karrin asked me to sit in, thought I might be able to help."
They sat down, and I brought them into the picture. Murphy knew my past, so I just sketched it out to Kincaid. The important part was that the freaking head of the philosophy department was actually trying to blackmail me, and it would have been hilarious if I wasn't so worried.
"My first instinct was to go smash all the windows at his house," I said. "Then I realized that might be a bit counter-productive."
"No shit," said Murphy, at the same time as Kincaid said "I'll do it if you get an alibi." They both broke off and glared at each other.
"We should go after Vargassi, not his stuff," said Murphy, and Kincaid and I nodded. Good compromise. "If he's been pulling shit like this for long, there's got to be some kind of trail. We get that, we show it to him, he fucks off. Simple."
"Split the work," said Kincaid. "Dresden can go after the academic stuff, you call up your buddies in the police, and I'll ask around. Talk to people."
"What exactly do you do, again?" I asked. That last bit had sounded a bit sinister.
"Freelancing," said Kincaid and Murphy at the same time.
Whatever. There was a plan. Plans made everything a hundred percent better, especially when it was a plan like ‘go do stuff and then win.’
---
Except the plan didn't exactly work. Vargassi wasn't clever or innovative as an academic – his tricks were old ones, and you could spot them if you went far enough into the literature. But he covered his tracks pretty damn well. After a week of reading page after page of philosophical theory, all I had was a pile of suspicions and a few trends. Nobody I'd called up had anything concrete against Vargassi.
Murphy and Kincaid were getting the same results. Vargassi never seemed to get into trouble with anyone. I bet it was just because his victims had a tendency of knuckling down quickly.
I rested my head against my pile of articles and groaned. I was so caught up in my misery that I didn't notice John had come in until his hand was ruffling the hair on the back of my neck. I jumped at the contact, but then relaxed into it as I realized who it was.
"Hard at work?" asked John. He didn't back off into the guest chair, just kept standing and massaging my neck.
"Sure," I said. He moved back and on to my shoulders. I looked up for a moment and noted the closed door, and then let my head drop back on to the stack. "I'll be honest, this stuff makes a way better pillow than it does reading material."
John stopped for a moment despite my protests, nudging me to the side so he could read the top title.
"Reading outside of your field? This is one of Vargassi's papers."
"I was interested," I said. John's thumb brushed a knot in my shoulder and I melted a little. "What's the difference between you two, anyway?" I knew they disagreed, but Vargassi’s theories were sounding awfully similar to what Marcone had outlined to me.
"I suppose it's a little fiddly for non-experts," said John. "But since I have your attention." He punctuated that with another dig from his thumbs, and I stifled a noise. Yeah, he could do whatever he liked.
"Pure moral relativism argues that all morality is situation and person specific. There are no over-arching principles which can be applied to everything. What I view as moral behavior is different from what you view as moral, and so on."
"Right." I arched up into his hands, and he pushed me back down again, palms fitting on top of my shoulder blades.
"Taken to an extreme, you can argue that it is possible to justify any behavior by the fact that you don't find it objectionable. The problem with this statement is that, when taken into the real world, it can cause complete anarchy. My point of view is that societies need some form of morality to operate properly. Vargassi tends more toward the... individual point of view."
Yeah, I could see that. Nothing wrong with crushing his peers and blackmailing poor beleaguered assistant profs as long as he got what he wanted.
"So you're both relativists, just with different scales of what’s important?"
John hummed and stroked along my spine. "If pressed, I think I hew closer to moral particularism. There are problems, but-" I could hear him checking himself. We'd strayed past my knowledge of philosophy about three words in to this discussion, and he could probably tell that I wasn't up for a long explanation. "At its root, particularism proposes that there are no great moral guidelines, just a set of duties that must be carried out for the good of the individual and the group. The importance and salience of each duty vary according to the situation, and must be considered appropriately. There are reasons for each action, not simply laws that force you to follow them."
"I could get behind that," I said. "You and Vargassi sound pretty different, for both being relativists."
"We operate within the same sphere currently," said John. He patted my back, and moved away to sit down. "Vargassi would certainly prefer that we present a 'united front.' I can't say I'm interested."
I groaned and sat up, looking him in the eye. That was an opening if I'd ever heard one, and I wasn't getting anywhere with this detective work.
"It'd be easier if you bent a little for him," I said, quietly, hating myself. "Just until you got tenure."
"Tenure." John waved a hand dismissively. "Too many academics hide their true beliefs in the everlasting hope of tenure. By the time they've received it, the discourse has moved on and they have nothing novel to say. I won't let Vargassi run – or ruin – my career, Harry."
Yeah, that had gone about as well as I had expected it to. I nodded, and pushed at the stack of articles, wiping away where I had drooled a little on the top page.
"Are you all right, Harry?" asked John. He leaned forward, looking concerned. "It's not like you to be so," he hesitated, and I could practically hear him flicking through his mental dictionary, looking for a word that wouldn't put me on the defensive. "To be so subdued."
"It's nothing," I said. "Tell me more about particularism, okay?"
I could have told him what was happening, right there and then. But you know, I liked being Harry Dresden, the religions prof with a nearly-finished book. I didn't want John to think about me as a former teenage delinquent. Even if it was pretty much true. And I definitely didn’t want to talk about my childhood, and I couldn’t imagine him letting me slide on that once the conversation had begun. So instead I listened to John talk and kissed him good night and tried to keep my uncertainty from showing.
Options one and three used up, and I still wasn't ready to risk Shiro. Time to come up with another plan. What I really needed, I decided, was information. I had to find out the inside scoop on Vargassi.
---
The next night, John was working on a paper and I was done twiddling my thumbs. Hendricks was loitering in the hall, doing his guard dog shtick again.
"Hendricks, my gigantic friend," I tried to throw an arm around Hendricks' shoulders, but gave up pretty quickly. "Do you want to go out with me and Murphy and her guy? I know John's too busy for either of us right now."
Hendricks eyed me uneasily. "You don't have to make nice with me, Professor Dresden."
"I do lots of things that I don't have to do," I said. "Come on. Are you doing anything tonight?"
Hendricks apparently had a date with Critique of Practical Reason, but no one has ever wanted to read Kant enough to fend me off.
Murphy didn't look surprised when I dragged Hendricks along to our little powwow at the bar. Kincaid nodded at him.
“You’re Hendricks? You got in a fight with Karrin?”
“Yeah,” said Hendricks, wary. Kincaid just grinned in answer and started talking to Murphy behind his hand.
"You want a private conversation, I can leave," said Hendricks.
Kincaid shook his head while Murphy actually blushed. I didn't really want to know what they'd been talking about.
We kept chatting, kept buying drinks for Hendricks. At first I was, because I wanted to get him talking about the philosophy department, but then Kincaid started picking up his tab. I gave him a look, but kept pumping Hendricks.
"I hear Vargassi isn't easy to work with."
"He's a self-absorbed dick," said Hendricks. "Keeps a fucking file in his office of everyone's screw-ups, pulls it up if he wants something."
"Really," I said.
This was exactly what I wanted. That blackmail folder might appear innocuous, but it definitely set up a trail of previous behavior if it turned into a fight between me and Vargassi. I could go to Leanansidhe with it and make a case that Vargassi hadn't been warning Shiro about me – that this was just one string in a line of similar manipulations.
"He got something on you?" asked Hendricks. He'd put away twice as much as I had, and it wasn't making a dent. "You should just tell John. He'll take care of it."
"I'm handling it," I said, annoyed. I had this!
Murphy leaned over and up – way up – and whispered something in Hendricks' ear. He got an odd look on his face, and I glared at them.
"No talking about me behind my back," I said.
"This hasn't got anything to do with you, Dresden," said Kincaid, easily. "Actually, it's getting pretty late. Maybe we should head out?"
"It's not even ten," I said.
"It's a school night," said Murphy.
"It's a Thursday," I said. "You have practically no work to do tomorrow."
"See you, Dresden," said Hendricks, and they all walked out. Together. I gaped after them, trying to reconcile their sudden abandonment.
Fine, whatever. Me and Vargassi's office had a date.
---
My key to Winter Hall got me past the locked back door, and I didn't bother to be quiet as I made my way up the stairs. The only people that were generally here this late were me and John. I wouldn't get caught.
Vargassi's office was locked, but it wasn't that hard to get in. I'd grabbed a kit from my apartment before driving back to campus. When you have a tendency to lock yourself out of your dorm room and you know a lot of nasty people, you learn how to pick locks pretty fast. The door clicked, and I walked into the dark office.
I didn't turn on the lights, just pulled up the blinds so the moonlight could filter through. The office was a bit messy, with actual drifts of paper on the floor, but I figured the folder was going to be in one of the two big filing cabinets on the left wall.
I skimmed through them quickly at first, then slower when I didn't find anything. Where else would you keep a folder except-
I stopped, and looked at the big desktop computer which was surrounded by books. Right. Computer file. Shit.
Maybe he hadn't bothered to password protect the thing?
I tried to turn the computer on, realized it was a mac and I had no idea how to turn it on, and then just started fumbling around the place, trying to figure it out.
It was probably inevitable that I would knock the damn thing over. That bit was my fault. It was not my fault that Vargassi had tangled his plugs together so much that the monitor half-dragged everything else with it, exposing some wires for the wall socket. And it was definitely not me that had left paper on the floor, right where it could catch the sparks.
I yelped and stomped on the smoking paper, trying to pull it away from the wires without getting too close myself. I managed to avert disaster. I mean, except for the monitor and the ripped-apart wall socket. Avert further disaster.
Which is when someone pushed the door open.
It could have been Vargassi. He'd have had a field day with this. Or it could have been Michael or freaking Shiro, and I would have given up and resigned right there. I count myself lucky that it was John standing in the door, half-illuminated by the lights in the hall.
"Uh." I shook charred paper off my boot. "Hi."
John just stared at me, assessing and reassessing.
"I don't think I broke anything that much," I said. "The wiring in this building must have been pretty shoddy to begin with."
"It's going to be reworked this summer," said John. "The fire department has been complaining."
"Exactly," I said. I picked up the monitor, and set it back on the desk. Apple makes sturdy products, I guess, and it had fallen on its back. Nothing obviously wrong, anyway.
"Harry-" began John.
"Look," I said. "Breaking and entering may be generally wrong. But you have to judge each situation by individual factors and variables, and I'm pretty sure that breaking in was the right thing to do in this case."
"Perhaps," said John, carefully, "you should come explain the situation to me."
"Maybe we should go somewhere else for that," I said. I didn't really want to stand around here. "Maybe we should go somewhere not in this building."
We ended up going to his house – an actual house, not an apartment or anything. He did have some housemates, but the place belonged to him.
"It's less costly to just buy a place if you're going to live in an area long enough," he said. "I'm not planning to leave Chicago."
"Still," I said. I looked around the little kitchen we were standing in, noting the clean stovetop and the new refrigerator that was probably filled with food. "This is nice."
"You're avoiding the point, Harry, as you have been all night. Why were you in Doctor Vargassi's office?"
"So, he's been trying to blackmail me." I can get blunt when I'm not trying to get out of a conversation as much as possible.
John's eyes narrowed, but he didn’t interrupt.
"To get at you," I continued. "You're making him nervous, I guess. I was trying to find evidence that he's done stuff like that before, so I could go to the dean with the whole story without it being all about what a fuckup I am."
"I am going to strangle him," said John. A hint of a Chicago accent bled through, and I flinched a little as I looked down and saw his hands shaking. "Why didn't you come to me?"
"I was fixing it," I said. I rubbed my nose, uncomfortable. "I didn't want you to get involved."
"What does he have on you?"
I crossed my arms. This is exactly why I had wanted to get through this on my own. So I wouldn't have to talk about it. But I guess that ship had sailed.
"Arrest records," I said. "Lot of arrests."
"For what?"
"Stuff. Being an angry kid, mostly." I shrugged. "Lot of shit happened. I didn't really have much in the way of outlets. So I got in fights with guys that were bigger than me, when they did stuff I didn't think they should be doing. Charges got dropped, mostly. I got brought up for that barn burning down, but they decided it was an accident."
"I can see why," said John, dryly. "You do have a bit of a tendency toward mishap."
"Yeah. It's nothing big, and it stopped after I got a ways into college," after I met Professor McCoy, "but it looks bad. To people."
"To me," said John. "To Professors Carpenter and Shiro. But if it's only arrests-"
"I nearly killed a guy when I was fourteen," I said, abruptly. Oh, hey, that's the part I really didn't want to talk about. "I was in the system, and Justin, the guy who was taking care of me, he- he did some stuff. Me and Elaine nearly beat him to death."
"Elaine?"
"Another foster kid. She's gone," I said. "And it's a juvie crime, so it's not supposed to be available. But I think he knows."
John didn't say anything. He just moved toward me. I flinched again, but he just kept moving until he was hugging me. More of a possessive grasp, really, his hand tugging on the back of my head until I was curled around him.
"This is nice," I said, uncertainly, mumbling into his shoulder. "Um. I'm kind of over it by now. Lots of court-mandated therapists."
"You don't have to worry about Vargassi," said John, in my ear. "I'll take care of him."
"Yeah, because one man against the machine has been working so well," I said.
"Why don’t we try working together, then?" John tilted his head and kissed me, and I decided maybe things would be okay after all.
---
I probably shouldn't have stayed over that night, because it meant getting up extra early so that I wasn't showing up to work in yesterday's clothes or, worse, John's. Romantic gestures and whatever, but his clothes wouldn't have fitted, and not in a cute way. Better to swing by my apartment and change real quick. Not that I regretted anything, because staying the night at John's was making me feel way more optimistic about my life.
The middle of November meant the kids were turning in their second paper. Copies were already appearing in the drop box I'd set up when I got in to the office. I'd been hoping Murphy would show up to help me deal with them, but she was nowhere to be found. And John had a lecture, and I didn't know what to do about the Vargassi situation yet. I ended up emptying out the box of papers and settling into my chair to rearrange lectures yet again.
Vargassi walked by, on the phone to a tech support place, by the sound of it. I put my most innocent look on when he glanced in through my open door. I guess it wasn't very good, because he stopped, pointed at John's door, and mimed cutting his throat. Probably more threats. Fortunately he got distracted by the support line's audio menu, and he started walking again, "monitor trouble. Monitor trouble." fading as he turned the corner.
It still made me antsy, and I was glad when John finally turned up.
"Ready?" I said.
John gestured me into his office, his finger pressed for a moment against his lips. His office wasn't quite as claustrophobic as mine or Vargassi’s, due to some rearranging of the requisite bookshelves and papers. There were three whole chairs, even, a luxury. John closed the door and began to talk.
"Your idea about the file was actually a good start."
"But I can't get at it," I pointed out. "We can't get on Vargassi's computer while he's there."
"Harry, not all computer storage is confined to one drive." John put on his 'I am explaining this to you because you really are a luddite' face. "The university provides a remote storage account for every student and employee, one which can be accessed over the net. Since Doctor Vargassi doesn't have a portable computer, I'm sure he makes extensive use of this service."
"So we just need to get on to that," I said. "Can we do that?"
"Possibly," said John. "The usernames are standardized, so I just need to figure out his password – which is also standardized. The secretary has them."
"Oh, her? Can you get them?"
"Miss Beckitt has already provided them to me," said John. He grinned. "Perhaps because I am capable of remembering her name, Harry."
"Right, well, do your stuff, then."
Sitting and waiting for John to do his computer thing was really dull. Especially when John made me shove my chair as far away from his desk as possible.
"I'm not going to do some kind of magic destruction thing to it," I said.
"You've destroyed four computers that I know of," said John. "It would be unwise of me to gamble with the fifth."
I was glad I hadn't told him about the library computers crashing on me, then. It wasn't my fault that there was a bug in my e-mail program that kept shutting the system down.
I tapped my feet and stared at the books while I was waiting. Nothing I had any particular interest in except for a worn-looking copy of Critique of Pure Reason. For all I've said about Kant, he's still preferable to doing nothing, so I was reaching out for the book when I noticed John had stopped typing and was just staring at the computer.
"Problem?"
"He's changed his password." John ticked at the keyboard on his laptop, idly. "I knew it was possible, but so few people actually bother."
"You have, haven't you?" A look at John's face assured me. "Vargassi's got more to hide than you."
"Yes." John pushed back from his desk, thinking.
"So can't you get in there with your hacking thing?"
"Hacking thing." John upgraded his 'luddite' look to an 'idiot' look. "Contrary to what you might have seen on television, not everyone who owns a computer is actually able to crack passwords at the drop of a hat."
"I don't own a television," I said. Obviously that was the most important thing that John had said. "Wait, so the great John Marcone is actually bad at something?"
"I do not possess a certain special skill," corrected John. "I was hoping that Mr. Hendricks would be available today, but he seems to be absent."
"I think it's grad students gone AWOL day," I said. "I've lost Murphy, too."
John frowned and seemed about to say something, but he was interrupted by a knock on the door. I glanced at him and then opened it, since I was closest.
"Professor?" Billy's bespectacled face peered in. "Uh, I have a question about the paper."
"You have class with John, I mean, Professor Marcone, too?" I said. "I thought you were an engineer."
"No, it's your paper, professor." Billy looked confused.
"So why are you knocking on John's door?"
"Well, you weren't in, so I asked the guy down the hall, uh, Sanya, and he said that your boyfriend probably would know-"
John was smiling. I was a little grim. Okay, we were dating and taking down evil department heads together, but I didn't want the whole school to know.
"Anyway," said Billy, riding over my annoyance. "I was actually wondering if I could have an extension..." He launched into one of those ludicrous explanations that is maybe true, maybe not, and it didn't matter because I knew he wouldn't have a doctor's note or a letter from a mortician. I was getting ready to tell him to look up the late penalties in the syllabus when something struck me.
"Billy, you're an engineer."
"Right, we've got that, and-"
"No, but, me and John are kind of having computer trouble. You wouldn't be able to give us a hand, would you?"
"I'm a mechanical engineer," said Billy, as if that were supposed to mean something to me. From a glance at John, it probably meant that he wasn't going to be any help. "But my friend Cindy is comp sci."
"Billy." I leaned in, secretive. "You get Cindy to help us, I can probably manage a couple days extension."
Billy grinned and backed up, already texting on his phone. John gave me a sideways look.
"That's an abuse of your position," he said, mildly.
I shrugged and scratched my nose with my middle finger, because I'm classy like that.
---
Cindy showed up and didn't bat an eye when we told her what was going on. This might have been because we gave her a slightly edited version or because of natural criminal tendencies, because she sure knew what she was doing.
"We'll try standard passwords before I break out the more complex things," she said. "Do you know his birthday? His license plate number?"
John went down to talk to his best friend the secretary, and I ran down to the lot to check Vargassi's car. I didn't actually know which one it was, but there were only five cars in the lot, so I picked the nicest-looking one that wasn't John's.
When I got back, John had somehow managed to finagle Vargassi's personnel file from the secretary, and he and Cindy were trying out combinations while Billy hovered over them.
"You don't need to hang around," I told Billy, writing down the number on a piece of paper.
"Got nothing better to do," he said. "This is interesting."
"You could be finishing your paper," I suggested, and he grimaced.
John looked up and walked over to take me aside.
"We'll get in sooner or later," he said. "I need you to go talk to Professor Yoshimo."
I made a face. John shrugged, not unsympathetic, just sure of himself.
"We're going to go to the dean with this. Your department head is going to hear about it, and I think you should acquaint him with your record before anything happens."
"Right." I shuffled my feet, and tried to make myself get out of there.
"You haven't done anything wrong," said John, insistently. "Just talk to him."
I gave him a smile, probably strained, and went to try and track down the elusive Shiro.
---
Michael was doing work in his office with his door open. I leaned in and waited for him to finish scribbling on a page.
"Hi," I said. "I need to talk to Shiro. Do you know if he's around?"
"I think he's out on the Lawn," said Michael. He looked at me with a crease between his eyebrows. "Is something wrong, Harry?"
"Stuff's happening," I allowed. "I just need to give Shiro a heads-up."
"Okay," said Michael. "It's about time you met him, anyway. He'll be on the lawn with the other graduate students. Short man with a sword."
"With a sword?"
Michael's smile left me thinking he was joking. "Why don't I come with you?"
---
The Lawn was covered in students, enjoying the surprisingly warm weather. There was too much wind to actually do any studying so most of them were just kind of lying around, pretending to work. There was a crowd of them blocking off a section of the lawn that was as far away from the library as it was from any of the other paths. Michael walked toward it and then shouldered politely through the crowd, clearing a path for me. I followed, looking over the kids' heads and gaping at what I saw. It was an actual freaking swordfight.
There was a youngish Hispanic guy, trying to defend himself with something I tentatively identified as a bamboo kendo sword. There was a slightly older Asian girl doing the same on his other side. And attacking them both, his stylized wooden katana a blur, was an elderly little Asian guy with thick glasses and a look of serene concentration on his face.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered to Michael.
"Research," he said. He was actually grinning a bit. "We'll have to wait, Shiro hates to be interrupted."
The fight went on for ten more minutes. At first I was expecting it to end with the two younger people having their heads chopped off, or the wooden equivalent, but then I realized that they were actually going through some sort of form, only really, really quickly, too fast for me to keep good track of. Suddenly it was all over, and Shiro was bowing to his students. The crowd of kids around us started to disperse, already looking for another show.
"Michael?" Shiro wiped a tiny bit of sweat off his brow, while the two students panted and collapsed at each other.
"Shiro," said Michael. "This is Harry, the new lecturer. He needs to talk to you."
"Harry Dresden." Shiro nodded at me. "Shiro Yoshimo. These are Ramirez," nodding at the guy, "and also Yoshimo, no relation." The girl waved at me.
"Hi," I said. "Uh, what were you doing?"
"The professor's studying alternate forms of meditation," piped up Ramirez. "Different ways of clearing the mind."
"We tried listening to death metal last month," added Yoshimo. "I like this better."
"Listening to-"
"Some people meditate with flute music," said Shiro. He blinked at me, his glasses making him look like a white-haired owl. "I hypothesized that a louder and more consuming music would make it easier to subsume the self. Also the Buddhist imagery of the band Gojira seemed appropriate."
"Buddhist death metal?" I was getting off track. "Um. Anyway. I just wanted to finally introduce myself, and tell you... something..." I glanced at the students and at Michael. Not that I was cutting him out, but I really didn't want this going everywhere if I couldn't help it.
"Let's go get some water for you," said Michael to the students, taking pity on me. Shiro and I watched him go.
"So?"
"You know Vargassi, right?" Best to just plunge in.
"Oily man." Shiro scratched his beard. "Yes."
"He's been kind of harassing me. I've got a bit of, uh, history." I spilled out the whole story to Shiro, leaving out the bits about any crimes that might be being committed right now. I hoped John and Cindy were actually getting somewhere.
"I see," said Shiro, when I was finished. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Doctor Dresden." Shiro looked me up and down, and then started gathering up all the wooden swords that had been left on the ground. "Your future here at the university will be determined by your performance, not by your past. We have had some trouble with criminal acts in the department. Lloyd Slate."
"I've heard some things," I said. Not anything concrete, just things.
"Yes," said Shiro. "But he was fired for what he was doing, not what he had done. I am going to go out on a limb here," he smiled, "but from what I hear from your undergraduates and Miss Murphy, you will do well here."
"Thanks," I said. This was not going anywhere near what I had expected. This was about a million times better than expected.
“And Michael likes you,” said Shiro, shrugging. “I trust his judgment.” He walked away. I thought for a second about following him, but I ended up running back to Winter Hall. I wanted to know what was going on.
---
When I pushed open the door to John's office, Cindy was alone in there, packing up a box of equipment.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey. Did you get it?"
"Yep." She grinned, a little bit of triumph showing through. "Was a bit of a pain. It was hashed, but not salted, so the rainbow table took care of it after a while, and-" She kept talking gobbledygook for a while, and I nodded along. "So we e-mailed it to the Dean."
"Is John talking to her?" Leanansidhe's office was in a building back the way I had come, and I was already weighing whether to walk over and try to get into the meeting or whether to just wait for John to come back.
"Nah, he went to talk to Professor Vargassi. Some lady came upstairs and they had an argument and then Professor Marcone said he had to go."
"Oh," I said. That was probably bad.
I waited for Cindy to finish zipping up her bag and start walking down the stairs before I went to Vargassi's office.
There was shouting in there. I didn't bother to knock before getting the door open.
"You think you're going to get my fucking department with this? I'm going to take you down, you and your giant fucking boytoy." Vargassi had John backed up against a wall, spitting in his face. John was taking it with the look of someone that he was going to win out in the end.
I was a little less capable of taking the long view.
"Get off him," I growled. I nearly grabbed Vargassi's collar, but a look from John warned me off. Right, that was probably a bad idea, considering. "Let's just walk away," I said instead.
"Both of you," said Vargassi, inarticulately. "Never fucking work again."
"We'll see," said John. He ducked away from Vargassi, wiping his face with one hand. He walked out of the office. Vargassi actually picked up a book and held it like he was going to throw it at John. I quickly stepped in to place myself between them.
"Hey," I said. "Look- shit!"
Vargassi let fly, and I didn't quite get my arm up in time. The book bounced off my nose and on to the ground, and I backed out pretty sharp, slamming the door behind me.
"Harry?"
"Ow." I rubbed my forehead, then my nose. "Nothing broken."
"It cut you, there," John touched a place above my eyebrow, setting off a tiny sting, and then glared at the door like he wanted to go back in.
"It probably just helps our case," I said. "I've seen worse. Come on, come away from there." I half-dragged him away until we were standing between our offices, next to the stairs.
"What were you doing in there, anyway?" I said. It seemed pretty dumb to me.
"Miss Beckitt thought it seemed appropriate to inform Doctor Vargassi of our actions," said John. “Given that, I thought I should talk to him myself.”
Okay. Really really dumb. I was about to say so when Hendricks and Murphy walked up the stairs, trailed by Kincaid.
"You're in late," said John, a bit of bite under his even tone. "It's three in the afternoon."
"Are you okay?" asked Murphy, glancing at my face.
"Sorry," said Hendricks.
I kept quiet. Arriving together, and what the hell was Kincaid doing on campus, and actually, that shirt he was wearing was definitely not his-
I glanced between Murphy and Hendricks, my eyes going wide. Seriously? Murphy scowled at me, and I noticed her hair was still a little wet. John and Hendricks were having some kind of very quiet fight, and, hell, Hendricks' hair was wet too. I looked back at Kincaid and raised my eyebrows.
He gave me a double thumbs-up and grinned like a hyena.
"You abandoned me," I heard myself saying to Murphy. "You abandoned me for a kinky fifteen-hour-long threesome."
John and Hendricks stopped talking. Murphy colored, a bit, and looked like she was trying to decide whether to just punch me or trip me down the stairs.
Kincaid grinned impossibly wider.
I sat down, right there in the hall, and laughed and laughed.
"So, it all worked out," said Murphy. "Also, Dresden, fuck off."
"Not enough dates!" I said, shaking four fingers at her.
Yeah, John looked at me like I'd just turned pink and green, but it was worth it.
---
On the last day of the semester, Bob called again.
"I've only got a minute, I have to give this final," I said.
"I've only got a minute," retorted Bob, "I have to tell these beautiful women the changes in the choreography."
"Yes, Bob, your job is so much more interesting than mine, what do you want?"
"Hey, just checking in. Everything good with your boy?" I could actually hear Bob's leer over the phone.
"Yeah," I said. It was true. Vargassi was going on 'sabbatical' at the end of this semester, and John was going to act as temporary head while the university investigated allegations of misconduct. Vargassi had actually had the police report on my conviction for assault when I was a minor, but instead of me getting in trouble, John had pointed out that it was illegal for Vargassi to have that report. In fact, a lot of things in that computer file had been illegally obtained.
Michael, Sanya, and the students all seemed to like me, and Shiro was still ignoring me after having moved on to koan meditation and an EEG machine. I was on track to getting my contract renewed, and there was promotion and tenure to hope for. Maybe even get, unlikely as it seemed.
"Yeah," I said again. "Everything's actually really great."
"Wow," said Bob. "What happened, did you start getting into rimming?"
I took the phone away from my ear, and set it on to my desk, next to Bob the skull. Then I gathered up the stack of printed tests, pressed the button on the skull, and walked away to the combined sound of the Bobs' cackles.
John was waiting for me in the hall, and we walked down the stairs together.
“Having a good day?” I asked.
“Reasonably so,” said John. “I was just thinking about solipsism-“
“John,” I said, sweetly, “if the next words out of your mouth are ‘what is your opinion,’ I reserve the right to sleep at my own apartment tonight. Alone.”
I could see him thinking about it. He was actually weighing the pros and cons.
“So,” he said, eventually. “What do you think of the solipsist argument? What if we reverse it; perhaps we are not real, but there is someone else who is who we may or may not be in contact with. Can you really be sure of even your own existence?”
“Cogito ergo sum!” I shouted, walking as fast as I could, holding the blank tests like a shield.
“Ah,” said John, “but Descartes’ reasoning is based on a faulty proposition. Kierkegaard – who Hendricks informs me you have definitely read – points out that ‘I think therefore I am’ already presupposes that you are the thinker. Also, Harry,” I had sped up and John was beginning to breathe a little harder, “I would appreciate it if you could slow down to a pace where I am able to sustain the argument.”
“I’m going to run late,” I said, which wasn’t actually true. I made a show of weighing the pros and cons of letting him catch up, and then gave in. “Okay, but you’re saying that there’s one person who’s imagining all this, and projecting thoughts into everyone’s skull? Is this a backdoor argument for the existence of God?”
“Nothing so simple,” said John. He gave me a brilliant smile, and I listened to his argument, the rise and fall of his tone. The sound of the words was nice enough, even if the words themselves were ridiculous.
I said as much and was treated to another smile. We went back and forth until we were standing outside the lecture building and John was pulling on the lapels of my duster.
And, okay, maybe I was a little late for the exam after all. But I gave the kids extra time to make up for it, and they paid me back by not commenting on my flush and my rumpled collar.
In my hearing, anyway.
---
Murphy and I were meeting at a bar. I got there early and snagged a booth while I waited. Normally I would've got a beer, but I thought about why I was there and Murphy's last experience with me and drinking, and I just got a soda instead.
Murphy walked in with a scruffy guy with longish golden-brown hair. They spotted me and walked over.
"Hey," I said. "I'm sorry about this, Murphy. I'm just really screwed."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "This is Kincaid."
"Right, your boyfriend." I held out my hand, and Kincaid took it, carefully.
"Sure," he said, glancing at Murphy. "More or less. Karrin asked me to sit in, thought I might be able to help."
They sat down, and I brought them into the picture. Murphy knew my past, so I just sketched it out to Kincaid. The important part was that the freaking head of the philosophy department was actually trying to blackmail me, and it would have been hilarious if I wasn't so worried.
"My first instinct was to go smash all the windows at his house," I said. "Then I realized that might be a bit counter-productive."
"No shit," said Murphy, at the same time as Kincaid said "I'll do it if you get an alibi." They both broke off and glared at each other.
"We should go after Vargassi, not his stuff," said Murphy, and Kincaid and I nodded. Good compromise. "If he's been pulling shit like this for long, there's got to be some kind of trail. We get that, we show it to him, he fucks off. Simple."
"Split the work," said Kincaid. "Dresden can go after the academic stuff, you call up your buddies in the police, and I'll ask around. Talk to people."
"What exactly do you do, again?" I asked. That last bit had sounded a bit sinister.
"Freelancing," said Kincaid and Murphy at the same time.
Whatever. There was a plan. Plans made everything a hundred percent better, especially when it was a plan like ‘go do stuff and then win.’
---
Except the plan didn't exactly work. Vargassi wasn't clever or innovative as an academic – his tricks were old ones, and you could spot them if you went far enough into the literature. But he covered his tracks pretty damn well. After a week of reading page after page of philosophical theory, all I had was a pile of suspicions and a few trends. Nobody I'd called up had anything concrete against Vargassi.
Murphy and Kincaid were getting the same results. Vargassi never seemed to get into trouble with anyone. I bet it was just because his victims had a tendency of knuckling down quickly.
I rested my head against my pile of articles and groaned. I was so caught up in my misery that I didn't notice John had come in until his hand was ruffling the hair on the back of my neck. I jumped at the contact, but then relaxed into it as I realized who it was.
"Hard at work?" asked John. He didn't back off into the guest chair, just kept standing and massaging my neck.
"Sure," I said. He moved back and on to my shoulders. I looked up for a moment and noted the closed door, and then let my head drop back on to the stack. "I'll be honest, this stuff makes a way better pillow than it does reading material."
John stopped for a moment despite my protests, nudging me to the side so he could read the top title.
"Reading outside of your field? This is one of Vargassi's papers."
"I was interested," I said. John's thumb brushed a knot in my shoulder and I melted a little. "What's the difference between you two, anyway?" I knew they disagreed, but Vargassi’s theories were sounding awfully similar to what Marcone had outlined to me.
"I suppose it's a little fiddly for non-experts," said John. "But since I have your attention." He punctuated that with another dig from his thumbs, and I stifled a noise. Yeah, he could do whatever he liked.
"Pure moral relativism argues that all morality is situation and person specific. There are no over-arching principles which can be applied to everything. What I view as moral behavior is different from what you view as moral, and so on."
"Right." I arched up into his hands, and he pushed me back down again, palms fitting on top of my shoulder blades.
"Taken to an extreme, you can argue that it is possible to justify any behavior by the fact that you don't find it objectionable. The problem with this statement is that, when taken into the real world, it can cause complete anarchy. My point of view is that societies need some form of morality to operate properly. Vargassi tends more toward the... individual point of view."
Yeah, I could see that. Nothing wrong with crushing his peers and blackmailing poor beleaguered assistant profs as long as he got what he wanted.
"So you're both relativists, just with different scales of what’s important?"
John hummed and stroked along my spine. "If pressed, I think I hew closer to moral particularism. There are problems, but-" I could hear him checking himself. We'd strayed past my knowledge of philosophy about three words in to this discussion, and he could probably tell that I wasn't up for a long explanation. "At its root, particularism proposes that there are no great moral guidelines, just a set of duties that must be carried out for the good of the individual and the group. The importance and salience of each duty vary according to the situation, and must be considered appropriately. There are reasons for each action, not simply laws that force you to follow them."
"I could get behind that," I said. "You and Vargassi sound pretty different, for both being relativists."
"We operate within the same sphere currently," said John. He patted my back, and moved away to sit down. "Vargassi would certainly prefer that we present a 'united front.' I can't say I'm interested."
I groaned and sat up, looking him in the eye. That was an opening if I'd ever heard one, and I wasn't getting anywhere with this detective work.
"It'd be easier if you bent a little for him," I said, quietly, hating myself. "Just until you got tenure."
"Tenure." John waved a hand dismissively. "Too many academics hide their true beliefs in the everlasting hope of tenure. By the time they've received it, the discourse has moved on and they have nothing novel to say. I won't let Vargassi run – or ruin – my career, Harry."
Yeah, that had gone about as well as I had expected it to. I nodded, and pushed at the stack of articles, wiping away where I had drooled a little on the top page.
"Are you all right, Harry?" asked John. He leaned forward, looking concerned. "It's not like you to be so," he hesitated, and I could practically hear him flicking through his mental dictionary, looking for a word that wouldn't put me on the defensive. "To be so subdued."
"It's nothing," I said. "Tell me more about particularism, okay?"
I could have told him what was happening, right there and then. But you know, I liked being Harry Dresden, the religions prof with a nearly-finished book. I didn't want John to think about me as a former teenage delinquent. Even if it was pretty much true. And I definitely didn’t want to talk about my childhood, and I couldn’t imagine him letting me slide on that once the conversation had begun. So instead I listened to John talk and kissed him good night and tried to keep my uncertainty from showing.
Options one and three used up, and I still wasn't ready to risk Shiro. Time to come up with another plan. What I really needed, I decided, was information. I had to find out the inside scoop on Vargassi.
---
The next night, John was working on a paper and I was done twiddling my thumbs. Hendricks was loitering in the hall, doing his guard dog shtick again.
"Hendricks, my gigantic friend," I tried to throw an arm around Hendricks' shoulders, but gave up pretty quickly. "Do you want to go out with me and Murphy and her guy? I know John's too busy for either of us right now."
Hendricks eyed me uneasily. "You don't have to make nice with me, Professor Dresden."
"I do lots of things that I don't have to do," I said. "Come on. Are you doing anything tonight?"
Hendricks apparently had a date with Critique of Practical Reason, but no one has ever wanted to read Kant enough to fend me off.
Murphy didn't look surprised when I dragged Hendricks along to our little powwow at the bar. Kincaid nodded at him.
“You’re Hendricks? You got in a fight with Karrin?”
“Yeah,” said Hendricks, wary. Kincaid just grinned in answer and started talking to Murphy behind his hand.
"You want a private conversation, I can leave," said Hendricks.
Kincaid shook his head while Murphy actually blushed. I didn't really want to know what they'd been talking about.
We kept chatting, kept buying drinks for Hendricks. At first I was, because I wanted to get him talking about the philosophy department, but then Kincaid started picking up his tab. I gave him a look, but kept pumping Hendricks.
"I hear Vargassi isn't easy to work with."
"He's a self-absorbed dick," said Hendricks. "Keeps a fucking file in his office of everyone's screw-ups, pulls it up if he wants something."
"Really," I said.
This was exactly what I wanted. That blackmail folder might appear innocuous, but it definitely set up a trail of previous behavior if it turned into a fight between me and Vargassi. I could go to Leanansidhe with it and make a case that Vargassi hadn't been warning Shiro about me – that this was just one string in a line of similar manipulations.
"He got something on you?" asked Hendricks. He'd put away twice as much as I had, and it wasn't making a dent. "You should just tell John. He'll take care of it."
"I'm handling it," I said, annoyed. I had this!
Murphy leaned over and up – way up – and whispered something in Hendricks' ear. He got an odd look on his face, and I glared at them.
"No talking about me behind my back," I said.
"This hasn't got anything to do with you, Dresden," said Kincaid, easily. "Actually, it's getting pretty late. Maybe we should head out?"
"It's not even ten," I said.
"It's a school night," said Murphy.
"It's a Thursday," I said. "You have practically no work to do tomorrow."
"See you, Dresden," said Hendricks, and they all walked out. Together. I gaped after them, trying to reconcile their sudden abandonment.
Fine, whatever. Me and Vargassi's office had a date.
---
My key to Winter Hall got me past the locked back door, and I didn't bother to be quiet as I made my way up the stairs. The only people that were generally here this late were me and John. I wouldn't get caught.
Vargassi's office was locked, but it wasn't that hard to get in. I'd grabbed a kit from my apartment before driving back to campus. When you have a tendency to lock yourself out of your dorm room and you know a lot of nasty people, you learn how to pick locks pretty fast. The door clicked, and I walked into the dark office.
I didn't turn on the lights, just pulled up the blinds so the moonlight could filter through. The office was a bit messy, with actual drifts of paper on the floor, but I figured the folder was going to be in one of the two big filing cabinets on the left wall.
I skimmed through them quickly at first, then slower when I didn't find anything. Where else would you keep a folder except-
I stopped, and looked at the big desktop computer which was surrounded by books. Right. Computer file. Shit.
Maybe he hadn't bothered to password protect the thing?
I tried to turn the computer on, realized it was a mac and I had no idea how to turn it on, and then just started fumbling around the place, trying to figure it out.
It was probably inevitable that I would knock the damn thing over. That bit was my fault. It was not my fault that Vargassi had tangled his plugs together so much that the monitor half-dragged everything else with it, exposing some wires for the wall socket. And it was definitely not me that had left paper on the floor, right where it could catch the sparks.
I yelped and stomped on the smoking paper, trying to pull it away from the wires without getting too close myself. I managed to avert disaster. I mean, except for the monitor and the ripped-apart wall socket. Avert further disaster.
Which is when someone pushed the door open.
It could have been Vargassi. He'd have had a field day with this. Or it could have been Michael or freaking Shiro, and I would have given up and resigned right there. I count myself lucky that it was John standing in the door, half-illuminated by the lights in the hall.
"Uh." I shook charred paper off my boot. "Hi."
John just stared at me, assessing and reassessing.
"I don't think I broke anything that much," I said. "The wiring in this building must have been pretty shoddy to begin with."
"It's going to be reworked this summer," said John. "The fire department has been complaining."
"Exactly," I said. I picked up the monitor, and set it back on the desk. Apple makes sturdy products, I guess, and it had fallen on its back. Nothing obviously wrong, anyway.
"Harry-" began John.
"Look," I said. "Breaking and entering may be generally wrong. But you have to judge each situation by individual factors and variables, and I'm pretty sure that breaking in was the right thing to do in this case."
"Perhaps," said John, carefully, "you should come explain the situation to me."
"Maybe we should go somewhere else for that," I said. I didn't really want to stand around here. "Maybe we should go somewhere not in this building."
We ended up going to his house – an actual house, not an apartment or anything. He did have some housemates, but the place belonged to him.
"It's less costly to just buy a place if you're going to live in an area long enough," he said. "I'm not planning to leave Chicago."
"Still," I said. I looked around the little kitchen we were standing in, noting the clean stovetop and the new refrigerator that was probably filled with food. "This is nice."
"You're avoiding the point, Harry, as you have been all night. Why were you in Doctor Vargassi's office?"
"So, he's been trying to blackmail me." I can get blunt when I'm not trying to get out of a conversation as much as possible.
John's eyes narrowed, but he didn’t interrupt.
"To get at you," I continued. "You're making him nervous, I guess. I was trying to find evidence that he's done stuff like that before, so I could go to the dean with the whole story without it being all about what a fuckup I am."
"I am going to strangle him," said John. A hint of a Chicago accent bled through, and I flinched a little as I looked down and saw his hands shaking. "Why didn't you come to me?"
"I was fixing it," I said. I rubbed my nose, uncomfortable. "I didn't want you to get involved."
"What does he have on you?"
I crossed my arms. This is exactly why I had wanted to get through this on my own. So I wouldn't have to talk about it. But I guess that ship had sailed.
"Arrest records," I said. "Lot of arrests."
"For what?"
"Stuff. Being an angry kid, mostly." I shrugged. "Lot of shit happened. I didn't really have much in the way of outlets. So I got in fights with guys that were bigger than me, when they did stuff I didn't think they should be doing. Charges got dropped, mostly. I got brought up for that barn burning down, but they decided it was an accident."
"I can see why," said John, dryly. "You do have a bit of a tendency toward mishap."
"Yeah. It's nothing big, and it stopped after I got a ways into college," after I met Professor McCoy, "but it looks bad. To people."
"To me," said John. "To Professors Carpenter and Shiro. But if it's only arrests-"
"I nearly killed a guy when I was fourteen," I said, abruptly. Oh, hey, that's the part I really didn't want to talk about. "I was in the system, and Justin, the guy who was taking care of me, he- he did some stuff. Me and Elaine nearly beat him to death."
"Elaine?"
"Another foster kid. She's gone," I said. "And it's a juvie crime, so it's not supposed to be available. But I think he knows."
John didn't say anything. He just moved toward me. I flinched again, but he just kept moving until he was hugging me. More of a possessive grasp, really, his hand tugging on the back of my head until I was curled around him.
"This is nice," I said, uncertainly, mumbling into his shoulder. "Um. I'm kind of over it by now. Lots of court-mandated therapists."
"You don't have to worry about Vargassi," said John, in my ear. "I'll take care of him."
"Yeah, because one man against the machine has been working so well," I said.
"Why don’t we try working together, then?" John tilted his head and kissed me, and I decided maybe things would be okay after all.
---
I probably shouldn't have stayed over that night, because it meant getting up extra early so that I wasn't showing up to work in yesterday's clothes or, worse, John's. Romantic gestures and whatever, but his clothes wouldn't have fitted, and not in a cute way. Better to swing by my apartment and change real quick. Not that I regretted anything, because staying the night at John's was making me feel way more optimistic about my life.
The middle of November meant the kids were turning in their second paper. Copies were already appearing in the drop box I'd set up when I got in to the office. I'd been hoping Murphy would show up to help me deal with them, but she was nowhere to be found. And John had a lecture, and I didn't know what to do about the Vargassi situation yet. I ended up emptying out the box of papers and settling into my chair to rearrange lectures yet again.
Vargassi walked by, on the phone to a tech support place, by the sound of it. I put my most innocent look on when he glanced in through my open door. I guess it wasn't very good, because he stopped, pointed at John's door, and mimed cutting his throat. Probably more threats. Fortunately he got distracted by the support line's audio menu, and he started walking again, "monitor trouble. Monitor trouble." fading as he turned the corner.
It still made me antsy, and I was glad when John finally turned up.
"Ready?" I said.
John gestured me into his office, his finger pressed for a moment against his lips. His office wasn't quite as claustrophobic as mine or Vargassi’s, due to some rearranging of the requisite bookshelves and papers. There were three whole chairs, even, a luxury. John closed the door and began to talk.
"Your idea about the file was actually a good start."
"But I can't get at it," I pointed out. "We can't get on Vargassi's computer while he's there."
"Harry, not all computer storage is confined to one drive." John put on his 'I am explaining this to you because you really are a luddite' face. "The university provides a remote storage account for every student and employee, one which can be accessed over the net. Since Doctor Vargassi doesn't have a portable computer, I'm sure he makes extensive use of this service."
"So we just need to get on to that," I said. "Can we do that?"
"Possibly," said John. "The usernames are standardized, so I just need to figure out his password – which is also standardized. The secretary has them."
"Oh, her? Can you get them?"
"Miss Beckitt has already provided them to me," said John. He grinned. "Perhaps because I am capable of remembering her name, Harry."
"Right, well, do your stuff, then."
Sitting and waiting for John to do his computer thing was really dull. Especially when John made me shove my chair as far away from his desk as possible.
"I'm not going to do some kind of magic destruction thing to it," I said.
"You've destroyed four computers that I know of," said John. "It would be unwise of me to gamble with the fifth."
I was glad I hadn't told him about the library computers crashing on me, then. It wasn't my fault that there was a bug in my e-mail program that kept shutting the system down.
I tapped my feet and stared at the books while I was waiting. Nothing I had any particular interest in except for a worn-looking copy of Critique of Pure Reason. For all I've said about Kant, he's still preferable to doing nothing, so I was reaching out for the book when I noticed John had stopped typing and was just staring at the computer.
"Problem?"
"He's changed his password." John ticked at the keyboard on his laptop, idly. "I knew it was possible, but so few people actually bother."
"You have, haven't you?" A look at John's face assured me. "Vargassi's got more to hide than you."
"Yes." John pushed back from his desk, thinking.
"So can't you get in there with your hacking thing?"
"Hacking thing." John upgraded his 'luddite' look to an 'idiot' look. "Contrary to what you might have seen on television, not everyone who owns a computer is actually able to crack passwords at the drop of a hat."
"I don't own a television," I said. Obviously that was the most important thing that John had said. "Wait, so the great John Marcone is actually bad at something?"
"I do not possess a certain special skill," corrected John. "I was hoping that Mr. Hendricks would be available today, but he seems to be absent."
"I think it's grad students gone AWOL day," I said. "I've lost Murphy, too."
John frowned and seemed about to say something, but he was interrupted by a knock on the door. I glanced at him and then opened it, since I was closest.
"Professor?" Billy's bespectacled face peered in. "Uh, I have a question about the paper."
"You have class with John, I mean, Professor Marcone, too?" I said. "I thought you were an engineer."
"No, it's your paper, professor." Billy looked confused.
"So why are you knocking on John's door?"
"Well, you weren't in, so I asked the guy down the hall, uh, Sanya, and he said that your boyfriend probably would know-"
John was smiling. I was a little grim. Okay, we were dating and taking down evil department heads together, but I didn't want the whole school to know.
"Anyway," said Billy, riding over my annoyance. "I was actually wondering if I could have an extension..." He launched into one of those ludicrous explanations that is maybe true, maybe not, and it didn't matter because I knew he wouldn't have a doctor's note or a letter from a mortician. I was getting ready to tell him to look up the late penalties in the syllabus when something struck me.
"Billy, you're an engineer."
"Right, we've got that, and-"
"No, but, me and John are kind of having computer trouble. You wouldn't be able to give us a hand, would you?"
"I'm a mechanical engineer," said Billy, as if that were supposed to mean something to me. From a glance at John, it probably meant that he wasn't going to be any help. "But my friend Cindy is comp sci."
"Billy." I leaned in, secretive. "You get Cindy to help us, I can probably manage a couple days extension."
Billy grinned and backed up, already texting on his phone. John gave me a sideways look.
"That's an abuse of your position," he said, mildly.
I shrugged and scratched my nose with my middle finger, because I'm classy like that.
---
Cindy showed up and didn't bat an eye when we told her what was going on. This might have been because we gave her a slightly edited version or because of natural criminal tendencies, because she sure knew what she was doing.
"We'll try standard passwords before I break out the more complex things," she said. "Do you know his birthday? His license plate number?"
John went down to talk to his best friend the secretary, and I ran down to the lot to check Vargassi's car. I didn't actually know which one it was, but there were only five cars in the lot, so I picked the nicest-looking one that wasn't John's.
When I got back, John had somehow managed to finagle Vargassi's personnel file from the secretary, and he and Cindy were trying out combinations while Billy hovered over them.
"You don't need to hang around," I told Billy, writing down the number on a piece of paper.
"Got nothing better to do," he said. "This is interesting."
"You could be finishing your paper," I suggested, and he grimaced.
John looked up and walked over to take me aside.
"We'll get in sooner or later," he said. "I need you to go talk to Professor Yoshimo."
I made a face. John shrugged, not unsympathetic, just sure of himself.
"We're going to go to the dean with this. Your department head is going to hear about it, and I think you should acquaint him with your record before anything happens."
"Right." I shuffled my feet, and tried to make myself get out of there.
"You haven't done anything wrong," said John, insistently. "Just talk to him."
I gave him a smile, probably strained, and went to try and track down the elusive Shiro.
---
Michael was doing work in his office with his door open. I leaned in and waited for him to finish scribbling on a page.
"Hi," I said. "I need to talk to Shiro. Do you know if he's around?"
"I think he's out on the Lawn," said Michael. He looked at me with a crease between his eyebrows. "Is something wrong, Harry?"
"Stuff's happening," I allowed. "I just need to give Shiro a heads-up."
"Okay," said Michael. "It's about time you met him, anyway. He'll be on the lawn with the other graduate students. Short man with a sword."
"With a sword?"
Michael's smile left me thinking he was joking. "Why don't I come with you?"
---
The Lawn was covered in students, enjoying the surprisingly warm weather. There was too much wind to actually do any studying so most of them were just kind of lying around, pretending to work. There was a crowd of them blocking off a section of the lawn that was as far away from the library as it was from any of the other paths. Michael walked toward it and then shouldered politely through the crowd, clearing a path for me. I followed, looking over the kids' heads and gaping at what I saw. It was an actual freaking swordfight.
There was a youngish Hispanic guy, trying to defend himself with something I tentatively identified as a bamboo kendo sword. There was a slightly older Asian girl doing the same on his other side. And attacking them both, his stylized wooden katana a blur, was an elderly little Asian guy with thick glasses and a look of serene concentration on his face.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered to Michael.
"Research," he said. He was actually grinning a bit. "We'll have to wait, Shiro hates to be interrupted."
The fight went on for ten more minutes. At first I was expecting it to end with the two younger people having their heads chopped off, or the wooden equivalent, but then I realized that they were actually going through some sort of form, only really, really quickly, too fast for me to keep good track of. Suddenly it was all over, and Shiro was bowing to his students. The crowd of kids around us started to disperse, already looking for another show.
"Michael?" Shiro wiped a tiny bit of sweat off his brow, while the two students panted and collapsed at each other.
"Shiro," said Michael. "This is Harry, the new lecturer. He needs to talk to you."
"Harry Dresden." Shiro nodded at me. "Shiro Yoshimo. These are Ramirez," nodding at the guy, "and also Yoshimo, no relation." The girl waved at me.
"Hi," I said. "Uh, what were you doing?"
"The professor's studying alternate forms of meditation," piped up Ramirez. "Different ways of clearing the mind."
"We tried listening to death metal last month," added Yoshimo. "I like this better."
"Listening to-"
"Some people meditate with flute music," said Shiro. He blinked at me, his glasses making him look like a white-haired owl. "I hypothesized that a louder and more consuming music would make it easier to subsume the self. Also the Buddhist imagery of the band Gojira seemed appropriate."
"Buddhist death metal?" I was getting off track. "Um. Anyway. I just wanted to finally introduce myself, and tell you... something..." I glanced at the students and at Michael. Not that I was cutting him out, but I really didn't want this going everywhere if I couldn't help it.
"Let's go get some water for you," said Michael to the students, taking pity on me. Shiro and I watched him go.
"So?"
"You know Vargassi, right?" Best to just plunge in.
"Oily man." Shiro scratched his beard. "Yes."
"He's been kind of harassing me. I've got a bit of, uh, history." I spilled out the whole story to Shiro, leaving out the bits about any crimes that might be being committed right now. I hoped John and Cindy were actually getting somewhere.
"I see," said Shiro, when I was finished. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Doctor Dresden." Shiro looked me up and down, and then started gathering up all the wooden swords that had been left on the ground. "Your future here at the university will be determined by your performance, not by your past. We have had some trouble with criminal acts in the department. Lloyd Slate."
"I've heard some things," I said. Not anything concrete, just things.
"Yes," said Shiro. "But he was fired for what he was doing, not what he had done. I am going to go out on a limb here," he smiled, "but from what I hear from your undergraduates and Miss Murphy, you will do well here."
"Thanks," I said. This was not going anywhere near what I had expected. This was about a million times better than expected.
“And Michael likes you,” said Shiro, shrugging. “I trust his judgment.” He walked away. I thought for a second about following him, but I ended up running back to Winter Hall. I wanted to know what was going on.
---
When I pushed open the door to John's office, Cindy was alone in there, packing up a box of equipment.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey. Did you get it?"
"Yep." She grinned, a little bit of triumph showing through. "Was a bit of a pain. It was hashed, but not salted, so the rainbow table took care of it after a while, and-" She kept talking gobbledygook for a while, and I nodded along. "So we e-mailed it to the Dean."
"Is John talking to her?" Leanansidhe's office was in a building back the way I had come, and I was already weighing whether to walk over and try to get into the meeting or whether to just wait for John to come back.
"Nah, he went to talk to Professor Vargassi. Some lady came upstairs and they had an argument and then Professor Marcone said he had to go."
"Oh," I said. That was probably bad.
I waited for Cindy to finish zipping up her bag and start walking down the stairs before I went to Vargassi's office.
There was shouting in there. I didn't bother to knock before getting the door open.
"You think you're going to get my fucking department with this? I'm going to take you down, you and your giant fucking boytoy." Vargassi had John backed up against a wall, spitting in his face. John was taking it with the look of someone that he was going to win out in the end.
I was a little less capable of taking the long view.
"Get off him," I growled. I nearly grabbed Vargassi's collar, but a look from John warned me off. Right, that was probably a bad idea, considering. "Let's just walk away," I said instead.
"Both of you," said Vargassi, inarticulately. "Never fucking work again."
"We'll see," said John. He ducked away from Vargassi, wiping his face with one hand. He walked out of the office. Vargassi actually picked up a book and held it like he was going to throw it at John. I quickly stepped in to place myself between them.
"Hey," I said. "Look- shit!"
Vargassi let fly, and I didn't quite get my arm up in time. The book bounced off my nose and on to the ground, and I backed out pretty sharp, slamming the door behind me.
"Harry?"
"Ow." I rubbed my forehead, then my nose. "Nothing broken."
"It cut you, there," John touched a place above my eyebrow, setting off a tiny sting, and then glared at the door like he wanted to go back in.
"It probably just helps our case," I said. "I've seen worse. Come on, come away from there." I half-dragged him away until we were standing between our offices, next to the stairs.
"What were you doing in there, anyway?" I said. It seemed pretty dumb to me.
"Miss Beckitt thought it seemed appropriate to inform Doctor Vargassi of our actions," said John. “Given that, I thought I should talk to him myself.”
Okay. Really really dumb. I was about to say so when Hendricks and Murphy walked up the stairs, trailed by Kincaid.
"You're in late," said John, a bit of bite under his even tone. "It's three in the afternoon."
"Are you okay?" asked Murphy, glancing at my face.
"Sorry," said Hendricks.
I kept quiet. Arriving together, and what the hell was Kincaid doing on campus, and actually, that shirt he was wearing was definitely not his-
I glanced between Murphy and Hendricks, my eyes going wide. Seriously? Murphy scowled at me, and I noticed her hair was still a little wet. John and Hendricks were having some kind of very quiet fight, and, hell, Hendricks' hair was wet too. I looked back at Kincaid and raised my eyebrows.
He gave me a double thumbs-up and grinned like a hyena.
"You abandoned me," I heard myself saying to Murphy. "You abandoned me for a kinky fifteen-hour-long threesome."
John and Hendricks stopped talking. Murphy colored, a bit, and looked like she was trying to decide whether to just punch me or trip me down the stairs.
Kincaid grinned impossibly wider.
I sat down, right there in the hall, and laughed and laughed.
"So, it all worked out," said Murphy. "Also, Dresden, fuck off."
"Not enough dates!" I said, shaking four fingers at her.
Yeah, John looked at me like I'd just turned pink and green, but it was worth it.
---
On the last day of the semester, Bob called again.
"I've only got a minute, I have to give this final," I said.
"I've only got a minute," retorted Bob, "I have to tell these beautiful women the changes in the choreography."
"Yes, Bob, your job is so much more interesting than mine, what do you want?"
"Hey, just checking in. Everything good with your boy?" I could actually hear Bob's leer over the phone.
"Yeah," I said. It was true. Vargassi was going on 'sabbatical' at the end of this semester, and John was going to act as temporary head while the university investigated allegations of misconduct. Vargassi had actually had the police report on my conviction for assault when I was a minor, but instead of me getting in trouble, John had pointed out that it was illegal for Vargassi to have that report. In fact, a lot of things in that computer file had been illegally obtained.
Michael, Sanya, and the students all seemed to like me, and Shiro was still ignoring me after having moved on to koan meditation and an EEG machine. I was on track to getting my contract renewed, and there was promotion and tenure to hope for. Maybe even get, unlikely as it seemed.
"Yeah," I said again. "Everything's actually really great."
"Wow," said Bob. "What happened, did you start getting into rimming?"
I took the phone away from my ear, and set it on to my desk, next to Bob the skull. Then I gathered up the stack of printed tests, pressed the button on the skull, and walked away to the combined sound of the Bobs' cackles.
John was waiting for me in the hall, and we walked down the stairs together.
“Having a good day?” I asked.
“Reasonably so,” said John. “I was just thinking about solipsism-“
“John,” I said, sweetly, “if the next words out of your mouth are ‘what is your opinion,’ I reserve the right to sleep at my own apartment tonight. Alone.”
I could see him thinking about it. He was actually weighing the pros and cons.
“So,” he said, eventually. “What do you think of the solipsist argument? What if we reverse it; perhaps we are not real, but there is someone else who is who we may or may not be in contact with. Can you really be sure of even your own existence?”
“Cogito ergo sum!” I shouted, walking as fast as I could, holding the blank tests like a shield.
“Ah,” said John, “but Descartes’ reasoning is based on a faulty proposition. Kierkegaard – who Hendricks informs me you have definitely read – points out that ‘I think therefore I am’ already presupposes that you are the thinker. Also, Harry,” I had sped up and John was beginning to breathe a little harder, “I would appreciate it if you could slow down to a pace where I am able to sustain the argument.”
“I’m going to run late,” I said, which wasn’t actually true. I made a show of weighing the pros and cons of letting him catch up, and then gave in. “Okay, but you’re saying that there’s one person who’s imagining all this, and projecting thoughts into everyone’s skull? Is this a backdoor argument for the existence of God?”
“Nothing so simple,” said John. He gave me a brilliant smile, and I listened to his argument, the rise and fall of his tone. The sound of the words was nice enough, even if the words themselves were ridiculous.
I said as much and was treated to another smile. We went back and forth until we were standing outside the lecture building and John was pulling on the lapels of my duster.
And, okay, maybe I was a little late for the exam after all. But I gave the kids extra time to make up for it, and they paid me back by not commenting on my flush and my rumpled collar.
In my hearing, anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 12:56 am (UTC)Anyway, thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 05:59 am (UTC)Thank you for writing this
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 07:31 am (UTC)You rock like a rocking person.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 05:03 am (UTC)Thanks! It was inspired by the giant meta thread :)
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Date: 2011-02-12 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 05:58 am (UTC)Thanks so much for sharing this!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 09:07 pm (UTC)Ahem. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 04:58 pm (UTC)The only thinkg I have to complain about... is Hendricks and Murphy! I never knew I needed that to happen until now! And I can't stop thinking about it! I mean, I love Murph but not with Harry an not with Kincaid (at least not long-term), but Hendricks... It's perfect!
I hope you'll write more in the Dresden fandom because your grasp of the characters and their voices was incredible! I hope to read more soon!
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Date: 2011-06-01 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 02:27 am (UTC)