Chapter Text
Smoking comes as easily as breathing. However, that is not to say that both are one in the same despite the similarities. Each action is often done incorrectly and is a glaring necessity. One cannot live without breathing, that behavior is evolutionary. Smoking is learned, that is obvious. A fetus does not enter the world as a child knowing what smoking is, or anything for that matter. All they know is that they’re breathing, though they do not know what breathing is. They cannot comprehend stress and anxiety, but they can feel it within their sterile, bright atmosphere, free of smoke and filled with chatter they can’t fathom. All they know, even if they don’t, is that breathing is a necessity to continue and smoking is not. So far, they have done everything correctly.
But that is not to dismiss that for some later down the line, the once ugly newborn has accustomed itself to the world, perhaps even having some friends, that it comes to understanding societal and cultural practices that more often than not, involve the use of cigarettes. When half the countries of Nauru, Myanmar or Serbia smoke does it not come as easily as breathing? When taking out a pack of cigarettes, is it not an innate practiced motion? Forever having a pack in a back pocket or purse, a lighter of some kind to match, perhaps a Bic, Zippo, or a flint lighter to go with. The action of taking out a singular cigarette, wetting lips for it to easily rest as the lighter is pulled out, the flame igniting for a mere second before the habit is ignited. The rush of nicotine down the trachea to the lungs, the constriction of that airway no longer a surprise but a given.
Breathing and smoking with enough time will become one in the same. A smoker finding the flame of a shitty Bic lighter, far past its date for the trash will latch onto it, finding that the habit is now innate and solidified within their blackened lungs. The yellowing of their teeth and tongue, forming unnerving smiles when societal cues come up in conversation. The attention drawn to their preferred fingers of holding said behavior with their off color. How it resembles an old hags’ fingers with the chip’s nails from weakness to how they draw attention when those fingers raise to their lips for a long drag to avoid personal questions. All of these are now innate and cannot even be seen as something learned from on lookers.
Even with this similarity of smoking and breathing, eventually it’ll be the undoing of itself. The longer time spent on the plane of existence, the more actions humanity does become incorrect. It morphs into something we cannot even begin to remember where it all went wrong. The way the diaphragm becomes forgotten in favor of chest breathing, and the way our lungs disintegrate as we speak, with or without smoking.
Everything is wrong.
Chronic bronchitis, emphysema, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, and pneumonia is only the start.
If smoking and breathing comes easily to a large percentage of the population, and if both lead to the same outcome at the very end, is there really an incorrect or correct way to criticize both now seemingly innate behaviors?
The answer to this question is that there is no sound, definitive answer. The world is hard, though it was designed that way. Since the dawn of time before humanity settled down and started their farms, casting aside their nomadic tendencies, humanity is always nuanced. Nothing is easy and though in the modern era where show hosts, advertisements, and the government have expertly marketed this idea that life is meant to be easy, their actions say otherwise.
Targeted marketing, government conspiracies, and blatant lies and fear mongering, by design are the only things humanity has mastered at being easy. It’s easy to lie to your neighbors, your friends, and family about mundane things that never occurred in your life. Lying to your significant other that you’re not having an affair is easy, takes no effort. Lying to your significant other about not using their retirement fund for your disastrous gambling habits is easy. Lying to your friends is easy and everything is going well in your life. It’s easy. Lying to your friends about having money for that ski resort vacation is easy. Lying to your friends that you too enjoy their hobbies is easy. Lying to your family about getting that six-figured job is easy. Lying to your family about finally settling down is easy. Lying to your family that you will not under any circumstances will put them into a retirement home and never speaking to them ever again because they utterly ruined your life is easy.
Lying is the easiest thing humanity has adapted to. Not breathing, not smoking but the consistent influx of lies and treachery is easy. Worming into the hearts of others only to snap their hearts arteries is easy, satisfyingly easy.
But for all of humanity's mistakes and the hurt they have caused to the planet we call “home”, there is one thing that humanity time and time again will struggle with and that is sympathy.
Not pity. Sympathy. Pity is a shallow emotion, something that will easily be called out but nothing will change. Pity is something that we know we can’t give but we do anyway. And for what? Pity is disappointment as disappointment is despondent. It’s a loss of something, but of what? What did a person lose by giving away pity? Was it time because time is a monetary currency humanity will never give back? This isn’t a trick question because it was never intended to be one. It is in the name itself.
A pit.
A pit of what?
A pit of nothing. A feeling that was never there to begin with. A feeling that will never perfect the thing it was always meant to be.
Sympathy.
Sympathy isn’t a pit of anything and in fact, it’s the peak. The peak of everything and everything beyond nothing. Sympathy is the purest form of kindness while pity is a cheap knockoff.
Sympathy isn’t a feeling like pity is. There is no disappointment, no despondence when given or anything above. Sympathy can be described as a transference of the self onto another’s emotional response. It’s intimate, raw, and honest.
Each descriptor Hawthorne is not.
The first time Hawthorne picked up a cigarette was early in secondary school in which someone who never really was intimate enough to be a friend but too close to being an acquaintance introduced it to him. Of course, the school was in one of the more “conservative” areas of England and smoking was not a taboo thing but certainly less common than it was during The War. Smoking then and today isn’t seen as a morale booster and instead a vice.
Hawthorne didn’t particularly, if he recalls correctly (which he most certainly can) wasn’t averse to the habit in part because he knew the moment he picked took the cigarette from his not a mate but not acquaintance, he knew his father would sniff it on him and Hawthorne revealed in the pleasure of pissing his father off.
And like clockwork, when the school day completed and he returned home to an empty abode, his father still at work and his mother keeping to herself, he knew what was meant to come later that evening. And he wasn’t perturbed in the slightest.
He had lied when his father came home, who immediately sniffed out the nicotine staining Hawthorne's breath. He remembered that no, he wasn’t the one who smoked, it was one of his mates.
To that, came a surprising result of his father taking his word. Hawthorne would be lying, which he is excellent at as aforementioned. Though that is not to dismiss the increased suffocation of his father’s wrath when he returned home for the evening, his mother conspicuously absent from the scene until the next morning.
After the first couple “conversations”, his father began smoking indoors, something that was known in the Hawthorne house as forbidden was now a common occurrence and when Hawthorne turned fifteen, his father gifted him a quality pack of cigarettes and lighter to match. That moment was not of love or perception of Hawthorne's autonomy but acceptance that his father can’t keep Hawthorne in the same stunted, rigid mannerisms and routine.
It’s funny, how after all these years of Hawthorne being out of contact with both, that he himself had inadvertently morphed his everyday life at the Scotland Yard in rigid routines and mannerisms with his colleagues. Which, as he quickly came to deduce, was not at all easy like smoking or breathing was. He despised the majority of his coworkers and when he pushed that despicable, deplorable, detestable, degenerate sad sack of shit down the stairs and forever sentencing Derek Abbott to hell in his own body, he was glad to go.
He didn’t feel pity, and he certainly didn’t feel sympathy. Not for the hundreds of child victims and not for the degenerate who pleaded, pleaded that he was running a fucking business.
He felt neither.
He felt neither because he didn’t know what those child victims went through, and he is privileged enough to thankfully never have to experience that kind of abuse.
But he wishes to understand. To give something of value back. But that wasn’t his job, offering sympathy, pity, empathy or the works, that was a shrink’s job when the victims become brave enough to talk to someone about it.
Hawthorne has made it his life’s mission to remain as inconspicuous, and routine based as possible outside of working hours. It’s much simpler to do this when, much to his distaste that Tony was on the money, didn’t speak to many others personally. If someone asked him if he had any friends today it would be a resounding no. (And no, Roland does not count because whether Hawthorne agrees or disagrees with, Roland makes an effort and he can’t fault his adoptive brother.)
What he can fault however, is his tentative relationship with Tony. Time and Time again Hawthorne even wonders why he introduced himself again over the phone, it's not as if they were close in any sense of the word. The relationship at that point was a friend of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance of a coworker sort of relationship, nothing in common.
At least that’s what Tony thinks, and it has been absurdly easy to keep the man on that path of questioning. It’s hilarious. It's also infuriating.
The first time they met up to discuss the case of Diana Cowper at that Starbucks, Tony for whatever reason was questioning Hawthorne on the most mundane of topics. Topics of which have no relevance to whatever he'll make out of the book. Hawthorne still remembers it despite wanting to forget because in the end, it wasn’t important.
He doesn’t. It happened after exploring a deceased Diana Cowper's home and having a rather heated discussion of facts with her maid Andrea.
It had been raining before and after exiting Andrea’s flat. Lighting his cigarette was tedious with the wind swiftly putting out the flicker of flame. Hawthorne could feel his gaze on him.
“What?”
“How do you know him?”
“Know who mate?”
“Meadows! Who did you think I meant?”
“Doesn’t really matter for the book, does it?”
“The readers need to read about background characters, not just you, you know.” Tony’s tone had been impatient.
“Well,” he drawled. “We worked together in Putney, offices next to each other the works. Sometimes I’d have to walk down the dark side to get shit done.”
“I literally have no clue what that means.”
Hawthorne remembers taking a purposely longer drag of his cigarette. He also remembers the rain pelting their umbrellas as they walked towards Elizabeth Station. The unnerving gaze of Tony at him for an answer.
“It means mate that you have to ask another team for assistance. House to house sort of stuff.”
He still has unpleasant moments when Tony persisted, especially when they settled at a local café.
“Do you want to talk about Diana Cowper?”
“No, I want to talk about you, this book is going to be about you.”<
“I’m not that interesting mate.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Beg all you want mate, but I am the most average man in all of London.”
Tony hadn’t been deterred in the slightest and if Hawthorne had been more careful with his wording, the rest of that conversation for sure would not have happened.
“The only way this…partnership is going to get a book written is if you let me into your life Hawthorne. I’ve got to know about you to write you to write a compelling book that will sell.”
“Nobody’s interested in me.” He muttered petulantly.
At this, Tony smiled. “Hawthorne, for better or worse I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t interesting in some capacity.”
Another cigarette had been lit, the quick succession of motions aiding Hawthorne to delay some sort of response.
Something that caught Hawthorne off guard was the silent ask for one of his cigarettes from Tony. Typically, and he should have abided by his normal position of offering cigarettes as in “He doesn’t offer cigarettes”, he takes out his half-used pack of Marlboros and his lighter, Tony taking them into his hands.
Hawthorne watched, half embarrassed and enraptured. He didn’t deduce that Tony was a smoker or having ever smoked. His long fingers of his right hand opening the pack and guiding a single fag to his chapped lips, the left hand and thumb flicking the lighter ablaze and effectively lighting the cigarette before returning both items.
And throughout the rest of that conversation and later down the line, Hawthorne did not have any lingering thoughts of any variety. And he is eternally relieved that Tony is such an unobservant individual as he continues talking.
“Look, the only way this is going to progress is if I know more about you, even basic interests. They’re not called murder victim stories; they’re called detective stories because they roll off the tongue. And the key word here is detective, you, Hawthorne.”
“Your bloody readers don’t need to know about insignificant shit about me.”
He remembered how Tony took a long drag before leaning against the table, far more serious than he had been conducting himself previously. Hawthorne despises how across the last couple months that image keeps appearing in his head.
“Look, let me put it clearly. I’m taking a massive risk even entertaining your idea. If you solve the crime or have already solved it at this very moment, while holding it over me, there will be absolutely nothing I can write about. And on the flip side, if you can’t solve it, this has been a complete waste of time for both of us. So yes Hawthorne, I need something insignificant about you to start. Hiding from my questions isn’t helpful."
Hawthorne didn’t like how Tony effectively put him in the corner like he was a child. This is why he sent (asked) his ex-wife to do, for lack of a better word, some reconnaissance on Tony. Which clearly, she did not mention the man' s almost uncanny ability to peer into Hawthorne's’ cognitive capacities.
He caved. “I don’t want to talk about Jack fucking Meadows. He didn’t like me and vice versa. When shit hit the fan, he was more than happy to kick me down a flight of stairs.”
“Did that happen? Kicking you down the stairs?”
“No, I did not get kicked down some fucking stairs mate.”
“What happened then? If not getting kicked down a flight of stairs?”
“I left. No stairs were involved.”
The expression Tony had worn would be amusing if Hawthorne had not been focused on diverging the man’s attention to literally anything else. For fucks sake, Hawthorne would have preferred to talk about the weather.
“Well,” Tony said at length before pulling out a notebook and pen as if he were a first year Uni student. “Since we're sitting here, I still have some questions about yourself. I mean, I don’t even know where you live.”
Was it too soon to start another cigarette? “I’ve…got a place in Gants Hill.”
“Are you married?”
“Used to be. And I’m not talking about it.”
“Do you watch football?”
“Not particularly.”
“Do you go to the cinema?”
“No.”
“Do you go to concerts?
“No.”
“Do you listen to any music?”
This was hell. “Fuck off mate. No.” He did, and so what if he did? The other man could make that shit up. He could explain to his readers that he had an affinity for Lady Gaga for all he cared.
“Do you have any children?”
He remembers that he ended up lighting another cigarette and threatening the smoldering side near Tony’s forehead. He remembers how the cigarette between Tony's own lips slipping down onto the table and the shocked expression.
“You—This isn’t going to fucking work. You can make up shit about me I do not give a flying fuck about your little game what difference does it make? I have an actual fucking crime to solve, a woman dead and strangled in her own front room for fucks sake. That’s what I give a shit about right now.” He had snatched up some of the files he had brought to this now “interrogation” of a meet up. “Do you want to look at this or not?”
The rest of the meet up had gone well enough if he had to suppose looking back on it. But of course, throughout the rest of the investigation it had its twists and turns. Turns that Hawthorne couldn’t bloody fucking believe his so called “partner” fell for it.
And that Hawthorne felt an emotion he hadn’t been cognizant of for a long time.