FAKE Ficlet: In Pieces

Jul 09, 2020 18:39

Title: In Pieces
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG
Setting: After the manga.
Summary: Injured and concussed, Dee and Ryo are off work and taking things easy for a few days.
Word Count: 500
Written For: Prompt 146: Pieces at anythingdrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

“It’s kinda ridiculous when you think about it,” Dee said, idly twirling a piece between finger and thumb.

“What is?” Ryo asked, head bent over the table, concentrating on an array of mostly blue pieces. He always preferred to get the sky out of the way first, leaving the more interesting parts for later.

“Jigsaw puzzles.” Dee leaned forward again, frowning at the patch of green he was working on, setting aside the piece in his hand to pick up another one, looking at it for a long moment then discarding it to return to the one he’d been holding before.

Ryo looked up, squinting slightly at his lover through his reading glasses. “Not sure if it’s my concussion or if you’re really not making sense.”

There was a livid bruise across his temple and another on his jaw, but they were the least of his injuries; he had a fractured collarbone, torn rotator cuff, and was covered in cuts, having been thrown headfirst through a plate glass window two days earlier by some guy looked like King Kong on steroids. Ryo’s martial arts skills hadn’t helped him one bit; Dee had put three bullets in the ape before he’d gone down. Turned out he’d been high as a kite on PCP and likely hadn’t felt a thing.

“Sorry, bud; it’s not you, it’s me.”

Dee wasn’t in much better shape than his partner, nursing two cracked ribs, a sprained wrist, severe bruising to his back, and a concussion of his own, from being bounced off one of the liquor store’s display units. He’d wound up smelling like a distillery and spent several hours wondering why he’d been drinking on duty. Both men had spent the first night in hospital, being treated for their injuries, before being released the next day to rest at home, which was why they were sitting at the table in Ryo’s apartment doing a jigsaw. They’d tried watching TV but the moving images gave them both a headache.

“I’m confused,” Ryo admitted.

“Yeah, I know how ya feel. I was just thinkin’; whose brilliant idea was it to take a perfectly good picture and cut it into pieces so people have to spend hours puttin’ it back together again?”

“John Spilsbury.”

“Huh?”

“Invented the jigsaw puzzle.”

Dee shook his head then wished he hadn’t. “You remember that but you can’t remember what day it is.”

“Neither can you,” Ryo pointed out. They’d spent quite a while that morning arguing over it before deciding it didn’t matter. “Y’know, we don’t have to do this.”

“Do what? You’ve lost me.”

Ryo’s smile turned into a wince. “The jigsaw puzzle. If you’d rather do something else…”

“No, this is good. Just ‘cause I think jigsaws are weird doesn’t mean I don’t like ‘em.”

“Oh. Okay.” Ryo returned his attention to the blue pieces. “D’you think the crime scene guys had to put that window back together?”

Dee snickered. “Dunno, but that would be one hell of a puzzle!”

The End

anythingdrabble, fic, fake fic, ryo maclean, fic: one-shot, dee laytner, ficlet, fake, fic: pg

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