I need me some AAI icons.
Title: The Back-up Plan
Author: seiberwing
Fandom: Ace Attorney
Pairing/characters: Tyrell Badd/Byrne Faraday, Kay Faraday, Jacques Portsman, Calisto Yew
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Ace Attorney and associated characters and settings belong to Capcom.
Prompt: Written for lgbtfest. 371. Any fandom, any same-sex pairing. 'Daytime friends and nighttime lovers/They don't wanna hurt the others/So they love in the nighttime/And shake hands in the light of day' Two coworkers struggle to hide their relationship in the office, where homophobia abounds.
Summary: Detective Badd would have preferred to keep his relationship with Prosecutor Faraday quiet, but there are far more important things at stake now than his reputation.
Warnings: Implied sexual situations, angst, nonsensical legal system.
Author's Notes: Contains spoilers for all cases of Ace Attorney Investigations. I will note that something Kay mentions at the end of Case 4 contradicts the events of this fic--consider it a mild AU, I don't think it highly impacts the plot to have that aspect shifted. (EDIT: Now with sequel!)
Every time Badd regretted being a detective, he looked to Byrne and was grateful he hadn’t decided to be a prosecutor. All that legal babble, the careful prepping of witnesses, the verifying of evidence and testimony…this definitely wasn’t the kind of job where you could just wake up from a coma and wander over to the bench to begin attacking the guilty the next day.
“It’s past midnight,” he said, looking up from his watch to regard Byrne over the pile of legal documents and evidence spread out on the prosecutor’s kitchen table. The trial wasn’t until the end of the week but Byrne had wanted to go over everything in advance to make sure his plans of attack matched reality. “I ought to head home.” He reached for his car keys, predicting this to be the sort of night where he wouldn’t bother taking his coat off before falling into bed.
Byrne coughed. “You can spend the night here if you want,” he said, gathering the papers together without looking up.
“On the couch?” He’d seen Byrne’s couch. It probably weighed less than he did.
“…doesn’t have to be the couch.” Byrne twisted, head gently jerking toward the stairs, eyes crossing Badd’s gaze for less than a second before he looked to his papers again.
Badd swirled his keys in his hand and searched for some alternate meaning. The prosecutor was looking too dodgy for chastity. “Are you comin’ on to me, Byrne?”
Byrne did a little half-shrug, the way he did when the answer was obviously yes but he didn’t want to legally commit. Badd wavered, halfway out the door, then finally put his car keys back on the table.
“Okay.”
He’d been stone-sober when he’d said it, nothing more than a little sleep-deprived. It would have been easier if he was, there would be that plausible deniability there, just letting it be some silly drunken accident that they’d be really awkward around and then try to ignore and maybe in a few years bring it up as a private joke. But to Badd’s great misfornate he woke up the next morning completely lucid and with something repeatedly poking him in the back.
“Uncle Badd, why are you here?”
Oh, good. The last person he wanted seeing him in bed with Byrne Faraday. Badd pulled the covers up to his shoulders and rolled over to see the thin form of Byrne's daughter Kay. She was wearing pink mouse pajamas and made Badd briefly wonder if he’d woken up in a world where he’d actually gotten a wife and a kid instead of a mirror and a lonely apartment.
“We’re…um.” Badd looked to Byrne, who was still asleep and just as naked as he was. “We’re having a sleepover.”
“Oh. Can I watch TV?”
“…sure.”
“Okay.” Kay padded out again, satisfied with the situation. Badd crept out of bed and pulled his clothes together, slipping out the door before Byrne could wake up.
They avoided each other the next day. Brusque post-it memos relating to actual legal affairs were exchanged and Byrne sent a few texts, but little else. Badd went home alone and spent the evening watching sitcoms. The process was repeated until Friday, when Byrne pinned him down and forced him to answer his barrage of questions.
“The defendant’s car was seen at the scene of the crime and caught by the security camera. The car wasn’t reported stolen, so they must have been at the scene of the crime.”
“Hold it! The car could have been used by any member of the defendant’s family.”
“Objection! But the fingerprints on the door handle definitely belonged to the defendant. And here I have the car wash bill from the previous morning, proving that the defendant would have had to have touched the car at some point that day.
“But--”
“Thank you, Detective Badd. Next witness!”
Byrne exited the courtroom two hours later smirking like he’d just taken over a small country. “And I am awesome.” He undid his scarf and twirled it around his finger merrily. “Before the might of Badd and Faraday, all sinners must fall. Come have a drink with me, I feel like celebrating.” He headed out the courthouse back door to the parking lot, ignorant as to whether Badd had even agreed, and Badd resignedly followed.
“So are we actually going to have that drink or should I save my money and go straight back to your place?” he asked, scowling as he picked his beat-up red Grand Am out from the rest of the automotive crowd. “Think we both know where this is going.”
Byrne turned and leaned on his car-newer and shinier, with graham cracker crumbs in the seat cushions. “Look, Tyrell,” he said, jubilation giving away to solemnity. “You’re my partner. You were there for me when my wife died and you were the only guy not kicking my ass to move on. Kay likes you. You’ve always had my back when it counts and I’d trust you with my life. I’m not just inviting you over because Kay’s staying with a friend for the weekend and under that mess of a trenchcoat I think you’re a pretty decent looking guy. If this is bothering you, fine, we’ll go back to being professionals, but that’s my cards out on the table.”
Badd took out his lollipop and waved it at Byrne. “I don’t remember you being this blunt last time,” he said, not entirely disapproving.
“That was the investigation.” Byrne cracked the passenger side door of his car and smirked his ‘I’ve got you on the ropes, just confess already’ smirk. “This is the cross-examination. You in or not?”
***
“Don’t know how you’re still in one piece,” Byrne mused later. The prosecutor’s unbound hair was spilling over his face, sticky with sweat, and in place of a post-coital cigarette Badd had given him a blueberry sucker. “You look like healed-over Swiss cheese.”
“I didn’t get them all at the same time,” Badd said, watching him drowsily with his hands behind his head. Byrne’s fingers trailed across the gunshot scar on Badd’s thigh, his first gift from the criminal world, then up to the one on his stomach where the bullet had missed his spine by mere inches.
“I remember this one. Crackhead with a knife?” Byrne touched a long white line going down Badd’s forearm.
“Methhead, but about right.”
“Right.” Byrne tapped a pale circle on Badd’s wrist. “So what’s this one, the little round mark?”
“Cigarette burn. I was trying to prove a point.”
“By putting out a cigarette on your arm?”
“I was young and stupid. So was everyone else there, so it worked pretty well.”
“You always were the most badass guy in the room.” Byrne kissed the last and largest of his gunshot scars, a wide blotch across his right shoulder. “That’s why I have you guarding my back.”
***
The ‘sleepovers’ became more common. They stayed friendly but professional at the office and used their relationship as prosecutor and detective as an excuse to go home together. It was Faraday and Badd in public, with Tyrell and Byrne only emerging when they were perfectly, utterly sure they were alone.
The carefully practiced façade came in handy when the pair found themselves with an even bigger secret to keep. A warm August night several years later found Badd not in his bed or in Byrne’s, but in a car he’d borrowed from the police impound (‘mine broke, nobody’ll miss it, can you slip me the keys?’) with his fingers worriedly kneading the steering wheel. Where the hell are they? He wouldn’t drive off without them-probably-but he wasn’t going to wait around until it was light enough for anyone to see that he’d covered the car’s plates.
Badd looked from the Sakura Fields home office to his watch, then to his gun in the passenger seat, then back to Sakura Fields. This was their third heist, but it was Byrne’s first-Yew had needed an extra set of hands. Badd was fine with the principle of stealing evidence of evildoing for the purposes of media exposure but the actual sneaking made him twitchy and the waiting made it worse. There was a stirring in the bushes and Badd’s hand lighted on his gun, releasing it again when Byrne and Yew burst out of the shrubbery and tore into the back of the car.
“Go, go!”
“Oh my god-“
“You won’t believe what happened.”
“I believe you’re late and a pair of idiots.” Badd pulled onto the road slow and steady, innocently, but wanted to hit the gas and peel out like a teenage joyrider.
“Okay, so we’re going great and then the door starts clicking open-”
“And we have maybe three seconds to get into the broom closet and shut the door-”
“So we’re squished up in this closet and the night guard is about five feet away-”
“And suddenly Yew starts trying to snicker-”
“Because I’m looking out the crack in the door and the guard is actually going through the fridge and it’s just-”
“Okay, okay.” Badd’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel as his two partners giggled in the back seat, ignorant of how many tension-filled minutes he’d spent listening for the sound of sirens or gunshots. “Just tell me what I need to take care of.”
“Pffheeeeee!” Yew cackled, falling against Byrne in another fit of laughter and making what Byrne called her “LOL” face. Whatever a "LOL" was. “You’re such a mom, Badd. Loosen up, for Pete’s sake!”
“Yeah, try maid,” Badd grumbled. “You guys get all the fun and I have to clean up the mess with ten forensics guys breathing down my trenchcoat.” Maybe he wasn’t the one dancing around security systems at three in the morning but being a member of the Yatagarasu had pushed him into some interesting skills. If they cut his pay down too far he could make a good living as a pickpocket.
Byrne was forced to give Badd the summary of their conquest while Yew recovered from her hysterics. In addition to a large pile of incriminating memos they’d gotten their hand on a sheet of email addresses-nothing huge, but the company names after the @ signs gave them quite a bit to go on.
Badd dropped off Yew with their prize and turned the car’s headlights for Byrne’s house. She’d mail it off with a Yatagarasu card, the other two ‘legs’ of the three-legged crow would handle the police end of things. It was almost down to routine by now.
Byrne flicked on the overhead light and began scribbling the record of his latest conquest in his diary. “I’m so strung out. I’m not sleeping all night, I don’t care how many files I have to go over tomorrow morning. Goddamn, that’s a rush.” He pulled Badd’s head over-nearly causing him to swerve off the road-and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. When he pulled back he was holding the detective’s lollipop stick between his teeth.
“Want to come over?” he asked before flicking out his tongue and turning the sweet around in his mouth. It would have been suggestive if Badd hadn’t been frantically swerving the car back onto the road and sending Fyrne ramming into the window.
Badd smacked the back of his head. “Don’t get us crashing into a tree and I’ll think about it,” he said, pulling his lollipop back and nearly taking the prosecutor’s teeth with it. Byrne laughed and there was fire in his eyes.
***
“It’s gonna pass. This bullshit is gonna pass.” It was September 2008. They’d been the Yatagarasu for two months and California was taking another drive down Idiocy Road.
It won’t pass.” Badd perched on the edge of the couch, watching Byrne watch the TV. He’d followed the gay marriage issue with vague interest and the following proposition with vague disgust, but it wasn't something he was concerned about.
“This isn’t kindergarten, we can’t go ‘no takebacks’. They can do whatever they want to us, the politicians are worse than the legal system, it’s like a whole administration of assholes.”
“Assholes and fundamentalists.”
“Fundamentalist assholes. With guns that shoot bigotry and wasps.”
“Now there’s an image.” But Badd saw his point. They’d both lost faith in the courts and politicians were even easier to bribe, bully, and blackmail.
Byrne sighed and poked the remote, switching off the depressing images of protestors and talking heads spouting lies. “Tyrell, I want to get married. Now, before we lose our shot at it.”
There was an odd squealing in Badd’s mind as gears ground to a halt and ran backwards. “To me?” he asked, horrified.
“No, to Winston Payne, of course to you. I’m not saying we’re gonna walk down the aisle together, I just want it down in a filing cabinet somewhere. We’re getting into some dangerous stuff and I want to make sure Kay’s with someone she loves if things go south for us and I wind up like Cece Yew. The Yatagarasu’s outside the law, but Badd and Faraday need as much legal support as they can get.”
Badd slipped his mirror from his coat pocket and ran a hand over his stubbled cheek. It was a nervous gesture, if you knew it, a twitch of hands seeking to do something while their owner worked for a more active solution to the situation. He turned the mirror just barely to the side and caught the reflection of Byrne biting his thumb and staring sideways at him.
“I’m the one with bullet holes in him, and I’m older than you,” Badd said, watching Byrne through the smudged glass. Talking about his own death felt more comfortable than talking about getting married. Married. To a guy. That wasn’t a concept that felt like it should exist on a personal level. Badd had never expected to do much more than live and die alone-he wasn’t about to marry some girl and have a kid to keep up appearances, but he didn’t consider himself the sort of person who built firm, public relationships.
“Then when you get shot again I’ll come visit you in the hospital,” Byrne encouraged, looking up at his friend pleadingly. “Either way we’ve got a backup for each other. And if we’re gonna do it we need to do it now before this stupidity kicks in.”
Badd said he’d think about it, and went home early. The next day Byrne found a crumpled ball of notepaper on his desk that concealed a strawberry peach lollipop. Around its stem was a plastic ring that probably came out of a vending machine and the word ‘okay’ written on the inside of the paper. Byrne laughed, and refused to tell anyone else why.
They got up at five in the morning and drove over to the next district’s courthouse, where nobody they knew would handle the paperwork. Neither spoke much, both praying they wouldn’t be recognized, and they rushed through the paperwork with the skill of trained lawmen. Byrne squeezed Badd’s hand once, right after they signed their names for the final time, and then dashed back to Badd’s beat-up car with the papers in hand.
“So did we just elope?” Badd asked, rubbing one eye with the heel of his palm. Tired as they were they were both grinning madly, feeling the same rush they got on late-night raids of something dangerous and wrong done for the right reasons.
“It’s not eloping if we have to go back to work in the afternoon.” Byrne pulled out a travel-sized bottle of champagne from his pocket. “Toast?”
“No, but I’ll take the booze.” Badd swallowed half the tiny bottle in one gulp and handed the rest back to his partner. His husband--no, that was taking it too far. Men didn't get husbands. Legal partner, that Badd could deal with. The matter was as close to official as it was going to get--as close as Badd ever hoped it would get.
***
For three years it was wonderful. Yew’s triumphant giggling, Byrne’s grin, Badd’s satisfied smirk, victory that tasted like adrenaline and sweat, business and businesspeople crushed by the weight of public opinion just when they thought they'd buried their crimes for good. When it all came crashing down Badd was huddled into the first floor courthouse lady’s room, Kay hunched and sobbing in his arms.
She’d gone and hidden, good on her with a gun-wielding psychopath ( backstabbing traitorous monster I’ll kill you Calisto I’ll kill if I ever see you again how could we let her get away) on the loose. Anyone who came in got a tearful sniff and a narrow-eyed glower, and decided to wash their hands elsewhere. “Uncle Badd?” Kay asked through a shuddering gasp. Badd stroked her back until she could talk again. “What’s gonna happen to me? Am I gonna have to live by myself? I don’t want to.” She buried her face against his shirt again.
“No, course not,” Badd soothed. “Nobody’s going to leave you out in the cold.”
“I want to come stay with you, Uncle Badd. Like when I used to stay overnight at your house. I don’t want to go with anyone else.”
Badd’s arms contracted around the small girl. “Then you will,” he said, and thought of the papers sealed away in his night table drawer and in Byrne's fireproof safe, and of his promise.
They got to the funeral fast. Badd negotiated his way into the crematorium and slipped one of the Yatagarasu’s cards into the box right before they incinerated Byrne's body, letting the truth of his greatness disappear with him. Kay clung to his leg as her grandfather let the ashes blow off the lakeside dock, spinning away into the wind and out over the water. “He's flying away,” she noted solemnly.
Badd said his piece in between a few scattered family members and the Chief Prosecutor, keeping it brief and focusing on Byrne’s unflinching commitment to truth and justice. It was cold compared to the other speeches about the prosecutor’s firey spirit and passionate love, with Badd removing himself from the equation and Byrne’s life. Byrne’s mother-in-law, of whom Byrne had never spoken highly, took the opportunity to thank him for taking care of Kay and mentioned how they’d be taking her back with them as soon as her father’s affairs were sorted.
The next morning Badd went to sell a small piece of his soul.
“I need Kay, Portsman. The only people left are her mom’s family, and they’re going to take her off to Wisconsin. She doesn’t know any of them, she’ll be miserable and I promised Byrne I’d look after her.”
Portsman bounced a tennis ball idly on a racket. He was new, and had that annoying arrogance of a lawyer who hadn’t lost a case yet and thus assumed he never would. To compound matters he kept his office filled with the trophies and equipments of his extensive athletics career, a peacock display that made it obvious that he'd only gone into law for the prestige. “And I’m the one prosecutor in the building who handles family law and you know I’m damn good. I see why you need me.” He smirked in a way that made Badd want to strangle him with the ribbon of the triathlon medal Portsman wore around his neck. “What I’m not seeing is why I need you. I’ve got better things to do with my time than juggle some dead-end domestic case, especially when I know you don’t have the cash to hire me.” ‘Pock!’ went the tennis ball as it hit the racket again.
Badd gritted his teeth and swallowed his pride. If things went his way his dignity would be suffering far worse slights by the end of the week. “Portsman, do this for me and you get a free pass. I’ll turn a blind eye to you messing around, I’ll get you evidence, anything short of letting you kill a guy.” It wasn’t an uncommon offer. Everyone in the office was shady, it was the only way to get anything done, Badd just saved his respect for those who were shady in the right direction. “One get out of trouble card, and you know I’ve got pull in the precinct. I don’t give those out cheap, either.”
Pock pock pock. Portsman shrugged, smacking his tennis ball harder and catching it when it bounced off the ceiling. “Not that I don’t enjoy a good bribe, but it’s not that simple. You’re a scruffy bachelor in his fifties with no legal ties to Kay and I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of money built up compared to her own family. Kay’s going on a long road trip, deal with it and get a puppy or something.”
Badd’s fingers tensed around the file folder he’d brought with him. He’d gotten Byrne’s set from the safe when he’d gone to his house to steal any inconvenient documents before they fell into the wrong hands. “I was his partner,” he said slowly, cracking open a shell he’d taken decades to build up and bearing his heart to a guy more concerned with his trophy collection than the people around him.
Portsman was slow on the uptake and gave him a despairing eyeroll. “Working with him’s not gonna be enough. I know you and him were tight, but the court isn’t gonna give a damn.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Badd handed him the folder, slightly soothed by the amusement of Portsman’s face changed from casual smugness to surprise. The prosecutor swore quietly, hand over his mouth. “You and Faraday? I mean, I’d buy Faraday being kinda limp in the wrist, but…I had no idea.”
“That was the point,” Badd said, arms crossing as he tried to hide how uncomfortable this was making him.
“Damn. Big bad Badd, who’d have thought.” Portsman flicked through the papers, whistling to himself. “This could do it, especially if I can swing us a friendly judge. Still taking that get out of trouble card, but I’d do the case just to be in the room when this bombshell drops. If you really want her that bad?”
“Yeah.” There were worse things than to tarnish Byrne’s reputation with that. And it was for Kay.
***
Kay was all Badd thought of through the custody hearing, tongue working at his teeth in search of a lollipop that wasn’t there. He’d dressed up in his finest and shaved, forcing himself into the model of a perfect citizen and hiding his scars under a new shirt and silk tie. On the other side of the courtroom Byrne’s mother’s family kept glaring at him. He got where they were coming from, he was some old man out of nowhere trying to get his hooks into their innocent niece. It’d look shady to anyone. But he wouldn’t be here if he cared what they thought.
He listened to the inlaws make their case for stealing away his little girl, refusing to react to their slurs against him. Portsman bore an expression of cynical boredom, only occasionally remarking on the quality of the argument or throwing in a muttered “oh good, you went ten minutes without insinuating my client’s a pedophile, I’m so proud of you’. He kept his manicured hand spread across the battered folder, poised until the judge handed the floor over to Badd’s side. Then he broke out the cocky smirk.
“While my opposite number is certainly trying his best, I’m afraid the law is not on his side. You see, I hold incontrovertible proof that Tyrell Badd deserves to be awarded full custody of Kay Faraday.” Portsman raised the battered folder above his head as he stood and Badd braced for impact. “May I present to the court the certification of marriage between my client and Byrne Faraday, dated September 12, 2008.”
Even the judge was too stunned to bang his gavel when the room exploded into outrage. Someone from the gallery shouted out “it’s a lie, he’s not!” and Badd wondered whose side they’d originally been on.
Portsman retained his player’s calm until the room had quieted down again. “Despite the lamentable passing of Proposition 8, Mr. Badd’s marriage to Byrne Faraday is quite legal under the grandfather clause,” he declared, pressing one hand to his chest. "Love wins out." Bullshit, of course, as if Portsman cared about that sort of thing, but the judge was nodding. Good going, sports boy.
“Objection!” Badd winced as the inlaws’ lawyer leapt to his feet. He was a shrill man, vaguely reminiscent of a younger Payne, and his voice was even screechier now that he was panicking. “It’s a…it’s some kind of trick. Legal loophole. That doesn’t mean Mr. Badd is in any way fit to be Kay’s caretaker.”
Badd raised his head up, defiant. His tongue kept flicking around inside his mouth and he found himself craving a sucker the way he used to crave cigarettes after a long day of looking over dead bodies and unrepentant perps. A couple decades ago this would have gotten him thrown out of the courtroom by default, and probably out of the force too. Now it was the only thing saving him. Them. His family. World was a weird place.
The judge shuffled the papers and adjusted his glasses to peer over his bench at Badd. “Did you, in fact, have a relationship with Byrne Faraday?”
“Yes, your honor.” Badd focused his eyes on the judge and kept his voice steady. There was only one person in this room whose approval he needed. Everything else was just noise.
Portsman handed over a surprisingly large stack of documents. “I have here sixteen sworn statements from various police officers, lawyers, and legal staff relating to the close personal relationship between my client and Mr. Faraday. This was not some document made in haste.”
More shuffling by the judge and the pause stretched out unbearably. There was a soft beeping noise in the gallery as someone texted the outside world. “Yes, but…all these documents seem to stress a platonic relationship,” the judge said, puzzled. “You are claiming it was more than friendship?”
In theory it shouldn’t matter, it was nothing more than a legal contract, but that wasn’t what everyone wanted to hear. Emotion got pull when evidence failed, that nonsense was why they’d gotten rid of the juries. Badd pulled the words arduously from his own lips, forcing his graveled growl to become soft. “Yeah. Yes. I’d known Byrne for over a decade, since before Kay was born. It didn’t become…romantic until about five years ago. We kept it quiet. I didn’t want to mess with his career and he didn’t want to mess with mine, we got the marriage to make sure we’d be attached to each other if anything happened. But I loved the guy. Loved him with everything I had.”
If he’d gotten up and just started stripping his clothes off it would feel less invasive than this. Badd could hear the inlaws were muttering to each other and to their lawyer. It’d be something to get used to…nothing stayed in the courtroom if it was juicy. People would talk. They were probably already throwing around those words that Byrne yelled at people for and Badd sat out, silent, considering it not his problem as long as everything stayed behind closed doors.
To hell with it.
His eyes caught a few of the other detectives and officers lurking in the gallery. They were pulling for him, or least they had been. No idea what they thought now, probably surprised that the hardest man in the district didn’t just consider himself too busy for women. Dick Gumshoe in particular had an expression Badd couldn’t quite read--he wouldn’t know it was guarded hope, not until Gumshoe came to him a year later because he’d been having these thoughts about Mr. Edgeworth he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
Badd pulled himself together to continue speaking. It was as much bullshit as Portsman’s sympathetic nods, but it wasn’t a lie either. “I can’t replace Byrne for Kay. Nobody could. But I can be her dad, I’ve been her other dad for a while now. I promised Byrne if anything happened to him I’d take care of her and I promised Kay I’d be here. I don’t break promises to him or to Kay.”
“And I want to stay with Uncle Badd!” Kay piped up, jumping to her feet and slamming her hands down on the bench in front of her. A perfectly performed ‘Hold It!’, in Byrne’s style.
“Please refrain from interrupting, Miss Faraday,” said the judge, but Badd could already see the tide turning in his favor.
Portsman went on about finances and Byrne’s life insurance-- they had all of Byrne’s stuff, too, hadn’t even thought about that-and Badd pulled in a deep bracing breath. Kay slipped under the table from her side and went crawling around the benches until she sat next to his feet, one arm tight around his ankle the way his arm had been tight around her whole body. When the judge gave full custody over to Badd she cheered and climbed into his lap to hug him.
The other detectives crowded at the courtroom door, obviously summoned by the scandalous text. One began to speak but Badd took his daughter’s hand and turned away from them. He’d deal with it tomorrow. Right now he just wanted to be with the one person who thought this was a good thing.
***
“It’s not gonna be ice cream every day, you know,” Badd cautioned as Kay worked her way through a Klondike bar he’d bought off a street vendor. “I’m going to do the mean dad things too. Make you eat your vegetables and go to bed on time.”
“That’s okay,” Kay said, wiping ice cream from her face with the back of her hand. She'd been the one least bothered by the courtroom revelation and seemed to be acting like the whole matter was normal. If nothing else Kay had a remarkable ability to shrug off strange events and move on with life.
Badd sucked on his popsicle for a while and then admitted, “I’m not really used to this whole thing. I’ve never had a kid before. Don’t even know if I’m ready to be a dad.” Hell, Byrne, I was supposed to go first. You weren’t supposed to die and leave me a kid.
“I’ll help you be a dad. You’re pretty good at it already.” Kay reached for a napkin and patted down her shirt, which was getting thoroughly stained. Badd pretended not to see her wipe her sticky hands on her shorts. “When he said you got married to Dad, did you mean like a real marriage?” She asked it casually, as if it was as simple a matter as it really was. “I don’t remember you getting married. I didn’t get to throw any flowers.”
“Yeah. Technically. We didn’t want anyone to know but it means you get to come stay with me.” He’d explain it when she was older and could understand that people might hate Uncle Badd and still be paragons of justice.
“Why not?”
“Because they might get mad.”
“Why?”
“Because people are stupid.”
“Oh.” Kay finished her ice cream and asked to eat the rest of Badd’s popsicle, because it was grape and that was her favorite so obviously she needed to have it. Badd handed it over and let out a long breath that he felt he’d been holding for days.
“He was proud of you,” he said, wiping a smear of purple syrup from her cheek. “He’d be proud of you now.” He’d say the same thing three years later when he dropped her off at high school, seven years later when she testified at Calisto Yew’s trial, eleven years later when she graduated from college, thirteen years later when she entered the courtroom to prosecute her first case.
"Yeah, Uncle Badd." Kay's indigo tongue flicked across her lips. Her tender mind couldn't grasp the concepts of societal boundaries, the frailties of the law, the idea of bad things for good reasons and good people who did bad things. She didn't need to. "Bet he was proud of you too."
Author: seiberwing
Fandom: Ace Attorney
Pairing/characters: Tyrell Badd/Byrne Faraday, Kay Faraday, Jacques Portsman, Calisto Yew
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Ace Attorney and associated characters and settings belong to Capcom.
Prompt: Written for lgbtfest. 371. Any fandom, any same-sex pairing. 'Daytime friends and nighttime lovers/They don't wanna hurt the others/So they love in the nighttime/And shake hands in the light of day' Two coworkers struggle to hide their relationship in the office, where homophobia abounds.
Summary: Detective Badd would have preferred to keep his relationship with Prosecutor Faraday quiet, but there are far more important things at stake now than his reputation.
Warnings: Implied sexual situations, angst, nonsensical legal system.
Author's Notes: Contains spoilers for all cases of Ace Attorney Investigations. I will note that something Kay mentions at the end of Case 4 contradicts the events of this fic--consider it a mild AU, I don't think it highly impacts the plot to have that aspect shifted. (EDIT: Now with sequel!)
Every time Badd regretted being a detective, he looked to Byrne and was grateful he hadn’t decided to be a prosecutor. All that legal babble, the careful prepping of witnesses, the verifying of evidence and testimony…this definitely wasn’t the kind of job where you could just wake up from a coma and wander over to the bench to begin attacking the guilty the next day.
“It’s past midnight,” he said, looking up from his watch to regard Byrne over the pile of legal documents and evidence spread out on the prosecutor’s kitchen table. The trial wasn’t until the end of the week but Byrne had wanted to go over everything in advance to make sure his plans of attack matched reality. “I ought to head home.” He reached for his car keys, predicting this to be the sort of night where he wouldn’t bother taking his coat off before falling into bed.
Byrne coughed. “You can spend the night here if you want,” he said, gathering the papers together without looking up.
“On the couch?” He’d seen Byrne’s couch. It probably weighed less than he did.
“…doesn’t have to be the couch.” Byrne twisted, head gently jerking toward the stairs, eyes crossing Badd’s gaze for less than a second before he looked to his papers again.
Badd swirled his keys in his hand and searched for some alternate meaning. The prosecutor was looking too dodgy for chastity. “Are you comin’ on to me, Byrne?”
Byrne did a little half-shrug, the way he did when the answer was obviously yes but he didn’t want to legally commit. Badd wavered, halfway out the door, then finally put his car keys back on the table.
“Okay.”
He’d been stone-sober when he’d said it, nothing more than a little sleep-deprived. It would have been easier if he was, there would be that plausible deniability there, just letting it be some silly drunken accident that they’d be really awkward around and then try to ignore and maybe in a few years bring it up as a private joke. But to Badd’s great misfornate he woke up the next morning completely lucid and with something repeatedly poking him in the back.
“Uncle Badd, why are you here?”
Oh, good. The last person he wanted seeing him in bed with Byrne Faraday. Badd pulled the covers up to his shoulders and rolled over to see the thin form of Byrne's daughter Kay. She was wearing pink mouse pajamas and made Badd briefly wonder if he’d woken up in a world where he’d actually gotten a wife and a kid instead of a mirror and a lonely apartment.
“We’re…um.” Badd looked to Byrne, who was still asleep and just as naked as he was. “We’re having a sleepover.”
“Oh. Can I watch TV?”
“…sure.”
“Okay.” Kay padded out again, satisfied with the situation. Badd crept out of bed and pulled his clothes together, slipping out the door before Byrne could wake up.
They avoided each other the next day. Brusque post-it memos relating to actual legal affairs were exchanged and Byrne sent a few texts, but little else. Badd went home alone and spent the evening watching sitcoms. The process was repeated until Friday, when Byrne pinned him down and forced him to answer his barrage of questions.
“The defendant’s car was seen at the scene of the crime and caught by the security camera. The car wasn’t reported stolen, so they must have been at the scene of the crime.”
“Hold it! The car could have been used by any member of the defendant’s family.”
“Objection! But the fingerprints on the door handle definitely belonged to the defendant. And here I have the car wash bill from the previous morning, proving that the defendant would have had to have touched the car at some point that day.
“But--”
“Thank you, Detective Badd. Next witness!”
Byrne exited the courtroom two hours later smirking like he’d just taken over a small country. “And I am awesome.” He undid his scarf and twirled it around his finger merrily. “Before the might of Badd and Faraday, all sinners must fall. Come have a drink with me, I feel like celebrating.” He headed out the courthouse back door to the parking lot, ignorant as to whether Badd had even agreed, and Badd resignedly followed.
“So are we actually going to have that drink or should I save my money and go straight back to your place?” he asked, scowling as he picked his beat-up red Grand Am out from the rest of the automotive crowd. “Think we both know where this is going.”
Byrne turned and leaned on his car-newer and shinier, with graham cracker crumbs in the seat cushions. “Look, Tyrell,” he said, jubilation giving away to solemnity. “You’re my partner. You were there for me when my wife died and you were the only guy not kicking my ass to move on. Kay likes you. You’ve always had my back when it counts and I’d trust you with my life. I’m not just inviting you over because Kay’s staying with a friend for the weekend and under that mess of a trenchcoat I think you’re a pretty decent looking guy. If this is bothering you, fine, we’ll go back to being professionals, but that’s my cards out on the table.”
Badd took out his lollipop and waved it at Byrne. “I don’t remember you being this blunt last time,” he said, not entirely disapproving.
“That was the investigation.” Byrne cracked the passenger side door of his car and smirked his ‘I’ve got you on the ropes, just confess already’ smirk. “This is the cross-examination. You in or not?”
***
“Don’t know how you’re still in one piece,” Byrne mused later. The prosecutor’s unbound hair was spilling over his face, sticky with sweat, and in place of a post-coital cigarette Badd had given him a blueberry sucker. “You look like healed-over Swiss cheese.”
“I didn’t get them all at the same time,” Badd said, watching him drowsily with his hands behind his head. Byrne’s fingers trailed across the gunshot scar on Badd’s thigh, his first gift from the criminal world, then up to the one on his stomach where the bullet had missed his spine by mere inches.
“I remember this one. Crackhead with a knife?” Byrne touched a long white line going down Badd’s forearm.
“Methhead, but about right.”
“Right.” Byrne tapped a pale circle on Badd’s wrist. “So what’s this one, the little round mark?”
“Cigarette burn. I was trying to prove a point.”
“By putting out a cigarette on your arm?”
“I was young and stupid. So was everyone else there, so it worked pretty well.”
“You always were the most badass guy in the room.” Byrne kissed the last and largest of his gunshot scars, a wide blotch across his right shoulder. “That’s why I have you guarding my back.”
***
The ‘sleepovers’ became more common. They stayed friendly but professional at the office and used their relationship as prosecutor and detective as an excuse to go home together. It was Faraday and Badd in public, with Tyrell and Byrne only emerging when they were perfectly, utterly sure they were alone.
The carefully practiced façade came in handy when the pair found themselves with an even bigger secret to keep. A warm August night several years later found Badd not in his bed or in Byrne’s, but in a car he’d borrowed from the police impound (‘mine broke, nobody’ll miss it, can you slip me the keys?’) with his fingers worriedly kneading the steering wheel. Where the hell are they? He wouldn’t drive off without them-probably-but he wasn’t going to wait around until it was light enough for anyone to see that he’d covered the car’s plates.
Badd looked from the Sakura Fields home office to his watch, then to his gun in the passenger seat, then back to Sakura Fields. This was their third heist, but it was Byrne’s first-Yew had needed an extra set of hands. Badd was fine with the principle of stealing evidence of evildoing for the purposes of media exposure but the actual sneaking made him twitchy and the waiting made it worse. There was a stirring in the bushes and Badd’s hand lighted on his gun, releasing it again when Byrne and Yew burst out of the shrubbery and tore into the back of the car.
“Go, go!”
“Oh my god-“
“You won’t believe what happened.”
“I believe you’re late and a pair of idiots.” Badd pulled onto the road slow and steady, innocently, but wanted to hit the gas and peel out like a teenage joyrider.
“Okay, so we’re going great and then the door starts clicking open-”
“And we have maybe three seconds to get into the broom closet and shut the door-”
“So we’re squished up in this closet and the night guard is about five feet away-”
“And suddenly Yew starts trying to snicker-”
“Because I’m looking out the crack in the door and the guard is actually going through the fridge and it’s just-”
“Okay, okay.” Badd’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel as his two partners giggled in the back seat, ignorant of how many tension-filled minutes he’d spent listening for the sound of sirens or gunshots. “Just tell me what I need to take care of.”
“Pffheeeeee!” Yew cackled, falling against Byrne in another fit of laughter and making what Byrne called her “LOL” face. Whatever a "LOL" was. “You’re such a mom, Badd. Loosen up, for Pete’s sake!”
“Yeah, try maid,” Badd grumbled. “You guys get all the fun and I have to clean up the mess with ten forensics guys breathing down my trenchcoat.” Maybe he wasn’t the one dancing around security systems at three in the morning but being a member of the Yatagarasu had pushed him into some interesting skills. If they cut his pay down too far he could make a good living as a pickpocket.
Byrne was forced to give Badd the summary of their conquest while Yew recovered from her hysterics. In addition to a large pile of incriminating memos they’d gotten their hand on a sheet of email addresses-nothing huge, but the company names after the @ signs gave them quite a bit to go on.
Badd dropped off Yew with their prize and turned the car’s headlights for Byrne’s house. She’d mail it off with a Yatagarasu card, the other two ‘legs’ of the three-legged crow would handle the police end of things. It was almost down to routine by now.
Byrne flicked on the overhead light and began scribbling the record of his latest conquest in his diary. “I’m so strung out. I’m not sleeping all night, I don’t care how many files I have to go over tomorrow morning. Goddamn, that’s a rush.” He pulled Badd’s head over-nearly causing him to swerve off the road-and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. When he pulled back he was holding the detective’s lollipop stick between his teeth.
“Want to come over?” he asked before flicking out his tongue and turning the sweet around in his mouth. It would have been suggestive if Badd hadn’t been frantically swerving the car back onto the road and sending Fyrne ramming into the window.
Badd smacked the back of his head. “Don’t get us crashing into a tree and I’ll think about it,” he said, pulling his lollipop back and nearly taking the prosecutor’s teeth with it. Byrne laughed and there was fire in his eyes.
***
“It’s gonna pass. This bullshit is gonna pass.” It was September 2008. They’d been the Yatagarasu for two months and California was taking another drive down Idiocy Road.
It won’t pass.” Badd perched on the edge of the couch, watching Byrne watch the TV. He’d followed the gay marriage issue with vague interest and the following proposition with vague disgust, but it wasn't something he was concerned about.
“This isn’t kindergarten, we can’t go ‘no takebacks’. They can do whatever they want to us, the politicians are worse than the legal system, it’s like a whole administration of assholes.”
“Assholes and fundamentalists.”
“Fundamentalist assholes. With guns that shoot bigotry and wasps.”
“Now there’s an image.” But Badd saw his point. They’d both lost faith in the courts and politicians were even easier to bribe, bully, and blackmail.
Byrne sighed and poked the remote, switching off the depressing images of protestors and talking heads spouting lies. “Tyrell, I want to get married. Now, before we lose our shot at it.”
There was an odd squealing in Badd’s mind as gears ground to a halt and ran backwards. “To me?” he asked, horrified.
“No, to Winston Payne, of course to you. I’m not saying we’re gonna walk down the aisle together, I just want it down in a filing cabinet somewhere. We’re getting into some dangerous stuff and I want to make sure Kay’s with someone she loves if things go south for us and I wind up like Cece Yew. The Yatagarasu’s outside the law, but Badd and Faraday need as much legal support as they can get.”
Badd slipped his mirror from his coat pocket and ran a hand over his stubbled cheek. It was a nervous gesture, if you knew it, a twitch of hands seeking to do something while their owner worked for a more active solution to the situation. He turned the mirror just barely to the side and caught the reflection of Byrne biting his thumb and staring sideways at him.
“I’m the one with bullet holes in him, and I’m older than you,” Badd said, watching Byrne through the smudged glass. Talking about his own death felt more comfortable than talking about getting married. Married. To a guy. That wasn’t a concept that felt like it should exist on a personal level. Badd had never expected to do much more than live and die alone-he wasn’t about to marry some girl and have a kid to keep up appearances, but he didn’t consider himself the sort of person who built firm, public relationships.
“Then when you get shot again I’ll come visit you in the hospital,” Byrne encouraged, looking up at his friend pleadingly. “Either way we’ve got a backup for each other. And if we’re gonna do it we need to do it now before this stupidity kicks in.”
Badd said he’d think about it, and went home early. The next day Byrne found a crumpled ball of notepaper on his desk that concealed a strawberry peach lollipop. Around its stem was a plastic ring that probably came out of a vending machine and the word ‘okay’ written on the inside of the paper. Byrne laughed, and refused to tell anyone else why.
They got up at five in the morning and drove over to the next district’s courthouse, where nobody they knew would handle the paperwork. Neither spoke much, both praying they wouldn’t be recognized, and they rushed through the paperwork with the skill of trained lawmen. Byrne squeezed Badd’s hand once, right after they signed their names for the final time, and then dashed back to Badd’s beat-up car with the papers in hand.
“So did we just elope?” Badd asked, rubbing one eye with the heel of his palm. Tired as they were they were both grinning madly, feeling the same rush they got on late-night raids of something dangerous and wrong done for the right reasons.
“It’s not eloping if we have to go back to work in the afternoon.” Byrne pulled out a travel-sized bottle of champagne from his pocket. “Toast?”
“No, but I’ll take the booze.” Badd swallowed half the tiny bottle in one gulp and handed the rest back to his partner. His husband--no, that was taking it too far. Men didn't get husbands. Legal partner, that Badd could deal with. The matter was as close to official as it was going to get--as close as Badd ever hoped it would get.
***
For three years it was wonderful. Yew’s triumphant giggling, Byrne’s grin, Badd’s satisfied smirk, victory that tasted like adrenaline and sweat, business and businesspeople crushed by the weight of public opinion just when they thought they'd buried their crimes for good. When it all came crashing down Badd was huddled into the first floor courthouse lady’s room, Kay hunched and sobbing in his arms.
She’d gone and hidden, good on her with a gun-wielding psychopath ( backstabbing traitorous monster I’ll kill you Calisto I’ll kill if I ever see you again how could we let her get away) on the loose. Anyone who came in got a tearful sniff and a narrow-eyed glower, and decided to wash their hands elsewhere. “Uncle Badd?” Kay asked through a shuddering gasp. Badd stroked her back until she could talk again. “What’s gonna happen to me? Am I gonna have to live by myself? I don’t want to.” She buried her face against his shirt again.
“No, course not,” Badd soothed. “Nobody’s going to leave you out in the cold.”
“I want to come stay with you, Uncle Badd. Like when I used to stay overnight at your house. I don’t want to go with anyone else.”
Badd’s arms contracted around the small girl. “Then you will,” he said, and thought of the papers sealed away in his night table drawer and in Byrne's fireproof safe, and of his promise.
They got to the funeral fast. Badd negotiated his way into the crematorium and slipped one of the Yatagarasu’s cards into the box right before they incinerated Byrne's body, letting the truth of his greatness disappear with him. Kay clung to his leg as her grandfather let the ashes blow off the lakeside dock, spinning away into the wind and out over the water. “He's flying away,” she noted solemnly.
Badd said his piece in between a few scattered family members and the Chief Prosecutor, keeping it brief and focusing on Byrne’s unflinching commitment to truth and justice. It was cold compared to the other speeches about the prosecutor’s firey spirit and passionate love, with Badd removing himself from the equation and Byrne’s life. Byrne’s mother-in-law, of whom Byrne had never spoken highly, took the opportunity to thank him for taking care of Kay and mentioned how they’d be taking her back with them as soon as her father’s affairs were sorted.
The next morning Badd went to sell a small piece of his soul.
“I need Kay, Portsman. The only people left are her mom’s family, and they’re going to take her off to Wisconsin. She doesn’t know any of them, she’ll be miserable and I promised Byrne I’d look after her.”
Portsman bounced a tennis ball idly on a racket. He was new, and had that annoying arrogance of a lawyer who hadn’t lost a case yet and thus assumed he never would. To compound matters he kept his office filled with the trophies and equipments of his extensive athletics career, a peacock display that made it obvious that he'd only gone into law for the prestige. “And I’m the one prosecutor in the building who handles family law and you know I’m damn good. I see why you need me.” He smirked in a way that made Badd want to strangle him with the ribbon of the triathlon medal Portsman wore around his neck. “What I’m not seeing is why I need you. I’ve got better things to do with my time than juggle some dead-end domestic case, especially when I know you don’t have the cash to hire me.” ‘Pock!’ went the tennis ball as it hit the racket again.
Badd gritted his teeth and swallowed his pride. If things went his way his dignity would be suffering far worse slights by the end of the week. “Portsman, do this for me and you get a free pass. I’ll turn a blind eye to you messing around, I’ll get you evidence, anything short of letting you kill a guy.” It wasn’t an uncommon offer. Everyone in the office was shady, it was the only way to get anything done, Badd just saved his respect for those who were shady in the right direction. “One get out of trouble card, and you know I’ve got pull in the precinct. I don’t give those out cheap, either.”
Pock pock pock. Portsman shrugged, smacking his tennis ball harder and catching it when it bounced off the ceiling. “Not that I don’t enjoy a good bribe, but it’s not that simple. You’re a scruffy bachelor in his fifties with no legal ties to Kay and I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of money built up compared to her own family. Kay’s going on a long road trip, deal with it and get a puppy or something.”
Badd’s fingers tensed around the file folder he’d brought with him. He’d gotten Byrne’s set from the safe when he’d gone to his house to steal any inconvenient documents before they fell into the wrong hands. “I was his partner,” he said slowly, cracking open a shell he’d taken decades to build up and bearing his heart to a guy more concerned with his trophy collection than the people around him.
Portsman was slow on the uptake and gave him a despairing eyeroll. “Working with him’s not gonna be enough. I know you and him were tight, but the court isn’t gonna give a damn.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Badd handed him the folder, slightly soothed by the amusement of Portsman’s face changed from casual smugness to surprise. The prosecutor swore quietly, hand over his mouth. “You and Faraday? I mean, I’d buy Faraday being kinda limp in the wrist, but…I had no idea.”
“That was the point,” Badd said, arms crossing as he tried to hide how uncomfortable this was making him.
“Damn. Big bad Badd, who’d have thought.” Portsman flicked through the papers, whistling to himself. “This could do it, especially if I can swing us a friendly judge. Still taking that get out of trouble card, but I’d do the case just to be in the room when this bombshell drops. If you really want her that bad?”
“Yeah.” There were worse things than to tarnish Byrne’s reputation with that. And it was for Kay.
***
Kay was all Badd thought of through the custody hearing, tongue working at his teeth in search of a lollipop that wasn’t there. He’d dressed up in his finest and shaved, forcing himself into the model of a perfect citizen and hiding his scars under a new shirt and silk tie. On the other side of the courtroom Byrne’s mother’s family kept glaring at him. He got where they were coming from, he was some old man out of nowhere trying to get his hooks into their innocent niece. It’d look shady to anyone. But he wouldn’t be here if he cared what they thought.
He listened to the inlaws make their case for stealing away his little girl, refusing to react to their slurs against him. Portsman bore an expression of cynical boredom, only occasionally remarking on the quality of the argument or throwing in a muttered “oh good, you went ten minutes without insinuating my client’s a pedophile, I’m so proud of you’. He kept his manicured hand spread across the battered folder, poised until the judge handed the floor over to Badd’s side. Then he broke out the cocky smirk.
“While my opposite number is certainly trying his best, I’m afraid the law is not on his side. You see, I hold incontrovertible proof that Tyrell Badd deserves to be awarded full custody of Kay Faraday.” Portsman raised the battered folder above his head as he stood and Badd braced for impact. “May I present to the court the certification of marriage between my client and Byrne Faraday, dated September 12, 2008.”
Even the judge was too stunned to bang his gavel when the room exploded into outrage. Someone from the gallery shouted out “it’s a lie, he’s not!” and Badd wondered whose side they’d originally been on.
Portsman retained his player’s calm until the room had quieted down again. “Despite the lamentable passing of Proposition 8, Mr. Badd’s marriage to Byrne Faraday is quite legal under the grandfather clause,” he declared, pressing one hand to his chest. "Love wins out." Bullshit, of course, as if Portsman cared about that sort of thing, but the judge was nodding. Good going, sports boy.
“Objection!” Badd winced as the inlaws’ lawyer leapt to his feet. He was a shrill man, vaguely reminiscent of a younger Payne, and his voice was even screechier now that he was panicking. “It’s a…it’s some kind of trick. Legal loophole. That doesn’t mean Mr. Badd is in any way fit to be Kay’s caretaker.”
Badd raised his head up, defiant. His tongue kept flicking around inside his mouth and he found himself craving a sucker the way he used to crave cigarettes after a long day of looking over dead bodies and unrepentant perps. A couple decades ago this would have gotten him thrown out of the courtroom by default, and probably out of the force too. Now it was the only thing saving him. Them. His family. World was a weird place.
The judge shuffled the papers and adjusted his glasses to peer over his bench at Badd. “Did you, in fact, have a relationship with Byrne Faraday?”
“Yes, your honor.” Badd focused his eyes on the judge and kept his voice steady. There was only one person in this room whose approval he needed. Everything else was just noise.
Portsman handed over a surprisingly large stack of documents. “I have here sixteen sworn statements from various police officers, lawyers, and legal staff relating to the close personal relationship between my client and Mr. Faraday. This was not some document made in haste.”
More shuffling by the judge and the pause stretched out unbearably. There was a soft beeping noise in the gallery as someone texted the outside world. “Yes, but…all these documents seem to stress a platonic relationship,” the judge said, puzzled. “You are claiming it was more than friendship?”
In theory it shouldn’t matter, it was nothing more than a legal contract, but that wasn’t what everyone wanted to hear. Emotion got pull when evidence failed, that nonsense was why they’d gotten rid of the juries. Badd pulled the words arduously from his own lips, forcing his graveled growl to become soft. “Yeah. Yes. I’d known Byrne for over a decade, since before Kay was born. It didn’t become…romantic until about five years ago. We kept it quiet. I didn’t want to mess with his career and he didn’t want to mess with mine, we got the marriage to make sure we’d be attached to each other if anything happened. But I loved the guy. Loved him with everything I had.”
If he’d gotten up and just started stripping his clothes off it would feel less invasive than this. Badd could hear the inlaws were muttering to each other and to their lawyer. It’d be something to get used to…nothing stayed in the courtroom if it was juicy. People would talk. They were probably already throwing around those words that Byrne yelled at people for and Badd sat out, silent, considering it not his problem as long as everything stayed behind closed doors.
To hell with it.
His eyes caught a few of the other detectives and officers lurking in the gallery. They were pulling for him, or least they had been. No idea what they thought now, probably surprised that the hardest man in the district didn’t just consider himself too busy for women. Dick Gumshoe in particular had an expression Badd couldn’t quite read--he wouldn’t know it was guarded hope, not until Gumshoe came to him a year later because he’d been having these thoughts about Mr. Edgeworth he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
Badd pulled himself together to continue speaking. It was as much bullshit as Portsman’s sympathetic nods, but it wasn’t a lie either. “I can’t replace Byrne for Kay. Nobody could. But I can be her dad, I’ve been her other dad for a while now. I promised Byrne if anything happened to him I’d take care of her and I promised Kay I’d be here. I don’t break promises to him or to Kay.”
“And I want to stay with Uncle Badd!” Kay piped up, jumping to her feet and slamming her hands down on the bench in front of her. A perfectly performed ‘Hold It!’, in Byrne’s style.
“Please refrain from interrupting, Miss Faraday,” said the judge, but Badd could already see the tide turning in his favor.
Portsman went on about finances and Byrne’s life insurance-- they had all of Byrne’s stuff, too, hadn’t even thought about that-and Badd pulled in a deep bracing breath. Kay slipped under the table from her side and went crawling around the benches until she sat next to his feet, one arm tight around his ankle the way his arm had been tight around her whole body. When the judge gave full custody over to Badd she cheered and climbed into his lap to hug him.
The other detectives crowded at the courtroom door, obviously summoned by the scandalous text. One began to speak but Badd took his daughter’s hand and turned away from them. He’d deal with it tomorrow. Right now he just wanted to be with the one person who thought this was a good thing.
***
“It’s not gonna be ice cream every day, you know,” Badd cautioned as Kay worked her way through a Klondike bar he’d bought off a street vendor. “I’m going to do the mean dad things too. Make you eat your vegetables and go to bed on time.”
“That’s okay,” Kay said, wiping ice cream from her face with the back of her hand. She'd been the one least bothered by the courtroom revelation and seemed to be acting like the whole matter was normal. If nothing else Kay had a remarkable ability to shrug off strange events and move on with life.
Badd sucked on his popsicle for a while and then admitted, “I’m not really used to this whole thing. I’ve never had a kid before. Don’t even know if I’m ready to be a dad.” Hell, Byrne, I was supposed to go first. You weren’t supposed to die and leave me a kid.
“I’ll help you be a dad. You’re pretty good at it already.” Kay reached for a napkin and patted down her shirt, which was getting thoroughly stained. Badd pretended not to see her wipe her sticky hands on her shorts. “When he said you got married to Dad, did you mean like a real marriage?” She asked it casually, as if it was as simple a matter as it really was. “I don’t remember you getting married. I didn’t get to throw any flowers.”
“Yeah. Technically. We didn’t want anyone to know but it means you get to come stay with me.” He’d explain it when she was older and could understand that people might hate Uncle Badd and still be paragons of justice.
“Why not?”
“Because they might get mad.”
“Why?”
“Because people are stupid.”
“Oh.” Kay finished her ice cream and asked to eat the rest of Badd’s popsicle, because it was grape and that was her favorite so obviously she needed to have it. Badd handed it over and let out a long breath that he felt he’d been holding for days.
“He was proud of you,” he said, wiping a smear of purple syrup from her cheek. “He’d be proud of you now.” He’d say the same thing three years later when he dropped her off at high school, seven years later when she testified at Calisto Yew’s trial, eleven years later when she graduated from college, thirteen years later when she entered the courtroom to prosecute her first case.
"Yeah, Uncle Badd." Kay's indigo tongue flicked across her lips. Her tender mind couldn't grasp the concepts of societal boundaries, the frailties of the law, the idea of bad things for good reasons and good people who did bad things. She didn't need to. "Bet he was proud of you too."