Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight - 1/1
TITLE Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight
RATING PG/PG13ish
WORDS ~2000
SUMMARY What our favorite jackass-pig detective and special prosecutor were up to in the riot. Slight spoilers for "33 Bullets", pre-slash.
NOTES Title is a song by the Dropkick Murphys, which I've uploaded to YSI and linked in the title.
GONNA BE A BLACKOUT TONIGHT
Matt had a nice long list of things he didn't like. Cats. Garret Macy. Getting shot at. That creepy-ass Oliver kid. Morgue elevators that stick in the winter and get him trapped with stinking shark corpses. Fog that was nice and thick (not because of the fog itself, but because everyone in this stupid city thought that fog meant you had to drive thirty miles under the speed limit). Losing his contacts and being forced to wear his glasses to work, because he always got mocked like he was back in tenth grade again, and the first time through had been more than enough for him, thanks-very-much.
But after the night eight-year-old Jammal Wilkes was shot thirty-three times, something new made it to the top of his list: riots. Matt Seely hated riots.
Things were actually alright until the sun went down. Not that there was a difference in the level of rioting, although Matt would have thought that people would feel a little more foolish, rioting in broad daylight. But they didn't. It was just, once the sun was gone, everything seemed so much bleaker and hopeless. Like, in daylight, it was just some teenage hoodlums up to mischief, and in the darkness the city became a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie with people hollering, “Waaaaarriors, come out to plaaaaay!” Not that Matt had ever seen that movie, but a while back the commercials had been on every channel he watched and it had sort of invaded his subconscious.
(As he was given his assignment with the rest of the cops, he spent a second wondering if any other city was having, like, sympathy riots. Then he was told that he got to hang out in the neighborhood around the courthouse, and then he had more things to worry about than the stupid thoughts his stupid brain was coming up with all on its own stupid self.)
***
“Shit!” Matt swore as he ducked a crazy swinging a torch at him. “Drop it, you dumbass!” Now, Matt Seely was not usually given to cursing like a sheltered twelve year old (much like being picked on for his glasses, he'd had more than enough of that the first time through), but while operating under the official colors of the office, he had to be careful of his language. Which, normally, was a load of crap he didn't bother to shovel in, but with conditions being such as they were... Not even Matt really wanted to increase tensions.
There was a loud cracking noise, and the wielder of flame crumpled into a heap on the street. The first priority, as Matt saw it, was to put out the fire before it sent the whole city up in flames (ignoring, of course, that most buildings in the general vicinity were completely made of stone and brick), so he did that before checking out who had just saved him (only, not really saved, because Matt Seely didn't get saved by people - if anything, he did the saving, okay?).
It took him a second, no longer, to recognize the guy who had dropped the aluminum baseball bat in favor of kneeling on the ground and checking the fire man's vitals, dark eyebrows drawn together in a way that made him look more confused than anything. “Ivers!” he said, surprised. He'd worked with special prosecutor William Ivers before, back in the awkward time period between when he'd made detective and when he'd made it into homicide. White collar crime? So not a fun place to be stuck, not even when your first word had been 'corporate'.
“Wow, Seely? You look different in uniform!” Ivers responded in that overly cheerful, not-too-bright way he had that made everybody underestimate him.
Matt self-consciously tugged at his collar. Really, all those years in private school had totally cured him of any inclination he might have had towards uniforms - at this point, he'd kill to be able to go back to his normal sweaters, or even a suit and tie. He was so jealous of Ivers' simple collared shirt and tie (which were probably originally part of a suit, before Ivers lost the jacket; he may be a frightening tornado of legal justice, but he was also very absent-minded and prone to losing things even when they were tied onto him). “Yeah, well, don't hold it against me.” He probably would have continued with an innuendo, because He Was Matt Seely, Innuendo King, but at that moment there was a sound of a gunshot around the corner. And even to him, shootings took priority over innuendo (at least, they did when he wasn't sure if someone was injured from the shooting).
There wasn't anybody in the alley around the corner. Which was very confusing. Matt, whose gun was still out from the crazy-torch-guy incident, almost reached up to scratch his head with it before remembering all those gun safety lessons he'd been forced through (it was entitled “Do Not Point Your Gun at Anything You're Not Willing To Cut Off”). Instead, he turned to Ivers. “You heard the gunshot too, right?”
Ivers nodded.
“Yeah, sorry, that was me,” a sheepish voice spoke up from behind a large metal dumpster. Matt immediately whipped his gun up in that direction, which was ultimately not needed as the owner of the sheepish voice slid the gun forward to them and then inched out from behind the metal monstrosity with their hands up.
Matt lowered his gun and rolled his eyes in one swift move (a move he'd practiced instead of the more typical lowering-and-holstering of the service weapon that was taught in the academy). Their shooter was a girl in the early teenage years, wearing jeans and T-shirt with a witty phrase, and giving them a sheepish grin. “It was just, y'know, lying there, and my dad keeps refusing to take me to the shooting range, and I wanna see what firing a gun's like, y'know?”
While Matt considered the possibility that he'd inhaled some of the fire and it had caused brain damage, Ivers spoke up. “So what was it like?”
The girl brightened. “It was AWESOME! Like, so cool. The second I turn eighteen, I'm getting a gun and taking myself to a shooting range, man.”
Before Ivers could continue his chat with an obviously insane teenager, Matt interfered. “Look, just go home. There's a riot on, in case you missed that.”
“Innit it cool?” she chirped. “I mean, besides, like, people dying and stuff. That's not cool.” Her grin turned into a serious look that was completely ridiculous on her face.
“You. Go.” Matt grit out between his teeth. The girl took the hint and scampered away into the apartment building next to them before Matt turned green and muscle-y and started to speak like a caveman.
Ivers looked amused, but then again he always looked amused or confused or distracted by shiny objects, so it didn't necessarily mean anything. Not necessarily. Matt glower-pouted at him, a very special combination of expressions he'd worked hard to combine ever since he was but a wee child. Of course, it had taken him many a year before he looked anything more than constipated, but those were the breaks.
Unfortunately, Ivers seemed immune to the power of the glower-pout, the most powerful weapon in Matt's arsenal. (Okay, second-most powerful; his pathetic “I'm so sad you should put me out of my misery” look was the most powerful, but sadly it wasn't expression he could give without actually feeling like that. Which meant that the last person who'd ever seen it was his roommate from high school.) Oh well. Now that they were no longer being interrupted by crazy pre-teens with gun fetishes, he could ask Ivers the question he'd meant to since he ran into him. “What are you doing out here anyway, Ivers?”
“Walking.”
GOD. Ivers was so annoying. Was this how other people felt about him?
“Oh, sorry, that a little obnoxious, wasn't it?” Okay, maybe Ivers wasn't like him; Matt could count the number of times he'd apologized on two hands and still be able to play patty-cake. “I was at work today, and then I finished, and I had walked to work today.” He shrugged. “I know there's a curfew, but I figure I can help keep the peace, right?”
Matt wasn't going to argue. Which was kind of a first for him.
***
Six hours of working with Ivers in the middle of a riot, and Matt was totally ready to either shoot the guy or... do something else that he really shouldn't be thinking about in the middle of a riot, because it was a little distracting.
The thing was, Ivers was annoying. But annoying in that special way that some people had that made yelling at them feel like kicking a puppy. An adorable puppy. Ah, if only he was more like a cat, Matt had no problem kicking those things. (What, one little cuddle session was supposed to change his mind about the vermin? He'd woken up to the cat clawing at him - he knew enough about cats to know that the cat was marking him with the scent pads on his paws, but that didn't mean being scratched up felt any better.) But no, Ivers was definitely a dog with the way he'd grip onto something and not let it go until the thing was so dead that even archaeologists went all, “Hey, too old and dead for us.”
Matt's brain scared him sometimes.
There hadn't been anything to exciting in their area recently, so Matt was complaining to Ivers about how completely underfunded the police department was - that being the reason he wasn't at least somewhat safer in a squad car; there wasn't anything approaching enough vehicles in the car pool. He was also talking about the Kansas City Experiment, which proved that police presence on the street had no effect on fear of crime, so this was all just pointless, anyway.
And, of course, that would be when everything went to hell. Or, well, more hell.
Matt hadn't even noticed the guy when he saw the glint of metal in his hand. He had noticed that Ivers had been quiet, but he'd assumed that was because he was... well, he hadn't actually assumed anything, he was busy enjoying the silence. He froze. “Gimme your wallet,” the thug with the gun demanded, as Matt stood perfectly still in the hopes that the guy wouldn't notice him, since he hadn't yet.
Ivers had his hands up. “Okay, okay, just... be calm,” he said, slowly moving one of his hands down to his pocket and removing his wallet before carefully tossing it to the guy with the gun. The guy caught it, and immediately started going through it - only to stop at the sight of Ivers' investigator badge from the D.A.'s office.
“Shit, you're a cop?!” Shit indeed, Matt knew that tone of voice. It was the universal voice of, “Oh no, this isn't a civilian I can intimidate into shutting up, I'm actually going to get in trouble for this... but only if he's able to tell someone...”
Matt started moving instantly, which was the only reason he was able to knock Ivers aside before the gun went off. Ivers hit the ground, followed by Matt a second later, and the thug freaked out, dropped his gun, and ran.
Breathing heavily from the burst of adrenaline, Matt rolled himself over onto his back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Ivers' voice was as shaky as Matt felt. “You?”
“I'm fine.”
Ivers was quiet for a while, and then... “I'm glad I'm not a cop. Paperwork is a lot safer.”
Matt grinned at that. It was always refreshing to meet a non-officer member of the criminal justice process who didn't constantly try to act like a sworn peace officer anyway, training be damned.
“I tell you what. After this craziness is over, we should go out for a drink. I could use a drink.”
“Me too,” Matt said, and then groaned as he pulled himself off of the ground. He held out a hand to help Ivers up. “Baker's on Fifth is pretty good. Not so loud you can't think, not so quiet that you feel like everyone's listening to you.”
Ivers gripped his hand and grimaced a smile. “It's a date.”
RATING PG/PG13ish
WORDS ~2000
SUMMARY What our favorite jackass-pig detective and special prosecutor were up to in the riot. Slight spoilers for "33 Bullets", pre-slash.
NOTES Title is a song by the Dropkick Murphys, which I've uploaded to YSI and linked in the title.
GONNA BE A BLACKOUT TONIGHT
Matt had a nice long list of things he didn't like. Cats. Garret Macy. Getting shot at. That creepy-ass Oliver kid. Morgue elevators that stick in the winter and get him trapped with stinking shark corpses. Fog that was nice and thick (not because of the fog itself, but because everyone in this stupid city thought that fog meant you had to drive thirty miles under the speed limit). Losing his contacts and being forced to wear his glasses to work, because he always got mocked like he was back in tenth grade again, and the first time through had been more than enough for him, thanks-very-much.
But after the night eight-year-old Jammal Wilkes was shot thirty-three times, something new made it to the top of his list: riots. Matt Seely hated riots.
Things were actually alright until the sun went down. Not that there was a difference in the level of rioting, although Matt would have thought that people would feel a little more foolish, rioting in broad daylight. But they didn't. It was just, once the sun was gone, everything seemed so much bleaker and hopeless. Like, in daylight, it was just some teenage hoodlums up to mischief, and in the darkness the city became a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie with people hollering, “Waaaaarriors, come out to plaaaaay!” Not that Matt had ever seen that movie, but a while back the commercials had been on every channel he watched and it had sort of invaded his subconscious.
(As he was given his assignment with the rest of the cops, he spent a second wondering if any other city was having, like, sympathy riots. Then he was told that he got to hang out in the neighborhood around the courthouse, and then he had more things to worry about than the stupid thoughts his stupid brain was coming up with all on its own stupid self.)
***
“Shit!” Matt swore as he ducked a crazy swinging a torch at him. “Drop it, you dumbass!” Now, Matt Seely was not usually given to cursing like a sheltered twelve year old (much like being picked on for his glasses, he'd had more than enough of that the first time through), but while operating under the official colors of the office, he had to be careful of his language. Which, normally, was a load of crap he didn't bother to shovel in, but with conditions being such as they were... Not even Matt really wanted to increase tensions.
There was a loud cracking noise, and the wielder of flame crumpled into a heap on the street. The first priority, as Matt saw it, was to put out the fire before it sent the whole city up in flames (ignoring, of course, that most buildings in the general vicinity were completely made of stone and brick), so he did that before checking out who had just saved him (only, not really saved, because Matt Seely didn't get saved by people - if anything, he did the saving, okay?).
It took him a second, no longer, to recognize the guy who had dropped the aluminum baseball bat in favor of kneeling on the ground and checking the fire man's vitals, dark eyebrows drawn together in a way that made him look more confused than anything. “Ivers!” he said, surprised. He'd worked with special prosecutor William Ivers before, back in the awkward time period between when he'd made detective and when he'd made it into homicide. White collar crime? So not a fun place to be stuck, not even when your first word had been 'corporate'.
“Wow, Seely? You look different in uniform!” Ivers responded in that overly cheerful, not-too-bright way he had that made everybody underestimate him.
Matt self-consciously tugged at his collar. Really, all those years in private school had totally cured him of any inclination he might have had towards uniforms - at this point, he'd kill to be able to go back to his normal sweaters, or even a suit and tie. He was so jealous of Ivers' simple collared shirt and tie (which were probably originally part of a suit, before Ivers lost the jacket; he may be a frightening tornado of legal justice, but he was also very absent-minded and prone to losing things even when they were tied onto him). “Yeah, well, don't hold it against me.” He probably would have continued with an innuendo, because He Was Matt Seely, Innuendo King, but at that moment there was a sound of a gunshot around the corner. And even to him, shootings took priority over innuendo (at least, they did when he wasn't sure if someone was injured from the shooting).
There wasn't anybody in the alley around the corner. Which was very confusing. Matt, whose gun was still out from the crazy-torch-guy incident, almost reached up to scratch his head with it before remembering all those gun safety lessons he'd been forced through (it was entitled “Do Not Point Your Gun at Anything You're Not Willing To Cut Off”). Instead, he turned to Ivers. “You heard the gunshot too, right?”
Ivers nodded.
“Yeah, sorry, that was me,” a sheepish voice spoke up from behind a large metal dumpster. Matt immediately whipped his gun up in that direction, which was ultimately not needed as the owner of the sheepish voice slid the gun forward to them and then inched out from behind the metal monstrosity with their hands up.
Matt lowered his gun and rolled his eyes in one swift move (a move he'd practiced instead of the more typical lowering-and-holstering of the service weapon that was taught in the academy). Their shooter was a girl in the early teenage years, wearing jeans and T-shirt with a witty phrase, and giving them a sheepish grin. “It was just, y'know, lying there, and my dad keeps refusing to take me to the shooting range, and I wanna see what firing a gun's like, y'know?”
While Matt considered the possibility that he'd inhaled some of the fire and it had caused brain damage, Ivers spoke up. “So what was it like?”
The girl brightened. “It was AWESOME! Like, so cool. The second I turn eighteen, I'm getting a gun and taking myself to a shooting range, man.”
Before Ivers could continue his chat with an obviously insane teenager, Matt interfered. “Look, just go home. There's a riot on, in case you missed that.”
“Innit it cool?” she chirped. “I mean, besides, like, people dying and stuff. That's not cool.” Her grin turned into a serious look that was completely ridiculous on her face.
“You. Go.” Matt grit out between his teeth. The girl took the hint and scampered away into the apartment building next to them before Matt turned green and muscle-y and started to speak like a caveman.
Ivers looked amused, but then again he always looked amused or confused or distracted by shiny objects, so it didn't necessarily mean anything. Not necessarily. Matt glower-pouted at him, a very special combination of expressions he'd worked hard to combine ever since he was but a wee child. Of course, it had taken him many a year before he looked anything more than constipated, but those were the breaks.
Unfortunately, Ivers seemed immune to the power of the glower-pout, the most powerful weapon in Matt's arsenal. (Okay, second-most powerful; his pathetic “I'm so sad you should put me out of my misery” look was the most powerful, but sadly it wasn't expression he could give without actually feeling like that. Which meant that the last person who'd ever seen it was his roommate from high school.) Oh well. Now that they were no longer being interrupted by crazy pre-teens with gun fetishes, he could ask Ivers the question he'd meant to since he ran into him. “What are you doing out here anyway, Ivers?”
“Walking.”
GOD. Ivers was so annoying. Was this how other people felt about him?
“Oh, sorry, that a little obnoxious, wasn't it?” Okay, maybe Ivers wasn't like him; Matt could count the number of times he'd apologized on two hands and still be able to play patty-cake. “I was at work today, and then I finished, and I had walked to work today.” He shrugged. “I know there's a curfew, but I figure I can help keep the peace, right?”
Matt wasn't going to argue. Which was kind of a first for him.
***
Six hours of working with Ivers in the middle of a riot, and Matt was totally ready to either shoot the guy or... do something else that he really shouldn't be thinking about in the middle of a riot, because it was a little distracting.
The thing was, Ivers was annoying. But annoying in that special way that some people had that made yelling at them feel like kicking a puppy. An adorable puppy. Ah, if only he was more like a cat, Matt had no problem kicking those things. (What, one little cuddle session was supposed to change his mind about the vermin? He'd woken up to the cat clawing at him - he knew enough about cats to know that the cat was marking him with the scent pads on his paws, but that didn't mean being scratched up felt any better.) But no, Ivers was definitely a dog with the way he'd grip onto something and not let it go until the thing was so dead that even archaeologists went all, “Hey, too old and dead for us.”
Matt's brain scared him sometimes.
There hadn't been anything to exciting in their area recently, so Matt was complaining to Ivers about how completely underfunded the police department was - that being the reason he wasn't at least somewhat safer in a squad car; there wasn't anything approaching enough vehicles in the car pool. He was also talking about the Kansas City Experiment, which proved that police presence on the street had no effect on fear of crime, so this was all just pointless, anyway.
And, of course, that would be when everything went to hell. Or, well, more hell.
Matt hadn't even noticed the guy when he saw the glint of metal in his hand. He had noticed that Ivers had been quiet, but he'd assumed that was because he was... well, he hadn't actually assumed anything, he was busy enjoying the silence. He froze. “Gimme your wallet,” the thug with the gun demanded, as Matt stood perfectly still in the hopes that the guy wouldn't notice him, since he hadn't yet.
Ivers had his hands up. “Okay, okay, just... be calm,” he said, slowly moving one of his hands down to his pocket and removing his wallet before carefully tossing it to the guy with the gun. The guy caught it, and immediately started going through it - only to stop at the sight of Ivers' investigator badge from the D.A.'s office.
“Shit, you're a cop?!” Shit indeed, Matt knew that tone of voice. It was the universal voice of, “Oh no, this isn't a civilian I can intimidate into shutting up, I'm actually going to get in trouble for this... but only if he's able to tell someone...”
Matt started moving instantly, which was the only reason he was able to knock Ivers aside before the gun went off. Ivers hit the ground, followed by Matt a second later, and the thug freaked out, dropped his gun, and ran.
Breathing heavily from the burst of adrenaline, Matt rolled himself over onto his back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Ivers' voice was as shaky as Matt felt. “You?”
“I'm fine.”
Ivers was quiet for a while, and then... “I'm glad I'm not a cop. Paperwork is a lot safer.”
Matt grinned at that. It was always refreshing to meet a non-officer member of the criminal justice process who didn't constantly try to act like a sworn peace officer anyway, training be damned.
“I tell you what. After this craziness is over, we should go out for a drink. I could use a drink.”
“Me too,” Matt said, and then groaned as he pulled himself off of the ground. He held out a hand to help Ivers up. “Baker's on Fifth is pretty good. Not so loud you can't think, not so quiet that you feel like everyone's listening to you.”
Ivers gripped his hand and grimaced a smile. “It's a date.”