Not As Dumb [FAKE, Ryo/Dee, M overall] [part 2 of 6]
Title: Not As Dumb, part 2 of 6 (see part 1 for full header info)
Author: bronze_ribbons
Word count for part 2: a bit over 6800 words
A/N: Apologies for the wait!
Part 1
Part 2
The second pair of handcuffs arrived two days later, in an envelope identical to the one used for the previous mailing. As before, the label was addressed to Ryo, but it was Dee who arrived home first from work that day. When he saw the packet, he didn't bother heading up to their apartment; instead, he snatched it up, sprinted out of the building, and hailed a cab straight back to the precinct station.
* * *
Ryo was squinting at the screen of his laptop when Ted poked his head through the doorway. "I'm calling in to Don and Joni's. You and Dee want anything?"
"Stromboli, for me." Ryo reached for his wallet and handed Ted a twenty. "Dee's not here -- he left at three."
Ted blinked. "He did? I just saw him ten minutes ago, terrorizing the new lab tech."
Ryo frowned. "That's...weird. We've got everything we need for the Subbarow case... Griaule's, that's open and shut... the Lomond murder, that's a total fiasco, but he knows that's not the lab's fault. He wouldn't be back here just for that..."
"Whatever it is, it's got him spitting nails," Ted said. "The tech wasn't getting in a single word edgewise."
"Just what I need," Ryo groaned. "Santiago on my tail."
Santiago was the head of the lab and fiercely protective of her subordinates. Ted's grin was both knowing and sympathetic. "She expecting you to keep Dee in line?"
Ryo cast a wary, weary glance at the telephone and pulled off his glasses. "I'll walk with you to DJ's, if you don't mind. She'll probably be on the horn any minute now, and I'm really not in the mood to explain again that Dee is not my job."
"Damn right I'm not your job," Dee said, materializing at Ted's shoulder. "I'm way more fun than a job."
"Modest, too," Ryo said drily.
"Modesty's a copout," Dee declared. "It's people who know what they want who get what they want."
Ryo opened his mouth to snap out a comeback, but no words came out: his mind had leaped back to the start of their partnership -- and to how fast and completely he'd fallen once he'd finally let himself want Dee with all his heart.
Ted hastily muttered, "I'll tell Don to make it two strombolis. See you guys in a while," and retreated down the hall.
Dee kicked the door shut, his eyes never leaving Ryo's face. They were blazing with a wild possessiveness that, once upon a time, Ryo would have found alarming.
These days, he found it hot beyond belief.
Closed door notwithstanding, though, they were at work. Ryo met Dee's stare with his own. "If the phone rings, it's yours."
"I'm off the clock."
"Then what the hell are you doing here?"
Dee disgustedly flung the new pair of handcuffs onto Ryo's desk. "So far, finding out diddly-squat."
Ryo winced as the metal clanged against the hard surface. "Dee, do you mind?" He scooped up the cuffs just before they skidded into his lap, holding them up for a closer look.
"Elegant," Ryo finally said.
"Not a damn print anywhere on 'em. Not a single stray fiber or speck inside the envelope or on its seal." Dee growled. "Some asshole is completely up to no good."
"I won't argue with that," Ryo said. "I wish you hadn't harassed the lab, though. It could have waited."
"Dude, once is creepy, twice is a threat."
"Not always," Ryo objected. "It could just be someone with a warped, overly subtle sense of humor. If I wanted to drive me crazy, I'd come up with something like this."
"No, you wouldn't," Dee retorted. "You'd be much more efficient about Operation Mortify Ryo. You'd get the packages sent to here, and you'd rig it so that they'd arrive artistically torn, so that everyone would see them before you ever a chance to hide 'em. And they'd be covered in turquoise fur --"
"Dear God --"
"--with rhinestone studs and a 'Stairway to Heaven' soundchip in the keyhole--"
"Dee, how do you know about handcuffs like -- no, wait, forget I asked. I don't actually want to know."
"Liar," Dee cheerfully said. "You adore me and you want to know everything."
Ryo set the handcuffs back down. "You're right, I do," he admitted. His lips twitched as he glimpsed the flare of delight in Dee's eyes; he found it both absurd and touching that he could make his partner so happy with such a simple acknowledgment.
It also secretly frightened him: it was not the kind of power he had ever wanted over anyone else. That Dee mattered to him more than anything was far less problematic: it was true that it had taken an inordinately long time and a talking-to from Diana for him to come to terms with his attraction to Dee, but he had never regretted finally crossing that Rubicon. Dee was brash, boisterous, and a hundred other things Ryo had never pictured himself finding tolerable -- never mind desirable -- in his pre-Dee fantasies of a romantic companion, and Dee's antics regularly complicated his life in too many ways to count, but there was also not a single shred of doubt in Ryo's mind that Dee was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It wasn't just the addictive bliss of soul-stealing kisses or the bone-melting gratification of great sex: it was how, with Dee, he hadn't lost who he was, but become more himself rather than less. Dee seldom let him get away with the excuses or evasions he automatically resorted to whenever he tried to escape his memories or deny his feelings, whether they were about victims he couldn't save or his tendency to play the martyr whenever things weren't going his way. Dee was himself a casual, habitual liar where everyday convenience was concerned -- just the day before, Ryo had caught him blatantly fibbing about a dental appointment -- but he was heartstoppingly blunt when something or someone mattered enough to him, and being anything he thought Ryo truly needed clearly mattered above anything else.
Ryo compressed his lips, remembering how Dee had saved him from himself the night he'd pointed his gun at Leo Grant. How Dee had charged to his rescue during a trip to England. He recalled a night not long after Bikky had left for college, when he'd been jumped by a newly-released felon -- one who'd nursed a ferocious grudge against Ryo all through his stay in the hoosegow -- and how Dee had appeared on the scene within seconds, having chosen to stalk Ryo's stalker instead of heading home to sleep, which had been what he'd told Ryo he'd be doing. Ryo owed Dee his life several times over -- and it bugged him more than he cared to admit. The Japanese side of him was hugely resistant to carrying any sort of debt, and as much as he loved his Aunt Elena and Uncle Rick, there was a part of him that would always feel he should have been able to handle his parents' deaths on his own, even though he wouldn't have expected it of anyone else on earth. It was the part of him that steadily rebuilt his savings each time they were depleted by emergencies and other major expenditures, and it was the part of him that couldn't help wondering what in the world Dee saw in him that made him worth the trouble. Sure, Ryo cooked and cleaned more often than not, but Dee was no slouch at either when he felt like it, and there were plenty of other people he could have seduced into keeping house had that been his priority. Ryo had been stuck with more than his share of the paperwork throughout their partnership, but that had been his fate throughout grade school as well -- he'd been the smart, goody-goody kid repeatedly saddled with slackers and jokers on group projects, and they'd always taken his efforts for granted; Ryo didn't think Dee was any different from them in that regard, so that couldn't be the basis for Dee's enduring devotion. It certainly wasn't Ryo's ability to express affection -- Ryo didn't have it in him to be romantic or glib, and he sometimes feared that his lover would someday come to his senses and transfer his attentions to someone much more in sync with his style. Ryo knew Dee would never actually do that to him, but it nonetheless nagged at him at times like these: what had he done to deserve Dee's passionate commitment to him, and was he doing enough--
"You've gone quiet again," Dee said.
"I'm thinking of how impossible you're going to be until we sort this out," Ryo lightly said, gesturing to the handcuffs.
"I'm impossible?" Dee snorted. "You're the one with the freakin' 'kiss me or kill me' vibe!"
"I -- I am not!" Ryo sputtered. "And even if I were, it doesn't mean it has anything to do with -- with whatever the heck these are about!"
"I will bet my left nut--"
"Could you please wager something not already on offer?" Ryo snapped. Then his cheeks turned crimson as he realized what he'd just said.
Dee burst out laughing. "You're right," he said, as he walked around to Ryo's side of the desk. "It's not a real bet when I want you to take--"
"Dee, we're at work. Stuff your tongue back into your skull and--"
Dee licked the underside of Ryo's earlobe, and his hand snaked down to cup Ryo through his slacks. "I want you to do this to me," he purred, his fingers pressing firmly against the fabric, seeking the curve of Ryo's balls.
"I'm not doing a damn thing to you other than chaining you to your desk," Ryo panted. His eyes were sparkling with both fury and arousal as he squirmed against Dee's hands and lips.
"If you insist," Dee crooned. "But only after I'm done with--"
"Dee, could you postpone molesting your partner until he's finished picking through my pics?" Alex Yoshizumi sauntered into the office, arms laden with carryout bags and a cardboard tray of soft drinks. He grinned as Ryo's desperate shove sent Dee sprawling onto the floor.
Dee glared at Alex. "Goddammit, whelp, didn't your elders ever teach you how to knock?"
The younger detective smirked as he set the food down on Dee's desk. "Of course they did, old man. I learned the not-knocking part from you."
"You reap what you sow," Ted intoned, walking in with his own dinner. "Serves you right for corrupting children, Dee."
Alex was in his second year at the precinct; he'd spent his first six months as Dee's partner, during Ryo's stint as a police academy instructor. He genially flipped Ted off as he said to Ryo, "Sorry to rush you, man, but O'Leary wants to go over my notes in an hour."
"Not a problem," Ryo said. He poked a button on his laptop and gestured at the reactivated screen. "I was looking at the last one when Dee dropped in. You can tell O'Leary I didn't see anything you didn't."
"Phooey," Alex said. "I mean, yay me for not missing anything, but I wanted to be done with this case. I was hoping the magic Maclean look-see would do the trick."
"I hate to break it to you, Alex, but you're probably actually getting better at your scene analyses. Clues don't just materialize because I'm the one looking."
"Oh, but they do," Alex claimed, grinning. "I learned that from your partner too."
"You see what I had to put up with?" Dee said to Ryo. "Never again."
"He's totally lying, kid," Ted said to Alex. "If Ryo skips back to teaching, that door so has your name on it."
"It wasn't horrible," Ryo said, "but I'd much rather be here. I'd only go back if I got hurt that bad again." He'd opted to become one of the academy's Social Science instructors during his recovery from a badly broken leg, choosing the novelty of preparing lectures over the known tedium of extended desk duty.
"If you ever go back, I'm going with you," Dee growled. "I'll get them to put me in Tactics or Gym."
"Ryo Maclean, you owe it to the public to stay healthy," Ted declared. "We can't let Dee near the recruits, the graduation rate's already at a record low."
"Graduation rate be damned," Dee said. "They're letting through too many morons as it is. The Lomond case is completely hosed because Darlington's a fucking tool with his head so far up his ass he can't --"
"Dee, chill," Ryo commanded. "Don't ruin a good meal by bringing up Darlington."
"You really are a catty bitch," Alex said to Ryo.
Ryo coolly replied, "It's how I am. Deal with it."
"Hey, hey, I'm not disagreeing with you." Alex tossed the pickle spear that had come with his sandwich onto Dee's stromboli wrapper. "Darlington's pretty, but he's dumber than a bag of hair. There's no friggin' way he made detective without some sort of greasin' up --"
"Pipe down," Ted hissed, darting a glance toward the open door. "Darlington does have friends here. Russell and Peckham are just down the hall."
Alex didn't lower his voice as he stated, "They're morons too. Someone's gonna get killed or maimed around that pack of clowns, and I hope to God I'm out of range when that happens."
Ted said, "You and Dee have spent way, way, way too much time together."
"He was like that when we got him," Dee said. "Also, he's right. I don't trust those fuckwits any further than I can spit."
"I'm so scared, Laytner," scoffed a supercilious voice from the doorway. "Though you're such a yokel, you probably spit like a champion."
"Want me to demonstrate, Russell?" Dee shot back.
"Save it for your Japanese boys," Russell sneered. "You must be good at bangin' them -- there's no other reason why they'd keep hauling your ass out of hot water."
"You son of a--" Alex barreled into Ted, who had swiftly stepped in front of him. Ryo had likewise gotten to his feet, ready to leap between Dee and the door if need be, but Dee had remained seated. He met the challenge in Ryo's stare with a slight shake of his head.
"Whipped," Russell taunted.
Dee ignored him, saying to Ryo, "Give me a little credit here. He's not worth me getting into trouble with you."
"So prissy little Maclean can kick your ass, huh?" Russell suggested.
"Stow it," Dee snarled. "Ryo's prettier than you'll ever be, but that's got nothing to do with your dick being smaller than a crayon."
Alex snickered. Ted sighed. Ryo muttered, "Oh, for crying out loud, I don't have time for this" as he sat back down and turned to his laptop.
Russell regarded Ryo with contempt. "Why don't you go back to the academy, then? You had plenty of time there to tattle on everyone you didn't like."
"My, my, aren't we quick with old gossip," Ryo calmly said, typing.
"You ruined a dozen careers with your power trips," Russell insisted.
"You flatter me."
"I bet you pull Star Cards from Laytner to get it up."
Ryo reached for the phone. "That's quite an imagination you've got, Russell. Care to share your major mental images with the Lou? I'm dialing his extension right now."
"You're such a fucking showoff," Russell snapped, but he'd vanished from the doorway by the time Lt. O'Leary's voice boomed, "Yes, Maclean?" through Ryo's handset.
"I've got a stromboli I'm not going to have time to eat," Ryo said. "You want Yoshizumi to bring it to you? No problem, sir, I'm glad it won't be going to waste. See you later, sir."
The room was dead silent as he hung up. Ted found his voice first. "So that's how to get first grade, huh? Cozying up to the commanders with food?"
Ryo shrugged. "It wouldn't kill you guys to be nice to them."
"But that was your dinner," Dee pointed out. "What are you going to do for yourself now?"
Ryo closed the lid of his laptop. "I was thinking my partner could treat me to something. Since the real reason I won't be eating this is because I'm escorting him home."
Dee's face lit up. "Do I believe my ears? Sandra Dee Maclean about to play hooky?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't be working." Ryo tucked an overstuffed accordion folder under his arm as he stood up. "I'll get more done if Santiago doesn't catch me here."
"Yet more proof that Russell's a total loser. He ran away from you, and you're running away from a girl," Alex teased.
Ryo's smile was sharp. "I seem to recall someone begging me not to leave him with Nurse Emiry just last month, and it wasn't Dee."
Yoshizumi protested, "She doesn't count! She's built like a rhinoceros and twice as mean!"
Ryo's smile became even more needle-bright. "And do you remember what Diana Spacey had to say when you said that in her hearing?"
Yoshizumi blanched and held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, I get it, I'm a loser too. But Russell's made of much more lose, and Darlington's the loser-est of them all."
Ryo lobbed the bag containing his DJ's order at the younger detective. "Take that to the Lou, please, and lose the attitude already. We've still got to work with those guys."
Alex turned to Dee. "Does he ever stop?"
Dee trilled, "It's what I love about you Japanese boys, didn't you know? You're so sweet and soft and submissive and -- ow!" The book Ryo had hurled at him bounced off his shoulder as he doubled over laughing, and his hands clutched the bag Alex had pitched at his face.
Ted shook his head. "Ryo, I don't know about sending that lunch to O'Leary. It probably looks more like salad than stromboli by now."
"Then I guess the children will have to explain why, won't they?" Ryo already had a foot out the door. "Dee, I'll meet you out front when you're done. I'm gonna check in with Drake and JJ, see what they got from interrogating Tellerman."
"Ryo, wait up, I'll -- dammit." Dee slumped back into his chair as the sound of Ryo's footsteps receded down the hall.
Ted fished a receipt and a couple of bills out of a pocket and handed them to Dee. "I've said it before -- you're the craziest son of a bitch on the squad, but Ryo's even more 'work my own way' than you."
Dee grinned as he tossed the receipt into a wastecan and folded the bills into his wallet. "Am I hearing you say that Ryo is more obnoxious?"
"I'm saying he's more dangerous," Ted soberly answered. Dee and Alex looked at him in surprise, both taken aback at the tired anxiety coloring his words. "You and Yosh, you're bigger pains in the ass, but you're like that on purpose -- you've got your guard up and your guns cocked when you go around smacking people's buttons and yanking their chains. Ryo's more scary than either of you because half of the time he doesn't have a clue that he's pissing people off -- and the rest of the time, he does, but he doesn't take them seriously enough to realize how much he's pissed them off. He's so into whatever he's doing at any given moment that he totally fails to notice when he's cut off someone's dick because it happened to be in the way -- and then he gets blindsided by how they go all triple batshit on him because their asses got handed to them by someone who looks like a kindergarten teacher."
Dee's eyebrows had nearly climbed into his scalp during his colleague's tirade. "Ted, my friend, you're thinking yourself into a tizzy again --"
"My kindergarten teacher was much meaner than Ryo," Alex said, in a tone of cheerful nostalgia. "I've never forgiven her for confiscating my laser pointer."
"A laser -- what the hell were you doing in preschool with that?" Dee demanded.
"Trying to impress the chicks," Alex admitted. "It was school, so I was bored out of my mind, so I nicked it from my mom's desk."
Ted's incredulous stare matched Dee's. "You were already after girls when you were five?"
"What can I say? I was a precocious little punk," Alex said, looking far too proud of that fact.
"Speaking of which, shouldn't you be legging this over to O'Leary's?" Dee threw the carryout sack back at the younger man.
Alex easily fielded the bag, wincing as he heard its contents rustle a little too loosely for comfort. "I'll just have to tell him I ran into Ted, and that's why it looks so bad."
Ted looked both amused and exasperated. "Why don't you pretend it's Russell in the doorway again, and I'll give you a few more bruises to show off?" A gleam appeared in his eye as he added, "In the old days, we could've just given JJ a call, and then positioned you right in front of Dee--"
Dee shuddered as he walked over to Ryo's desk. "Thank you, Lord, for mercies large and small /And bless all Thy creatures, the short and the tall..." The handcuffs jingled as he picked them up.
Alex automatically turned his head toward the sound as he headed toward the door. As he caught sight of the manacles, he stopped in his tracks, leaning toward Dee for a closer look. "Is that a pair of Adams handcuffs? What's Ryo doing with those?"
"Adams?" Dee narrowed his eyes. "These are JJ's?"
"I doubt that specific pair is his," Alex said, frowning at Dee's sudden intensity. "The pair I saw was in his guestroom, mounted in an antique shadowbox frame. Some uncle ten or fifteen 'great's back came up with the design."
Dee exhaled angrily. "So I've still got nada on these," he said, rattling the handcuffs.
"Ryo's already looked them over?" At Dee's nod, Alex continued, "He's slipping, man. First my pics and now your cuffs -- that's two sets of clues he's failed to coax out of thin air. The Maclean mojo is not in the house today. Did he forget to sacrifice a dozen sunflowers to the gods? Is there something we need to -- Ulp. Um, hi sir." He grinned weakly at Lieutenant O'Leary, who had silently appeared in the doorway.
"Is that my lunch that's mangled between your mitts, you mutt?" Alex immediately handed him the now sad-looking sack of food. O'Leary unrolled the top of the bag and peered into it with an air of resigned apprehension. Rolling it closed again, he thrust it at Alex and said, "Do me a favor -- go find a plate for this and put in the nuker for a couple minutes. And rinse the fork and the knife in the bag while you're there. I'll meet you back in my office in ten."
"Yes, sir!" O'Leary neatly stepped aside as Alex scurried out.
"And Russell's giving me shit about my Japanese harem?" Dee said.
O'Leary coolly asked, "Are you planning to report him?"
"Hell, no. That'd waste my time more than his. All they'll do is make the guy take a class, and he'll still be an asshole once he's done with it."
"Then save your bitching for someone who cares," O'Leary said. "Which isn't me -- and right now isn't your partner, either. He's not real happy about Santiago storming into Parker and Adams's office to corner him there."
"Oh, great," Dee muttered. "That's my whole night down the drain. I'll be lucky if he's speaking to me again before breakfast."
The lieutenant leaned against the frame of the door, his arms folded. "Laytner, I seem to recall that you're not a moron, even though you keep acting like one. You yell at the labbies, they whine to Santiago. Santiago takes it out on Maclean, Maclean goes sub-zero on you. You know by now that that's what's going to happen, so why the hell do you still do this to yourself?"
"Can I help it that Santiago can't save it for someone who cares?"
"If it's urgent enough to light fires under Santiago's crew, I ought to already know what it's about."
"If I knew what the fuck was going on, I wouldn't need to lean on the damn lab," Dee countered. He held the handcuffs out to his superior. "Ryo's started receiving some jewelry in the mail. Sender unknown."
"A new secret admirer? Already?" O'Leary inspected the cuffs, scowling. "Parker just turned in the paperwork on the last one." He turned a gimlet glare upon Ted. "And what are you finding so funny?"
Ted gamely admitted, "It's how you said 'Already,' sir. It reminded me of Ryo's reaction the time you told him he was catnip for kooks."
"Well, he is," O'Leary irritably grunted, but a corner of his mouth had twitched upward. "Present company not excepted."
"Present company doesn't give a flying fuck what you call it," Dee snapped. "All the other kooks need to take a hike. Preferably off the Tappan Zee."
"I'm sure the feeling's mutual," the lieutenant said, handing the cuffs back to Dee. "I know you've got nine lives, Laytner, but try not to get baited into wasting any of them while you're watching out for Maclean. We don't have the budget or the time to fish either of you out of the Hudson." He turned to Ted again. "Consider yourself Laytner's backup for this."
Dee bristled. "I don't need a babysitter."
"Funny you should say that." O'Leary allowed himself a sardonic smile. "You sound just like Maclean when he thinks you're hovering. Later, gentlemen."
"I do not hover!" Dee yelled down the hall.
"The hell you don't!" a boyish voice shouted back.
"Like you're one to talk, JJ!" Dee bellowed, hastily retreating back into the office. His attempt to slam the door collided with 130 pounds of flying sharpshooter, its panels and hinges rattling dangerously. JJ merrily picked himself up off the floor and dusted off his clothes before looking over at Dee, who had taken refuge behind Ryo's desk.
"I should start doing more of that again," JJ said, his eyes alight with wicked glee. "That was way more fun than what my trainer put me through this morning."
"I'll put you through this window if you do," Dee threatened. "Then Drake will kill me for killing you, and O'Leary won't kill Drake, but he'll make him mentor our replacements, and that will make Drake wish O'Leary had simply killed him after all, so he'll go get blind drunk and then piss on your grave, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"
Ted said, "You're missing a step. Ryo would kill Drake before the Lou got around to it."
Dee shook his head. "No, Ryo wouldn't go that far."
"For you, he would," JJ countered.
"No," Dee reiterated. "Trust me on this. Killing for revenge is a line Ryo won't ever cross."
He thought he had been doing a good job of keeping his voice matter-of-fact, but Ted and JJ exchanged a startled look. Shit. But before Dee could come up with something to steer the topic elsewhere, Ted mused aloud, "He's been stuck with you what, ten, eleven years? And you're both still alive..."
JJ snickered. Dee gritted out, "Just what are you getting at?"
"You're a psycho and a pest," Ted flatly stated. "If Ryo ever does shoot you, all he'll have to do is plead temporary sanity and the jury will find for him."
"And O'Leary appointed you as my nanny? I feel so reassured."
"O'Leary what?" JJ looked bemused but unsurprised. "Oh, Dee, what did you do now?"
"Time for a coffee break," Ted said, forestalling Dee's response. "Let's head over to Ninth Street. Dee's gonna bring us up to date on Ryo's latest set of love tokens, and after that, he can bring back a latte to calm his darling down."
"We can skip the walk," Dee growled. "There's nothing to tell, and Ryo'll just dump the drink over my head."
"Ryo would not," JJ said. "Too messy. Though Santiago was really shrill today -- he might be pissed off enough not to care. Especially if he's hit that mood where he wants an excuse to stay snippy with you."
Ted had been studying Dee while JJ talked. "Something about this is freaking you out more than usual," he said. "You'd normally be all over any scrap of a clue, no matter how random it might seem. Either this isn't really about Ryo, or you're getting as dumb as you are loud."
Dee hotly flung back, "Maybe I just don't wanna discuss stalkers around someone who stalked me."
A sudden hush fell among the three detectives. At Dee's words, JJ's eyes had instantly brimmed with tears, but he furiously blinked them back as he said, "Whatever you want, Dee. I'll just go back to work, and Drake can --"
"No, JJ, we need you on this one. You're the one who's our resident expert on these," Ted cut in, extricating the Adams cuffs from Dee's unresisting grasp.
"What the..." JJ automatically accepted the cuffs from Ted, his demeanor shifting from "hurt" to "professional" as if someone had flipped a switch. "Did they come with a key?"
"No," Dee rasped out, not quite looking at JJ.
"Polished steel... 1862 patent stamp... I saw a pair of these listed at 300 bucks in a catalog not too long ago. That was for mint condition, though, with a reproduction key... You bullied the lab into taking glamour shots of these, right? E-mail them to me, I'll start asking around -- my Aunt Abby's the historian in the family, she follows most of the collecting gossip and she'll have heard if there's a pair of these gone AWOL. Do you have photos of the other stuff Ryo's received?" At Dee's shake of his head, JJ tsked. "Ted's right, you are off your game. Don't go hassling the lab again -- Ted can take care of it."
Dee nodded in agreement: Ted had long ago proven he was ahead of the rest of them when it came to all things related to computers; he had a knack for selecting the best settings on any digital camera he got his hands on, such that even his basic, no-frills, off-the-cuff snapshots looked miles better than anything anyone else in their circle could usually manage. Dee ran a hand through his hair and then reached for his pack of cigarettes. "Let's go," he said. "JJ, you wanna pick up Drake and meet us out front?"
"No, I've got stuff I need to get back to," JJ said, his voice even. "You guys take Drake along and bring back a Coke for me when you're done."
"10-4," Dee briskly said, and headed out the door. Ted trailed behind him, pausing to look at JJ with open concern.
"It's okay," JJ reassured him. "Honest. Shoo!" Ted's expression lightened into an answering smile and he hurried out after Dee.
As the footsteps of his colleagues receded down the hall, JJ's smile faded. He stepped over to Ryo's desk and quickly shuffled through the second stack of folders from its right edge, easily locating the one on Tellerman's aunt that Ryo had advised him to retrieve. His original mission completed, JJ lingered in front of the desk, surveying Ryo's neat row of sticky-notes, the magnets clinging to the side of the file cabinet, and the easel-style desk calendar from the NYPD union; from a previous snoop-around, JJ happened to know that a snapshot of Dee, Bikky, and Carol was tucked securely inside the calendar, behind the panel for "December."
JJ sighed sadly, knowing he was about to succumb once more to one of his most private, guiltiest compulsions: periodically prowling through the contents of Ryo's desk. It was a habit he had first indulged in soon after the episode where he'd spied Dee planting a kiss on Ryo at the shooting range: he'd wanted so desperately to figure out what on earth Ryo possessed that Dee found so irresistible, and analyzing Ryo's belongings in-depth had seemed as good a way as any to cater to his mind's insistence on dwelling upon everything to do with Dee. After a while, it had become less about the hope for answers and more about the fun of getting away with it: Ryo was notorious for his uber-neat, order-loving ways, but he was also legendarily, astoundingly lax about keeping tabs on his belongings. JJ hadn't personally believed the yarn that had buzzed around for a while about Ryo's foster son, Ryo's stun gun, and a bear, but he'd witnessed Ryo misplacing coffeemugs, making return trips for jackets left behind, and even spacing out completely on dates with Dee (the last fortunately far less frequent than his other lapses of attention). JJ had relished "borrowing" small items from Ryo from time to time, and returning them a few days later with Ryo apparently none the wiser. It wasn't that stealing from Ryo had presented any particular challenge -- Drake and Dee and Ted themselves all regularly raided Ryo's desk for spare change and snacks -- but, for JJ, each instance of illicit possession had nonetheless felt like a tiny triumph: learning so much about Ryo, however trivial or tangential, had allowed him to feel as though he was uniquely and intimately connected to Ryo's life -- which, by extension, had let him persuade himself that he was uniquely and intimately connected to Dee as well.
There was only so much self-delusion even he could stomach, however, and he'd finally reached his limit right around the time Ryo moved in with Dee. He had attended a brunch where he'd blithely remarked to a friend how So-and-So needed to realize she was no longer as cute as she thought she was, and the friend had bluntly replied, "Takes one to know one -- you're not getting any younger yourself." The casually cruel remark had suddenly jolted him into truly seeing his behavior from Dee and Ryo's perspectives: he had been so intent on being adoring, adorable, and memorable that he hadn't been able to recognize -- much less accept -- that those very same actions had come across to Dee for more than a decade as creepy and tiresome. For the first time in his life, he had assessed his own actions from the vantage point of someone neutral -- the same stance he generally maintained toward the rest of his detective work, but which he hadn't previously thought to apply toward his unrequited attraction to Dee -- and what he'd seen had made him wish he'd possessed some sort of magical eraser for all his interactions with Dee since their academy days. It was humiliating to realize that Dee and Ryo would never see him without the baggage of a thousand unrequited passes, and that it was all his own doing -- it wasn't as though Dee hadn't conveyed his dismay and frustration at the persistence and intensity of JJ's affection each time JJ had attempted to vault through Dee's resistance.
JJ smiled faintly to himself as he gazed at Ryo's desk, his mind darting among various highlights in his relationships with Dee, Ryo, and Drake. The past couldn't be wholly forgotten, but it could pushed firmly into the background by one's present behavior, and he was so clearly good for Drake -- in a way he'd never managed to be for Dee -- that it did him good: to have his natural inclination to fuss and to fawn be rewarded with appreciation rather than contempt was a heady feeling he never wanted to lose. Directing it at Drake instead of Dee had also significantly improved his level of camaraderie with both Dee and Ryo: Dee no longer actively avoided him, and seemed less prone to using JJ as a target for his periodic, outsized outbursts of rage; Ryo remained polite and cool and hard to read, but JJ nonetheless fancied that his former rival had incrementally thawed towards him: regularly-getting-laid-Ryo seemed much more able to take a joke, and was even occasionally willing to dish back what he got, judging from the thoroughness with which JJ and Drake's office had gotten swathed with the Billy Joel toilet paper.
So yes, things had worked out for the best, in general. But there were still some ugly moments among all of them: there was Dee being Dee and thus incurably rude, especially when he felt tense or threatened. There was Ryo being Ryo, who was seldom rude on purpose but who sometimes managed to offend people out of sheer goody-two-shoed cluelessness. There was Drake being a terminal slob, inadvertently inflicting cigarette burns and coffee stains upon JJ's clothes and other belongings. There was Ted being a chronic worrywart: his tendency to dwell upon every potential angle to a situation was one of his strengths as a detective, and it helped make him a whiz at debugging anything technology-related, but it also sometimes paralyzed him when he needed simply to plow ahead with a plan. There was Alex Yoshizumi, who was as brash as Dee and as hardworking as Ryo -- working with him sometimes felt like being trapped with a profane Energizer bunny.
And there was JJ being himself, which meant he tended to say too much and feel too much, and to remind people of the very things he wanted them to forgive and forget for the sake of a quick quip or a moment's laugh. It meant that he constantly craved the pleasure of being memorable: his dyed hair, his superlative sharpshooting skills, and his strident pursuit of Dee were all facets of the same insatiable hunger for attention. And it meant that even though he was largely content with his current relationship, he still sometimes fell prey to the urge to collect all the information he could about his old crushes, former boyfriends, and in Ryo's case, onetime rival.
He no longer permitted himself to take anything from Ryo's desk without Ryo's express permission -- the chances of getting caught were exponentially higher now that Drake had unlimited access to JJ's own belongings, and the increasingly diminished sense of power he'd once extracted out of possessing Ryo's possessions (however temporarily and no matter how trivial) was not worth the potential fallout. Nevertheless, it was an addiction that JJ couldn't completely shake. Learning about every case Ryo was working on somehow made JJ feel like he was supporting Ryo's successes, even when he wasn't directly involved with the investigations in question, and no matter how sternly he chastised himself on the sheer absence of logic in that particular emotional equation. Retrieving Ryo's spare glasses or vial of prescription antacids was not a task JJ was ever likely to receive, but he still liked the fact that he knew where Ryo stored such things. It had let him glimpse snapshots of Dee that Ryo had never shared publicly -- all technically work-safe, but still unmistakably photos taken by a lover rather than a mere friend.
As he rifled through Ryo's in-tray, JJ wasn't expecting much in the way of surprises. He recognized some of its contents as memos and junk mail he hadn't gotten around to sifting out of his own in-box. There was paperwork for three new cases and two ongoing inquiries, an envelope from the Property Clerk Division, a receipt from one of the dispatchers who'd apparently sold to Ryo three pies (one cherry, one pecan, one pumpkin) on behalf of her daughter's band, and -- hel-lo, JJ thought, as a fat, unmarked file practically flipped itself open. What in the world?
He stared at the file and its contents for a long, long time, and finally let out a low, disbelieving whistle. "Brilliant of you, Ryo. Storing it in the one place on your desk where Dee would never look..." He pulled his cellphone out of his vest and punched Ryo's speed-dial code. When the other detective picked up, he said, "It's JJ. Your instructions were fine, I found the file right away. ...Never mind that for now, I have a different question you need to answer."
"Sure, JJ. What's come up?"
JJ hauled in a deep breath before continuing, all too aware of what he himself was about to reveal. "That's quite a collection of threats you've received from Darlington's brother. Were you planning to tell Dee about them sometime this century?"
Part 3
Author: bronze_ribbons
Word count for part 2: a bit over 6800 words
A/N: Apologies for the wait!
Part 1
Part 2
The second pair of handcuffs arrived two days later, in an envelope identical to the one used for the previous mailing. As before, the label was addressed to Ryo, but it was Dee who arrived home first from work that day. When he saw the packet, he didn't bother heading up to their apartment; instead, he snatched it up, sprinted out of the building, and hailed a cab straight back to the precinct station.
* * *
Ryo was squinting at the screen of his laptop when Ted poked his head through the doorway. "I'm calling in to Don and Joni's. You and Dee want anything?"
"Stromboli, for me." Ryo reached for his wallet and handed Ted a twenty. "Dee's not here -- he left at three."
Ted blinked. "He did? I just saw him ten minutes ago, terrorizing the new lab tech."
Ryo frowned. "That's...weird. We've got everything we need for the Subbarow case... Griaule's, that's open and shut... the Lomond murder, that's a total fiasco, but he knows that's not the lab's fault. He wouldn't be back here just for that..."
"Whatever it is, it's got him spitting nails," Ted said. "The tech wasn't getting in a single word edgewise."
"Just what I need," Ryo groaned. "Santiago on my tail."
Santiago was the head of the lab and fiercely protective of her subordinates. Ted's grin was both knowing and sympathetic. "She expecting you to keep Dee in line?"
Ryo cast a wary, weary glance at the telephone and pulled off his glasses. "I'll walk with you to DJ's, if you don't mind. She'll probably be on the horn any minute now, and I'm really not in the mood to explain again that Dee is not my job."
"Damn right I'm not your job," Dee said, materializing at Ted's shoulder. "I'm way more fun than a job."
"Modest, too," Ryo said drily.
"Modesty's a copout," Dee declared. "It's people who know what they want who get what they want."
Ryo opened his mouth to snap out a comeback, but no words came out: his mind had leaped back to the start of their partnership -- and to how fast and completely he'd fallen once he'd finally let himself want Dee with all his heart.
Ted hastily muttered, "I'll tell Don to make it two strombolis. See you guys in a while," and retreated down the hall.
Dee kicked the door shut, his eyes never leaving Ryo's face. They were blazing with a wild possessiveness that, once upon a time, Ryo would have found alarming.
These days, he found it hot beyond belief.
Closed door notwithstanding, though, they were at work. Ryo met Dee's stare with his own. "If the phone rings, it's yours."
"I'm off the clock."
"Then what the hell are you doing here?"
Dee disgustedly flung the new pair of handcuffs onto Ryo's desk. "So far, finding out diddly-squat."
Ryo winced as the metal clanged against the hard surface. "Dee, do you mind?" He scooped up the cuffs just before they skidded into his lap, holding them up for a closer look.
"Elegant," Ryo finally said.
"Not a damn print anywhere on 'em. Not a single stray fiber or speck inside the envelope or on its seal." Dee growled. "Some asshole is completely up to no good."
"I won't argue with that," Ryo said. "I wish you hadn't harassed the lab, though. It could have waited."
"Dude, once is creepy, twice is a threat."
"Not always," Ryo objected. "It could just be someone with a warped, overly subtle sense of humor. If I wanted to drive me crazy, I'd come up with something like this."
"No, you wouldn't," Dee retorted. "You'd be much more efficient about Operation Mortify Ryo. You'd get the packages sent to here, and you'd rig it so that they'd arrive artistically torn, so that everyone would see them before you ever a chance to hide 'em. And they'd be covered in turquoise fur --"
"Dear God --"
"--with rhinestone studs and a 'Stairway to Heaven' soundchip in the keyhole--"
"Dee, how do you know about handcuffs like -- no, wait, forget I asked. I don't actually want to know."
"Liar," Dee cheerfully said. "You adore me and you want to know everything."
Ryo set the handcuffs back down. "You're right, I do," he admitted. His lips twitched as he glimpsed the flare of delight in Dee's eyes; he found it both absurd and touching that he could make his partner so happy with such a simple acknowledgment.
It also secretly frightened him: it was not the kind of power he had ever wanted over anyone else. That Dee mattered to him more than anything was far less problematic: it was true that it had taken an inordinately long time and a talking-to from Diana for him to come to terms with his attraction to Dee, but he had never regretted finally crossing that Rubicon. Dee was brash, boisterous, and a hundred other things Ryo had never pictured himself finding tolerable -- never mind desirable -- in his pre-Dee fantasies of a romantic companion, and Dee's antics regularly complicated his life in too many ways to count, but there was also not a single shred of doubt in Ryo's mind that Dee was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It wasn't just the addictive bliss of soul-stealing kisses or the bone-melting gratification of great sex: it was how, with Dee, he hadn't lost who he was, but become more himself rather than less. Dee seldom let him get away with the excuses or evasions he automatically resorted to whenever he tried to escape his memories or deny his feelings, whether they were about victims he couldn't save or his tendency to play the martyr whenever things weren't going his way. Dee was himself a casual, habitual liar where everyday convenience was concerned -- just the day before, Ryo had caught him blatantly fibbing about a dental appointment -- but he was heartstoppingly blunt when something or someone mattered enough to him, and being anything he thought Ryo truly needed clearly mattered above anything else.
Ryo compressed his lips, remembering how Dee had saved him from himself the night he'd pointed his gun at Leo Grant. How Dee had charged to his rescue during a trip to England. He recalled a night not long after Bikky had left for college, when he'd been jumped by a newly-released felon -- one who'd nursed a ferocious grudge against Ryo all through his stay in the hoosegow -- and how Dee had appeared on the scene within seconds, having chosen to stalk Ryo's stalker instead of heading home to sleep, which had been what he'd told Ryo he'd be doing. Ryo owed Dee his life several times over -- and it bugged him more than he cared to admit. The Japanese side of him was hugely resistant to carrying any sort of debt, and as much as he loved his Aunt Elena and Uncle Rick, there was a part of him that would always feel he should have been able to handle his parents' deaths on his own, even though he wouldn't have expected it of anyone else on earth. It was the part of him that steadily rebuilt his savings each time they were depleted by emergencies and other major expenditures, and it was the part of him that couldn't help wondering what in the world Dee saw in him that made him worth the trouble. Sure, Ryo cooked and cleaned more often than not, but Dee was no slouch at either when he felt like it, and there were plenty of other people he could have seduced into keeping house had that been his priority. Ryo had been stuck with more than his share of the paperwork throughout their partnership, but that had been his fate throughout grade school as well -- he'd been the smart, goody-goody kid repeatedly saddled with slackers and jokers on group projects, and they'd always taken his efforts for granted; Ryo didn't think Dee was any different from them in that regard, so that couldn't be the basis for Dee's enduring devotion. It certainly wasn't Ryo's ability to express affection -- Ryo didn't have it in him to be romantic or glib, and he sometimes feared that his lover would someday come to his senses and transfer his attentions to someone much more in sync with his style. Ryo knew Dee would never actually do that to him, but it nonetheless nagged at him at times like these: what had he done to deserve Dee's passionate commitment to him, and was he doing enough--
"You've gone quiet again," Dee said.
"I'm thinking of how impossible you're going to be until we sort this out," Ryo lightly said, gesturing to the handcuffs.
"I'm impossible?" Dee snorted. "You're the one with the freakin' 'kiss me or kill me' vibe!"
"I -- I am not!" Ryo sputtered. "And even if I were, it doesn't mean it has anything to do with -- with whatever the heck these are about!"
"I will bet my left nut--"
"Could you please wager something not already on offer?" Ryo snapped. Then his cheeks turned crimson as he realized what he'd just said.
Dee burst out laughing. "You're right," he said, as he walked around to Ryo's side of the desk. "It's not a real bet when I want you to take--"
"Dee, we're at work. Stuff your tongue back into your skull and--"
Dee licked the underside of Ryo's earlobe, and his hand snaked down to cup Ryo through his slacks. "I want you to do this to me," he purred, his fingers pressing firmly against the fabric, seeking the curve of Ryo's balls.
"I'm not doing a damn thing to you other than chaining you to your desk," Ryo panted. His eyes were sparkling with both fury and arousal as he squirmed against Dee's hands and lips.
"If you insist," Dee crooned. "But only after I'm done with--"
"Dee, could you postpone molesting your partner until he's finished picking through my pics?" Alex Yoshizumi sauntered into the office, arms laden with carryout bags and a cardboard tray of soft drinks. He grinned as Ryo's desperate shove sent Dee sprawling onto the floor.
Dee glared at Alex. "Goddammit, whelp, didn't your elders ever teach you how to knock?"
The younger detective smirked as he set the food down on Dee's desk. "Of course they did, old man. I learned the not-knocking part from you."
"You reap what you sow," Ted intoned, walking in with his own dinner. "Serves you right for corrupting children, Dee."
Alex was in his second year at the precinct; he'd spent his first six months as Dee's partner, during Ryo's stint as a police academy instructor. He genially flipped Ted off as he said to Ryo, "Sorry to rush you, man, but O'Leary wants to go over my notes in an hour."
"Not a problem," Ryo said. He poked a button on his laptop and gestured at the reactivated screen. "I was looking at the last one when Dee dropped in. You can tell O'Leary I didn't see anything you didn't."
"Phooey," Alex said. "I mean, yay me for not missing anything, but I wanted to be done with this case. I was hoping the magic Maclean look-see would do the trick."
"I hate to break it to you, Alex, but you're probably actually getting better at your scene analyses. Clues don't just materialize because I'm the one looking."
"Oh, but they do," Alex claimed, grinning. "I learned that from your partner too."
"You see what I had to put up with?" Dee said to Ryo. "Never again."
"He's totally lying, kid," Ted said to Alex. "If Ryo skips back to teaching, that door so has your name on it."
"It wasn't horrible," Ryo said, "but I'd much rather be here. I'd only go back if I got hurt that bad again." He'd opted to become one of the academy's Social Science instructors during his recovery from a badly broken leg, choosing the novelty of preparing lectures over the known tedium of extended desk duty.
"If you ever go back, I'm going with you," Dee growled. "I'll get them to put me in Tactics or Gym."
"Ryo Maclean, you owe it to the public to stay healthy," Ted declared. "We can't let Dee near the recruits, the graduation rate's already at a record low."
"Graduation rate be damned," Dee said. "They're letting through too many morons as it is. The Lomond case is completely hosed because Darlington's a fucking tool with his head so far up his ass he can't --"
"Dee, chill," Ryo commanded. "Don't ruin a good meal by bringing up Darlington."
"You really are a catty bitch," Alex said to Ryo.
Ryo coolly replied, "It's how I am. Deal with it."
"Hey, hey, I'm not disagreeing with you." Alex tossed the pickle spear that had come with his sandwich onto Dee's stromboli wrapper. "Darlington's pretty, but he's dumber than a bag of hair. There's no friggin' way he made detective without some sort of greasin' up --"
"Pipe down," Ted hissed, darting a glance toward the open door. "Darlington does have friends here. Russell and Peckham are just down the hall."
Alex didn't lower his voice as he stated, "They're morons too. Someone's gonna get killed or maimed around that pack of clowns, and I hope to God I'm out of range when that happens."
Ted said, "You and Dee have spent way, way, way too much time together."
"He was like that when we got him," Dee said. "Also, he's right. I don't trust those fuckwits any further than I can spit."
"I'm so scared, Laytner," scoffed a supercilious voice from the doorway. "Though you're such a yokel, you probably spit like a champion."
"Want me to demonstrate, Russell?" Dee shot back.
"Save it for your Japanese boys," Russell sneered. "You must be good at bangin' them -- there's no other reason why they'd keep hauling your ass out of hot water."
"You son of a--" Alex barreled into Ted, who had swiftly stepped in front of him. Ryo had likewise gotten to his feet, ready to leap between Dee and the door if need be, but Dee had remained seated. He met the challenge in Ryo's stare with a slight shake of his head.
"Whipped," Russell taunted.
Dee ignored him, saying to Ryo, "Give me a little credit here. He's not worth me getting into trouble with you."
"So prissy little Maclean can kick your ass, huh?" Russell suggested.
"Stow it," Dee snarled. "Ryo's prettier than you'll ever be, but that's got nothing to do with your dick being smaller than a crayon."
Alex snickered. Ted sighed. Ryo muttered, "Oh, for crying out loud, I don't have time for this" as he sat back down and turned to his laptop.
Russell regarded Ryo with contempt. "Why don't you go back to the academy, then? You had plenty of time there to tattle on everyone you didn't like."
"My, my, aren't we quick with old gossip," Ryo calmly said, typing.
"You ruined a dozen careers with your power trips," Russell insisted.
"You flatter me."
"I bet you pull Star Cards from Laytner to get it up."
Ryo reached for the phone. "That's quite an imagination you've got, Russell. Care to share your major mental images with the Lou? I'm dialing his extension right now."
"You're such a fucking showoff," Russell snapped, but he'd vanished from the doorway by the time Lt. O'Leary's voice boomed, "Yes, Maclean?" through Ryo's handset.
"I've got a stromboli I'm not going to have time to eat," Ryo said. "You want Yoshizumi to bring it to you? No problem, sir, I'm glad it won't be going to waste. See you later, sir."
The room was dead silent as he hung up. Ted found his voice first. "So that's how to get first grade, huh? Cozying up to the commanders with food?"
Ryo shrugged. "It wouldn't kill you guys to be nice to them."
"But that was your dinner," Dee pointed out. "What are you going to do for yourself now?"
Ryo closed the lid of his laptop. "I was thinking my partner could treat me to something. Since the real reason I won't be eating this is because I'm escorting him home."
Dee's face lit up. "Do I believe my ears? Sandra Dee Maclean about to play hooky?"
"I didn't say I wouldn't be working." Ryo tucked an overstuffed accordion folder under his arm as he stood up. "I'll get more done if Santiago doesn't catch me here."
"Yet more proof that Russell's a total loser. He ran away from you, and you're running away from a girl," Alex teased.
Ryo's smile was sharp. "I seem to recall someone begging me not to leave him with Nurse Emiry just last month, and it wasn't Dee."
Yoshizumi protested, "She doesn't count! She's built like a rhinoceros and twice as mean!"
Ryo's smile became even more needle-bright. "And do you remember what Diana Spacey had to say when you said that in her hearing?"
Yoshizumi blanched and held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, I get it, I'm a loser too. But Russell's made of much more lose, and Darlington's the loser-est of them all."
Ryo lobbed the bag containing his DJ's order at the younger detective. "Take that to the Lou, please, and lose the attitude already. We've still got to work with those guys."
Alex turned to Dee. "Does he ever stop?"
Dee trilled, "It's what I love about you Japanese boys, didn't you know? You're so sweet and soft and submissive and -- ow!" The book Ryo had hurled at him bounced off his shoulder as he doubled over laughing, and his hands clutched the bag Alex had pitched at his face.
Ted shook his head. "Ryo, I don't know about sending that lunch to O'Leary. It probably looks more like salad than stromboli by now."
"Then I guess the children will have to explain why, won't they?" Ryo already had a foot out the door. "Dee, I'll meet you out front when you're done. I'm gonna check in with Drake and JJ, see what they got from interrogating Tellerman."
"Ryo, wait up, I'll -- dammit." Dee slumped back into his chair as the sound of Ryo's footsteps receded down the hall.
Ted fished a receipt and a couple of bills out of a pocket and handed them to Dee. "I've said it before -- you're the craziest son of a bitch on the squad, but Ryo's even more 'work my own way' than you."
Dee grinned as he tossed the receipt into a wastecan and folded the bills into his wallet. "Am I hearing you say that Ryo is more obnoxious?"
"I'm saying he's more dangerous," Ted soberly answered. Dee and Alex looked at him in surprise, both taken aback at the tired anxiety coloring his words. "You and Yosh, you're bigger pains in the ass, but you're like that on purpose -- you've got your guard up and your guns cocked when you go around smacking people's buttons and yanking their chains. Ryo's more scary than either of you because half of the time he doesn't have a clue that he's pissing people off -- and the rest of the time, he does, but he doesn't take them seriously enough to realize how much he's pissed them off. He's so into whatever he's doing at any given moment that he totally fails to notice when he's cut off someone's dick because it happened to be in the way -- and then he gets blindsided by how they go all triple batshit on him because their asses got handed to them by someone who looks like a kindergarten teacher."
Dee's eyebrows had nearly climbed into his scalp during his colleague's tirade. "Ted, my friend, you're thinking yourself into a tizzy again --"
"My kindergarten teacher was much meaner than Ryo," Alex said, in a tone of cheerful nostalgia. "I've never forgiven her for confiscating my laser pointer."
"A laser -- what the hell were you doing in preschool with that?" Dee demanded.
"Trying to impress the chicks," Alex admitted. "It was school, so I was bored out of my mind, so I nicked it from my mom's desk."
Ted's incredulous stare matched Dee's. "You were already after girls when you were five?"
"What can I say? I was a precocious little punk," Alex said, looking far too proud of that fact.
"Speaking of which, shouldn't you be legging this over to O'Leary's?" Dee threw the carryout sack back at the younger man.
Alex easily fielded the bag, wincing as he heard its contents rustle a little too loosely for comfort. "I'll just have to tell him I ran into Ted, and that's why it looks so bad."
Ted looked both amused and exasperated. "Why don't you pretend it's Russell in the doorway again, and I'll give you a few more bruises to show off?" A gleam appeared in his eye as he added, "In the old days, we could've just given JJ a call, and then positioned you right in front of Dee--"
Dee shuddered as he walked over to Ryo's desk. "Thank you, Lord, for mercies large and small /And bless all Thy creatures, the short and the tall..." The handcuffs jingled as he picked them up.
Alex automatically turned his head toward the sound as he headed toward the door. As he caught sight of the manacles, he stopped in his tracks, leaning toward Dee for a closer look. "Is that a pair of Adams handcuffs? What's Ryo doing with those?"
"Adams?" Dee narrowed his eyes. "These are JJ's?"
"I doubt that specific pair is his," Alex said, frowning at Dee's sudden intensity. "The pair I saw was in his guestroom, mounted in an antique shadowbox frame. Some uncle ten or fifteen 'great's back came up with the design."
Dee exhaled angrily. "So I've still got nada on these," he said, rattling the handcuffs.
"Ryo's already looked them over?" At Dee's nod, Alex continued, "He's slipping, man. First my pics and now your cuffs -- that's two sets of clues he's failed to coax out of thin air. The Maclean mojo is not in the house today. Did he forget to sacrifice a dozen sunflowers to the gods? Is there something we need to -- Ulp. Um, hi sir." He grinned weakly at Lieutenant O'Leary, who had silently appeared in the doorway.
"Is that my lunch that's mangled between your mitts, you mutt?" Alex immediately handed him the now sad-looking sack of food. O'Leary unrolled the top of the bag and peered into it with an air of resigned apprehension. Rolling it closed again, he thrust it at Alex and said, "Do me a favor -- go find a plate for this and put in the nuker for a couple minutes. And rinse the fork and the knife in the bag while you're there. I'll meet you back in my office in ten."
"Yes, sir!" O'Leary neatly stepped aside as Alex scurried out.
"And Russell's giving me shit about my Japanese harem?" Dee said.
O'Leary coolly asked, "Are you planning to report him?"
"Hell, no. That'd waste my time more than his. All they'll do is make the guy take a class, and he'll still be an asshole once he's done with it."
"Then save your bitching for someone who cares," O'Leary said. "Which isn't me -- and right now isn't your partner, either. He's not real happy about Santiago storming into Parker and Adams's office to corner him there."
"Oh, great," Dee muttered. "That's my whole night down the drain. I'll be lucky if he's speaking to me again before breakfast."
The lieutenant leaned against the frame of the door, his arms folded. "Laytner, I seem to recall that you're not a moron, even though you keep acting like one. You yell at the labbies, they whine to Santiago. Santiago takes it out on Maclean, Maclean goes sub-zero on you. You know by now that that's what's going to happen, so why the hell do you still do this to yourself?"
"Can I help it that Santiago can't save it for someone who cares?"
"If it's urgent enough to light fires under Santiago's crew, I ought to already know what it's about."
"If I knew what the fuck was going on, I wouldn't need to lean on the damn lab," Dee countered. He held the handcuffs out to his superior. "Ryo's started receiving some jewelry in the mail. Sender unknown."
"A new secret admirer? Already?" O'Leary inspected the cuffs, scowling. "Parker just turned in the paperwork on the last one." He turned a gimlet glare upon Ted. "And what are you finding so funny?"
Ted gamely admitted, "It's how you said 'Already,' sir. It reminded me of Ryo's reaction the time you told him he was catnip for kooks."
"Well, he is," O'Leary irritably grunted, but a corner of his mouth had twitched upward. "Present company not excepted."
"Present company doesn't give a flying fuck what you call it," Dee snapped. "All the other kooks need to take a hike. Preferably off the Tappan Zee."
"I'm sure the feeling's mutual," the lieutenant said, handing the cuffs back to Dee. "I know you've got nine lives, Laytner, but try not to get baited into wasting any of them while you're watching out for Maclean. We don't have the budget or the time to fish either of you out of the Hudson." He turned to Ted again. "Consider yourself Laytner's backup for this."
Dee bristled. "I don't need a babysitter."
"Funny you should say that." O'Leary allowed himself a sardonic smile. "You sound just like Maclean when he thinks you're hovering. Later, gentlemen."
"I do not hover!" Dee yelled down the hall.
"The hell you don't!" a boyish voice shouted back.
"Like you're one to talk, JJ!" Dee bellowed, hastily retreating back into the office. His attempt to slam the door collided with 130 pounds of flying sharpshooter, its panels and hinges rattling dangerously. JJ merrily picked himself up off the floor and dusted off his clothes before looking over at Dee, who had taken refuge behind Ryo's desk.
"I should start doing more of that again," JJ said, his eyes alight with wicked glee. "That was way more fun than what my trainer put me through this morning."
"I'll put you through this window if you do," Dee threatened. "Then Drake will kill me for killing you, and O'Leary won't kill Drake, but he'll make him mentor our replacements, and that will make Drake wish O'Leary had simply killed him after all, so he'll go get blind drunk and then piss on your grave, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"
Ted said, "You're missing a step. Ryo would kill Drake before the Lou got around to it."
Dee shook his head. "No, Ryo wouldn't go that far."
"For you, he would," JJ countered.
"No," Dee reiterated. "Trust me on this. Killing for revenge is a line Ryo won't ever cross."
He thought he had been doing a good job of keeping his voice matter-of-fact, but Ted and JJ exchanged a startled look. Shit. But before Dee could come up with something to steer the topic elsewhere, Ted mused aloud, "He's been stuck with you what, ten, eleven years? And you're both still alive..."
JJ snickered. Dee gritted out, "Just what are you getting at?"
"You're a psycho and a pest," Ted flatly stated. "If Ryo ever does shoot you, all he'll have to do is plead temporary sanity and the jury will find for him."
"And O'Leary appointed you as my nanny? I feel so reassured."
"O'Leary what?" JJ looked bemused but unsurprised. "Oh, Dee, what did you do now?"
"Time for a coffee break," Ted said, forestalling Dee's response. "Let's head over to Ninth Street. Dee's gonna bring us up to date on Ryo's latest set of love tokens, and after that, he can bring back a latte to calm his darling down."
"We can skip the walk," Dee growled. "There's nothing to tell, and Ryo'll just dump the drink over my head."
"Ryo would not," JJ said. "Too messy. Though Santiago was really shrill today -- he might be pissed off enough not to care. Especially if he's hit that mood where he wants an excuse to stay snippy with you."
Ted had been studying Dee while JJ talked. "Something about this is freaking you out more than usual," he said. "You'd normally be all over any scrap of a clue, no matter how random it might seem. Either this isn't really about Ryo, or you're getting as dumb as you are loud."
Dee hotly flung back, "Maybe I just don't wanna discuss stalkers around someone who stalked me."
A sudden hush fell among the three detectives. At Dee's words, JJ's eyes had instantly brimmed with tears, but he furiously blinked them back as he said, "Whatever you want, Dee. I'll just go back to work, and Drake can --"
"No, JJ, we need you on this one. You're the one who's our resident expert on these," Ted cut in, extricating the Adams cuffs from Dee's unresisting grasp.
"What the..." JJ automatically accepted the cuffs from Ted, his demeanor shifting from "hurt" to "professional" as if someone had flipped a switch. "Did they come with a key?"
"No," Dee rasped out, not quite looking at JJ.
"Polished steel... 1862 patent stamp... I saw a pair of these listed at 300 bucks in a catalog not too long ago. That was for mint condition, though, with a reproduction key... You bullied the lab into taking glamour shots of these, right? E-mail them to me, I'll start asking around -- my Aunt Abby's the historian in the family, she follows most of the collecting gossip and she'll have heard if there's a pair of these gone AWOL. Do you have photos of the other stuff Ryo's received?" At Dee's shake of his head, JJ tsked. "Ted's right, you are off your game. Don't go hassling the lab again -- Ted can take care of it."
Dee nodded in agreement: Ted had long ago proven he was ahead of the rest of them when it came to all things related to computers; he had a knack for selecting the best settings on any digital camera he got his hands on, such that even his basic, no-frills, off-the-cuff snapshots looked miles better than anything anyone else in their circle could usually manage. Dee ran a hand through his hair and then reached for his pack of cigarettes. "Let's go," he said. "JJ, you wanna pick up Drake and meet us out front?"
"No, I've got stuff I need to get back to," JJ said, his voice even. "You guys take Drake along and bring back a Coke for me when you're done."
"10-4," Dee briskly said, and headed out the door. Ted trailed behind him, pausing to look at JJ with open concern.
"It's okay," JJ reassured him. "Honest. Shoo!" Ted's expression lightened into an answering smile and he hurried out after Dee.
As the footsteps of his colleagues receded down the hall, JJ's smile faded. He stepped over to Ryo's desk and quickly shuffled through the second stack of folders from its right edge, easily locating the one on Tellerman's aunt that Ryo had advised him to retrieve. His original mission completed, JJ lingered in front of the desk, surveying Ryo's neat row of sticky-notes, the magnets clinging to the side of the file cabinet, and the easel-style desk calendar from the NYPD union; from a previous snoop-around, JJ happened to know that a snapshot of Dee, Bikky, and Carol was tucked securely inside the calendar, behind the panel for "December."
JJ sighed sadly, knowing he was about to succumb once more to one of his most private, guiltiest compulsions: periodically prowling through the contents of Ryo's desk. It was a habit he had first indulged in soon after the episode where he'd spied Dee planting a kiss on Ryo at the shooting range: he'd wanted so desperately to figure out what on earth Ryo possessed that Dee found so irresistible, and analyzing Ryo's belongings in-depth had seemed as good a way as any to cater to his mind's insistence on dwelling upon everything to do with Dee. After a while, it had become less about the hope for answers and more about the fun of getting away with it: Ryo was notorious for his uber-neat, order-loving ways, but he was also legendarily, astoundingly lax about keeping tabs on his belongings. JJ hadn't personally believed the yarn that had buzzed around for a while about Ryo's foster son, Ryo's stun gun, and a bear, but he'd witnessed Ryo misplacing coffeemugs, making return trips for jackets left behind, and even spacing out completely on dates with Dee (the last fortunately far less frequent than his other lapses of attention). JJ had relished "borrowing" small items from Ryo from time to time, and returning them a few days later with Ryo apparently none the wiser. It wasn't that stealing from Ryo had presented any particular challenge -- Drake and Dee and Ted themselves all regularly raided Ryo's desk for spare change and snacks -- but, for JJ, each instance of illicit possession had nonetheless felt like a tiny triumph: learning so much about Ryo, however trivial or tangential, had allowed him to feel as though he was uniquely and intimately connected to Ryo's life -- which, by extension, had let him persuade himself that he was uniquely and intimately connected to Dee as well.
There was only so much self-delusion even he could stomach, however, and he'd finally reached his limit right around the time Ryo moved in with Dee. He had attended a brunch where he'd blithely remarked to a friend how So-and-So needed to realize she was no longer as cute as she thought she was, and the friend had bluntly replied, "Takes one to know one -- you're not getting any younger yourself." The casually cruel remark had suddenly jolted him into truly seeing his behavior from Dee and Ryo's perspectives: he had been so intent on being adoring, adorable, and memorable that he hadn't been able to recognize -- much less accept -- that those very same actions had come across to Dee for more than a decade as creepy and tiresome. For the first time in his life, he had assessed his own actions from the vantage point of someone neutral -- the same stance he generally maintained toward the rest of his detective work, but which he hadn't previously thought to apply toward his unrequited attraction to Dee -- and what he'd seen had made him wish he'd possessed some sort of magical eraser for all his interactions with Dee since their academy days. It was humiliating to realize that Dee and Ryo would never see him without the baggage of a thousand unrequited passes, and that it was all his own doing -- it wasn't as though Dee hadn't conveyed his dismay and frustration at the persistence and intensity of JJ's affection each time JJ had attempted to vault through Dee's resistance.
JJ smiled faintly to himself as he gazed at Ryo's desk, his mind darting among various highlights in his relationships with Dee, Ryo, and Drake. The past couldn't be wholly forgotten, but it could pushed firmly into the background by one's present behavior, and he was so clearly good for Drake -- in a way he'd never managed to be for Dee -- that it did him good: to have his natural inclination to fuss and to fawn be rewarded with appreciation rather than contempt was a heady feeling he never wanted to lose. Directing it at Drake instead of Dee had also significantly improved his level of camaraderie with both Dee and Ryo: Dee no longer actively avoided him, and seemed less prone to using JJ as a target for his periodic, outsized outbursts of rage; Ryo remained polite and cool and hard to read, but JJ nonetheless fancied that his former rival had incrementally thawed towards him: regularly-getting-laid-Ryo seemed much more able to take a joke, and was even occasionally willing to dish back what he got, judging from the thoroughness with which JJ and Drake's office had gotten swathed with the Billy Joel toilet paper.
So yes, things had worked out for the best, in general. But there were still some ugly moments among all of them: there was Dee being Dee and thus incurably rude, especially when he felt tense or threatened. There was Ryo being Ryo, who was seldom rude on purpose but who sometimes managed to offend people out of sheer goody-two-shoed cluelessness. There was Drake being a terminal slob, inadvertently inflicting cigarette burns and coffee stains upon JJ's clothes and other belongings. There was Ted being a chronic worrywart: his tendency to dwell upon every potential angle to a situation was one of his strengths as a detective, and it helped make him a whiz at debugging anything technology-related, but it also sometimes paralyzed him when he needed simply to plow ahead with a plan. There was Alex Yoshizumi, who was as brash as Dee and as hardworking as Ryo -- working with him sometimes felt like being trapped with a profane Energizer bunny.
And there was JJ being himself, which meant he tended to say too much and feel too much, and to remind people of the very things he wanted them to forgive and forget for the sake of a quick quip or a moment's laugh. It meant that he constantly craved the pleasure of being memorable: his dyed hair, his superlative sharpshooting skills, and his strident pursuit of Dee were all facets of the same insatiable hunger for attention. And it meant that even though he was largely content with his current relationship, he still sometimes fell prey to the urge to collect all the information he could about his old crushes, former boyfriends, and in Ryo's case, onetime rival.
He no longer permitted himself to take anything from Ryo's desk without Ryo's express permission -- the chances of getting caught were exponentially higher now that Drake had unlimited access to JJ's own belongings, and the increasingly diminished sense of power he'd once extracted out of possessing Ryo's possessions (however temporarily and no matter how trivial) was not worth the potential fallout. Nevertheless, it was an addiction that JJ couldn't completely shake. Learning about every case Ryo was working on somehow made JJ feel like he was supporting Ryo's successes, even when he wasn't directly involved with the investigations in question, and no matter how sternly he chastised himself on the sheer absence of logic in that particular emotional equation. Retrieving Ryo's spare glasses or vial of prescription antacids was not a task JJ was ever likely to receive, but he still liked the fact that he knew where Ryo stored such things. It had let him glimpse snapshots of Dee that Ryo had never shared publicly -- all technically work-safe, but still unmistakably photos taken by a lover rather than a mere friend.
As he rifled through Ryo's in-tray, JJ wasn't expecting much in the way of surprises. He recognized some of its contents as memos and junk mail he hadn't gotten around to sifting out of his own in-box. There was paperwork for three new cases and two ongoing inquiries, an envelope from the Property Clerk Division, a receipt from one of the dispatchers who'd apparently sold to Ryo three pies (one cherry, one pecan, one pumpkin) on behalf of her daughter's band, and -- hel-lo, JJ thought, as a fat, unmarked file practically flipped itself open. What in the world?
He stared at the file and its contents for a long, long time, and finally let out a low, disbelieving whistle. "Brilliant of you, Ryo. Storing it in the one place on your desk where Dee would never look..." He pulled his cellphone out of his vest and punched Ryo's speed-dial code. When the other detective picked up, he said, "It's JJ. Your instructions were fine, I found the file right away. ...Never mind that for now, I have a different question you need to answer."
"Sure, JJ. What's come up?"
JJ hauled in a deep breath before continuing, all too aware of what he himself was about to reveal. "That's quite a collection of threats you've received from Darlington's brother. Were you planning to tell Dee about them sometime this century?"
Part 3