"You're looking to get shot in the face, Dee."
Dee frowned. Fine way to say "hello," what happened to all that imbued Japanese politeness that he'd been so enamored of in Ryo the first weeks they'd worked together?
He'd never approved of Caller ID, especially not in the MacLean residence.
"I don't see why you got Caller ID, anyway," he complained. He picked at a loose thread on his shirt and felt pathetically single and male; it was vaguely disconcerting because most of his life he'd prided himself on being unquestionably both.
Dee knew exactly why Ryo had gotten Caller ID, it had a lot to do with himself and telemarketers. Later, it had more to do with being able to see who Bikky had occupied himself talking to. "It's not like he's going to field calls from 1-900 porn numbers when you're not home," Dee had said, not that it made any difference because the MacLean got Caller ID and Dee was never free from persecution again.
"I got Caller ID so I could screen your calls after nine," Ryo said breezily, totally ignoring Dee's injured sound in the background. "Only it doesn't work if you hit redial eight times successively in what is obviously an attempt to get shot in the face."
Grinning, Dee said, "Hah! You're good, but you're not that good."
Ryo made a sound that meant Dee knew damn well he was.
"Anyway," Ryo said diplomatically. "Why did you call?"
Dee grinned leeringly, and he wrapped the phone cord around his fingertip. "Your new shirt was utterly ravishing, you know, Ryo--"
There was a loud click and Dee reflected that he also disapproved of hanging up on one's partner in the middle of a conversation.
It was true, though, Dee reflected later that night: Ryo was gorgeous.
Hot water from the shower sluiced down his body and he ran his hand absently over the scar on his leg; bullet badges, he'd told Ryo, when the fairer man had gotten the silent, closed-over expression of guilt that emerged every time Dee was hurt.
Dee remembered John Howard, the motherfucker, who'd been irresponsible, incompetent, and treated the twenty seventh precinct as a particularly tasteless rung to the top of the ladder. Dee had only been a tiny bit sorry that his so-called partner had taken an indefinite leave after having been found sexually harassing suspects, though Dee felt deeply for the harassed.
He remembered the speculation about which poor bastard would end up his partner thereafter, and when the news came in that someone was transferring in, all bets were off: curiosity was high, and Dee spent some quality time snooping, only to find accolades a-plenty in Ryo's file, and a poor photograph of the man. Dee remembered thinking that Randy MacLean was a pretty boy, the first time he'd sifted through Ryo's file; and when they'd met face to face, Dee had reconstructed his argument.
He was reconstructing it still.
Ryo seemed to change day by day, an ever-varying collection of traits and patterns and peripheral things. One morning he'd walk in sleepy and soft, less annoyed with Dee's inappropriate jokes, tugging his tie loose with one crooked finger and leaning into his chair, sipping coffee and allowing Dee to make an ass of himself, smiling wryly. Another, he'd be altogether different, ironed and starched, tight-lipped and irate, slamming down files and telling Dee to take things more seriously, and that Dee shouldn't joke about things he didn't mean. Ryo had a temper that flared up like a sudden fire, and then disappeared just as quickly, with a sheepish smile and a sincere apology, hands tucked in pockets as dark brown eyes looked away.
Those things that remained constant, however, were those that Dee clutched to his chest in obsessive memory:
Ryo always brushed his hair out of his with his left hand, carding three fingers through the chestnut brown bangs that always fell across his eyes. He did it hundreds of times a day, and never managed to notice any of the female officers or Dee entranced by it. Ryo had an oral fixation, and was forever chewing on the ends of pencils and pens or his lip with no other options, staring down at some piece of evidence with fine, envious concentration, while Dee watched Ryo's tongue dart out, and tried not to have to stand up. Ryo always smelled like a combination of the coffee he drank in the morning and Ivory soap, the pine-scented car-freshener from his car, and Bikky's school: pencils and notebooks and chalk.
Ryo was kind, infinitely so.
Dee catalogued and re-catalogued these facts and figures, falling images of his partner arranging themselves into neat folders in his mind, logged away for safekeeping the day that Ryo finally figured out that he had much more ahead of himself than a dead end precinct in the bad part of the city.
One day, Dee was sure, turning off the hot water and standing still a moment, feeling his skin steam, Ryo would move on to bigger and better things. Someone would eventually notice that Randy MacLean was one of the finest sharpshooters in North America, possessed of a fine investigative mind, and imbued with some sort of respectability that was difficult to find. They'd say, "Randy, you deserve more than this crummy desk with a broken drawer, and your pervert of a partner. Come with us. We'll treat you the way you deserve."
And then, Dee had promised himself, Dee would be happy for Ryo and never ask him to stay. It was the least that he could do.
But the here and now, Dee also knew, was what he lived for, and here and now, it was February fourteenth: New York was plastered with cheap ads for heart-candies and flowers, romantic getaways. It seemed that every single couple that lived in the great Manhattan area were all out on gross display, holding hands and being disgustingly happy with one another, always looking just on the cusp of rolling into bed with one another, or looking as if they'd just rolled out.
Dee was patently against Valentine's Day on general principle. Affection shouldn't be packaged into a weekend getaway, and love didn't restrict itself to any one day or even any one month. Mother had never said for him to find a nice girl, and treat her right mid February, one day of the year; then again, Dee thought ruefully, Mother had never said anything about finding a nice boy, either.
Some smartass at the precinct had cut red hearts out of fliers talking about workplace sexual harassment that had been posted all over the building a few weeks back, and taped one to the monitor on Dee's computer.
He rolled his eyes and shrugged off his coat, tugging the heart off his computer with a flick of his wrist and yelling, "That's funny, guys, really fucking bright." Dee threw it into his trash can with unnecessary force, and a few of the guys nearby whistled low and under the breath.
"And yet, still so apropos."
Files thudded onto the desk opposite his, and Dee smelled coffee strong in the air, and grinned, saying with a pout, "Aw, come on, partner. You're not supposed to be on their side."
Ryo, with the judicious condescension that Dee found only slightly less annoying than actual condescension, said, "I'm not on anybody's side. I'm simply making an observation."
Dee opened his mouth, but was interrupted when Drake walked by and clapped him on the arm, saying, "Hell, Laytner, don't push your luck. If I was your partner, I'd have pressed charges on day one and requested to transfer--" Drake looked at Ryo and laughed "--again."
"See, Dee," Ryo said with a mischievous smirk, "everyone recognizes my burden."
Dee fumed, and Drake walked over to Ryo, putting a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and sighing dramatically. "And what a burden it is," he said. "Tell me, Randy, how do you sleep through the night knowing this punk knows where you live?" He looked supremely concerned.
Ryo smirked and sipped his coffee, leveling a gaze at Dee that made him stop, and reorient himself. "Chastity belt," he said lightly, and as Drake laughed, Ryo added, "I think JJ was looking for you earlier, Drake."
Dee barely registered Drake leaving.
Ryo was wearing a dark blue shirt and black slacks, and new, silver wire-frame glasses sat on his nose that day. His tie was plain black silk and Dee resisted the urge to reach over and stroke his finger down the length of it, to feel the lines of Ryo's stomach underneath the cotton cloth.
He scowled.
Ryo blinked in surprise, and set down his coffee. "It was just a joke, Dee," he said gently.
"Like I give a shit about what Drake says," Dee growled. "What were you thinking when you got dressed this morning? Let's drive Dee insane?"
The tension in Ryo's shoulders dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, and the brunette rolled his eyes, settling into his chair. "Yes, that's exactly what I do every morning," Ryo said smoothly. "I get out of bed, glance through my closet, and plan my outfit to drive you to new levels of inappropriate workplace behavior."
"You know," Dee started, slipping around his desk and leaning over Ryo, one hand on his desk, one on Ryo's chair, trapping him, "I always forget how sexy it is when you're sarcastic."
He liked the proximity, the way that Ryo's pupils dilated, just so, as if in surprise or submission, a delicious combination of things that Dee had spent endless nights imagining, too tempting to ignore: what would it be like for Ryo MacLean to give in to him, and how sweet would it be?
Ryo sipped his coffee again and turned on his computer, ignoring him completely. "When are you going to grow up, Dee?" he asked, gentle and long-suffering, peering up at Dee with curiously calm blue eyes. "It's not funny anymore."
Dee stared at him, and wondered if it had ever been funny to begin with.
Over lunch in the greasy dive he visited for the sheer excess of it, Dee admitted that it had.
In the beginning, it was funny to see the way that Ryo colored when he made his jokes about hypothetical romantic rendezvous, better when he whispered in his partner's ears about illicit meetings in supply closets. It was while Dee couldn't decide whether or not Randy MacLean was simply extraordinarily closeted or just identified gay--regardless of his actual sexual orientation.
Later, Dee decided that he didn't care which. He just liked the way that Ryo laughed, low and sweet and sexy. He liked how Ryo read files, with steady, smooth fingers that stroked down along margins of a page. He liked how Ryo put it all out there, on the line--his neck, his heart, his better judgment--out of sheer, reasonless faith in Dee. The responsibility made Dee want to slow down, to carry the weight with better care.
And that was the reason, Dee reflected.
Dee was a classical die-hard romantic: constantly inspired into and out of love, and he had no doubt that his coworkers had done their part in informing Ryo of Dee's past exploits. And he couldn't deny his conquests. Many women who had fallen at his feet, week to a roguish smile and a tiny flash of gunmetal: each of them playing with fire they didn't know how to handle. Dee's limited attention span had never allowed for much courtship, just a vague sense of achievement before he made the standard apologies, falling into and out of love as quickly as he'd change his shirts.
But that was the problem with Ryo, he was no temporary amusement. In fact, Dee thought, the whole thing had stopped being funny years ago.
A far more fitting metaphor had appeared, Dee thought angrily, slamming down a ten dollar bill and grabbing his coat.
If Dee was a loaded gun, then Ryo knew exactly how to aim.
Ryo was on the phone when Dee reached the precinct again. The receiver was clutched between his shoulder and ear, sifting through the files on his desk busily as he said, "It depends on what you want it for."
Dee took a deep breath and flopped down into his seat, acknowledging Ryo's distracted wave with a bob of his chin.
Ryo listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone for a moment before a smirk crept across his face. Setting down the files, long fingers wrapped around the receiver and he uncoiled, one long, lean line of muscle and bone, until Dee could barely stand the fact that he could only watch, and not touch, not run a hand possessively down that arm, and wrap his fingers around Ryo's wrists to feel the pulse beneath the skin.
"In that case, fine," Ryo acquiesced, but with a warning in his voice, added, "But just this once." Grinning, he hung up the phone, and covered his face with his hands, as the smile bubbled into a laugh.
Dee raised his brows. "What's up?"
Ryo glanced up, and did not wipe the smirk from his face, "Guess who just asked for an advance on his allowance?"
"One of your many bastard offspring, I'm sure," Dee quipped.
Nodding cheerfully, Ryo agreed. "Bicky's panicking. I've never seen anyone that out of their mind for Valentine's day ever." Pausing to smirk knowingly at himself, Ryo added, "He must really like her. He's nearly crawling the walls of the apartment."
Snorting, Dee reached over to grab the nearest file from Ryo's desk. "That kid is so maladjusted."
"Don't tell me you've never been crazy for someone," Ryo said, entirely too smug. "You're just the type to go off the deep end for every other pretty girl you meet."
Opportunity knocking. "What about pretty boys?" Dee asked, leering.
Ryo ignored him. "I wonder what he's going to end up buying her." He laughed, carefree and sweet, cupping his chin in one palm. "Maybe flowers. Chocolate." He frowned. "He can't afford jewelry on his allowance," Ryo commented softly, and sounded regretful about it.
Dee threw a paperclip at him. "It's not your fault the punk doesn't get a part time job."
"I told him to focus on school," Ryo said. "So it's my fault for being a public servant."
"God, you're such a woman sometimes," Dee muttered, and read through the file in his hands. Double homicide, twenty-something gay couple, with "FAGGOTS" painted on the walls of their small, trendy Manhattan flat. He slammed it shut. "Why the fuck are you reading this shit?"
Ryo blinked, looked to the file in Dee's hands, and then looked back up.
"I was under the impression that was our job," he said lightly. "What is up with you today?"
Dee felt unsettled, annoyed. "Nothing," he started, and under Ryo's steady gaze, sighed and said, "What the hell is it with people and Valentine's day, anyway? What's the big fucking deal? It's fucking everywhere. And it's just this--this over-commercialized pagan excuse for goddamn Hallmark and fucking Hershey's to make a killing and--"
"--and I take it you're alone for Valentine's day this year," Ryo interrupted smoothly.
"I'll kill you," Dee said.
"It's hardly reason for you to throw a temper tantrum," Ryo said lightly.
Dee growled. "How are you so goddamn calm about this?"
Ryo being calm about Valentine's day when he was a wreck about Christmas and worried about whether or not to indoctrinate Bicky with the Christian religion on Easter--it was completely reasonless unless Ryo had no need to worry about Valentine's day. Of course, Dee realized, it all made perfect sense.
Ryo took off his glasses and set them on the desk lightly. "Okay, I can hear the gears grinding in your head, and that terrifies me." He leveled a blank stare at Dee. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing," Dee said defensively. And in an inelegant change of subject, he said, "So who's the lucky lady this Valentine's day?"
Ryo said, "Oh for the love of Christ," and went back to reading the files on his desk.
Dee had the subtlety of a stampede, and accepting what he could not change, he waited until eight thirty that night to stop circling the block around Ryo's apartment to go upstairs and try to peep through the crack of the door like a proper stalker.
At eight thirty-six, Ryo threw open the apartment door and shooed him in with an annoyed expression.
"Sorry for interrupting your Valentine's day," he said sullenly.
Shrugging, Ryo said, "It's not like I had a date or anything planned."
"Oh, I see."
Ryo poured him a mug of coffee and sighed. "What's bothering you, Dee?"
It was all those metaphors. The books and ties and guns and jokes that weren't funny. Ryo was too there, too effusive, spreading into every inch of Dee's life with a completeness that was disconcerting, claustrophobic, consistently present. There was no where to run from him and Dee found himself disturbingly content not to leave at all. He was turning into a blurb from a bad romance novel--a bad gay pulp romance novel.
"Do I register at all?" Dee blurted out to Ryo's surprised face. "I mean, am I even a blip on your radar? Do you just go home and laugh at the poor fag who you work with?"
Ryo frowned at him. "Firstly, don't use that word. And secondly, you're insane."
"And you're not answering the question," Dee shot back. "You can be honest."
"I live on the fourth floor," Ryo said sarcastically. "I'm just trying to make sure you're not going to throw yourself off my fire escape in one of your dramatic displays."
"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Dee said scowling.
"No," Ryo explained, "that means 'I'm trying to make sure you're not going to throw yourself off my fire escape in one of your dramatic displays.'" He sighed. "I've told you before, Dee. I can't just--I haven't--" He frowned at himself for a moment before admitting finally, prying the words from his chest, "I don't want to lead you on."
Dee stared. "And torturing me is so much better."
"You torture yourself," Ryo returned quickly, eyes narrowed. "You make all these presumptions about me, about us, and when they're not real you get angry. That's not me; that's all you."
"Why do you always have to be such a goddamn grown-up?" Dee muttered, throwing himself against the couch with all the silent vitriol of a seventeen year old.
"Someone has to," Ryo said through gritted teeth.
"Look," Dee growled, "I'm not exactly sure when we turned into a goddamn Lifetime movie, but I'm not liking it, all right?" Ryo rolled his eyes and nursed his coffee in annoyed silence. "Fucking Christ, MacLean. If you're straight, just say it. Just say, Dee, I'm not about the cock."
Ryo flinched, eyes darkening for a split-second.
And that was fascinating, how Ryo moved and reacted to things, like a wounded animal. Dee had come up with a multitude of reasons for Ryo's behavior over the years: his parents, his past, his first kill, which Ryo had related one night after eight shots of Absolut with a wry, horrible grin on his face. He talked about the splatter of gray-red on his hands, and how sometimes, he still found himself rubbing his palms along his thighs, trying to wipe it away as if he was still a stupid twenty-two year old cop on a particularly unfortunate beat in Chicago.
Excuses, all of them, for Ryo and for himself. It was easier to think that there were forgivable reasons why Ryo didn't say "yes" or "no," something beyond Ryo being cowardly and Dee lying to himself.
Crunch time, Dee decided, putting his foot down, force a little equilibrium; Ryo couldn't always have the upper hand, and Dee couldn't always be impatiently waiting for the cards to fall. He'd promised himself to let Ryo go if that was what he wanted, what he needed; but Dee needed to know, wanted something more than 'maybe.'
"Just say it," Dee demanded. "Just say you're not interested. Just say no."
"It's so easy for you, isn't it?" Ryo exploded. His head rocketed up, red-faced and shaking. "You're never conflicted over anything. You never regret it. You never need time to think about it because you don't fucking think about anything!"
Ryo slammed his mug on the table so hard Dee swore he heard the glass fracture.
"Because you've never had to think about how anything you did would affect anybody else," Ryo continued, voice raising. "Or if you had to, you didn't care. It never mattered to you. No one ever mattered but yourself. And you can push and push and push and expect me to be able to give you clear-cut answers when--"
He seemed to have lost momentum, the rage in his voice shaking into fragmented pieces, quivering defeat and exhaustion, and Dee finally realized that the pounding baseline noise he heard in the background was the terrified beating of his own heart, thudding against his ribcage.
"When I don't have them myself," Ryo finished in a whisper.
Dee hated himself.
He reached forward, hand careful where his mouth was never.
Ryo leaned back, neck against the edge of his sofa, covering his face with one arm.
"I'm a shithead," Dee whispered. "I'm such a shithead. Man, Ryo--Ryo, I'm so sorry, man."
"You go to hell," Ryo managed, voice thick with something just shy of tears.
Dee winced, pulling his hand away before fingertips brushed along Ryo's arm. "I'll get right on that," he promised.
"You've ruined my life," Ryo said, still hiding his face. "Everything used to be so simple. I went to work, locked up bad guys. Got home and played pick-up games with Bicky and sometimes I'd go out and have drinks with women and sometimes I'd stay a few hours and then have to sneak back before Bicky got worried but you." He lifted his arm to glare at Dee, eyes red-rimmed and shiny. "You."
Dee made an uncomfortable expression. "Sorry?"
"You go to hell," Ryo repeated, with more vehemence this time.
Because Dee was just as maladjusted as he claimed Bicky to be, he brightened. "So. It's. This isn't 'no'?"
Ryo stared at him.
"I mean, I'm just asking for the sake of asking," Dee babbled. "No pressure or anything. Just, uh, wanted to know if--you know what? I didn't want to know anything. I just wanted to let you know that I'm interested. And that you can be, if you want."
Ryo narrowed his eyes dangerously.
"Or you can be not interested, if you want that, too," Dee said, more softly. "I didn't mean to bully you into anything."
Ryo scowled. "Get out of my apartment."
Dee affected a wounded expression, but let out a sigh of relief, feeling forgiveness, or something close to it coming from his partner. He pushed himself up to his feet and glanced at where Ryo was still crumpled against his couch, feeling a wave of self-loathing wash over himself all over again. Biting his lip, he asked, "You going to be all right by yourself?"
"How is this you getting out of my apartment?" Ryo shot back.
"I was just asking," Dee said, much more gently than he would under normal conditions.
"I'm a grown man," Ryo muttered, shoving himself up stubbornly, swooping down to pick up his mug and stomp toward the kitchen. "I can handle myself."
And it was fondly that Dee observed his partner, tied up in many complexities, standing in the yellow-orange light of his kitchen, lit up against the darkness of the city, melting into the apartment from a window over the sink.
It was true, all of it, then, and the world was made anew, Dee felt with a sense of bewildered gratefulness. Those many months he'd watched his partner and found less and less funny about the way he teased, and how those jokes colored into confessions, into requests, into unbridled jealousy and unabashed tenderness. Then all of it had been real after all, the line of Ryo's back, the very defined shape of his neck, and Ryo's arching brown eyebrows above dark eyes and a set mouth, lips too-thin to be feminine and too rounded to be hard.
And Ryo was a walking contradiction, in how he was one of the best sharpshooters on the eastern seaboard and a sharp officer and didn't notice when people fell into his smile, melted beneath his gaze. In how Ryo could love so fiercely and yet never quite show it, or show it the right way to the right people. In how Ryo noticed everything about everyone except for himself, some sort of modern, poorly-paid Merlin with a semi-automatic weapon and a foster son.
All the dearer for all that did not compute, Dee thought.
"Yeah," Dee agreed quietly. "Yeah, you can."
He was lingering in the doorway when he paused long enough to ask, "Hey, Ryo?"
"Oh my God," Ryo groaned. "Oh my God. Haven't you done enough damage for the night?"
"No, no, just--what did Bicky get Carol?" Dee said lightly.
Ryo froze in the kitchen, and when he turned to Dee, he was nearly laughing. "Are you serious?"
Dee frowned, one hand on the doorknob. "I'm serious. What's so funny?"
"You hate Bicky and--" Ryo cut himself off, gave a breathy laugh, and said, "He took his fifty bucks and put in a bet for the Knicks game earlier today and bought her a silver locket with the winnings."
Dee stared. "You're fucking with me."
"I wish," Ryo said. "It's why he's grounded right now."
"For what, sheer brilliance?" Dee argued.
A muffled cry echoed through a wall, and Dee and Ryo whipped around to stare down the hall to Ryo's bedroom in amazement as they heard, "Yeah! Seriously, Dee! Down with the man! Crushing the inventive proletariat."
Ryo groaned and rubbed his temple. "Just for that, Bicky, you're grounded all week."
Dee snickered as Bicky shouted something very obscene.
And after a pause, Ryo glanced back at Dee. "Why are you still here?" he asked tiredly.
"I really am sorry," Dee apologized. "Really."
"I get that, really." Ryo leaned against the kitchen counter, the full distance of a living room between them, as if unwilling to cross that space for fear of something waiting at the end.
Dee took a deep breath. "So are we all right? Are we okay?"
Ryo rolled his eyes. "We will be. Just--"
"--Getting out, even as we speak," Dee said quickly, stepping nimbly into the hallway and closing the door behind himself.
A block away from home, Dee thought that it was easier and harder, much simpler and more complicated than he'd anticipated or planned for. Ryo was predictably conflicted but unpredictably himself, and Dee figured that he wasn't well-versed enough in Ryo's moods and sways to properly understand that concept--but he would be, given time, and Dee planned on taking all the time he needed.
There would be years and years ahead of them.
Dee would still leave if Ryo wanted, but he would stay if Ryo let him, and that was an equilibrium all on its own.