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FAKE First Year Together: A New Day (May)	By : BrittColumbia Category: +. to F > FAKE Views: 14597 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own FAKE, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
FAKE
First Year Together: A New Day (May)

Pairing: Dee/Ryo

Rating:    Chapter 14 has no sex or kissing or
anything to prevent you from reading it at work. The F-word gets tossed around a couple of times.

Spoilers:   To Volume 7

Timing: Set in May directly after Book 7 ended

Summary: Ryo is coming to terms with the changes
in his relationship with Dee, as well as his new sexual identity. Meanwhile,
Dee and Ryo are trying to help a young runaway. This story explores homophobic
attitudes but is primarily a love story between two men.

Disclaimer:   I do not own these characters.
They are the property of Sanami Matoh. I am not making any money from
this.

Author's notes:
I believe in a strong and equal Ryo and Dee. There will be no gratuitous crying and running away! I HATE it when characters cry and run
away. Ryo and Dee are men, not
boys.

Chapter 15 is
waiting for you on my LJ page. http://brit-columbia.livejournal.com/

Thank you Blue Simplicity for so efficiently beta-ing this chapter
and standing ready to beta the next one.

A New
Day

Chapter 14

Arriving
punctually at five minutes before seven the next morning, Detective McLean was
surprised to be informed by Janet that his partner was already there. He wondered if there might be something
special going on that he had forgotten about, apart from the nine o'clock
appointment between Eddie and Detective Shaver, of course. He found Dee in the break room dumping
sugar liberally into a cup of coffee.

"Good
Morning, Dee. Nice to see you here
so early. Are you turning over a
new leaf?"

Dee
turned to him with a weak grin.
"Nah. Just couldn't sleep.
Gave up trying and came to work. How ya doin'?"

He
certainly did look tired.
"Why couldn't you sleep?
Is anything wrong?"

"Too
much coffee, probably," Dee lied.
He wasn't about to tell Ryo the truth. Well, actually I was worrying that a certain someone is
having second thoughts about being in a male-male relationship with me and is
shortly going to give me my walking papers. Nope. Couldn't say that.

           Ryo
shook his head and said, "When are you going to remember that you can't
drink coffee in the evenings? Some
people can, but not you."

"Yeah,
like you for example. Hey, we
never got a chance to talk about Thomas last night. What did the doc say?"

Ryo
frowned and said, "Ah."
He poured a cup of coffee for himself.

"'Ah'?"

"Well,
she did find some faded bruises on his thighs and buttocks that were consistent
with some kind of beating---long thin bruises, like he'd been hit with a stick
or a switch."

Looking
down at his coffee, Dee swore under his breath through clenched teeth. Then he glanced up at Ryo.
"But?"

"But,
Thomas wouldn't tell her how he got them.
Or me. First he said he
couldn't remember, and then he said he might have fallen."

They
left the break room and started heading toward the stairs.

"Kid's
having second thoughts about getting his dad in trouble," Dee said
thoughtfully.

"Yeah,
and he doesn't even know at this point that the woman he thinks of as his
mother is about to take off, leaving him alone with Lieutenant
Abernathy." Ryo glanced at
Dee. He wondered if Mrs.
Abernathy's impending abandonment of her son was upsetting for Dee. After all, Dee's own mother had
abandoned him when he was a baby.
It couldn't be easy for him to hear about things like this. But on the other hand, he had grown up
in an orphanage surrounded by other children in similar circumstances. Ryo
understood that there was a difference between being orphaned and being
abandoned. He just couldn't be
sure how inured Dee was to the concept of parents deserting their
children. He suspected however,
from certain things Dee had said while drunk, that his own experience was a
deep and private pain that was not up for discussion.

Dee's
expression was grim, but his thoughts were mainly for Thomas. "He told us his dad didn't beat
him when she was around. If she's
gone, and that bastard Abernathy is pissed about her leaving him, he could end
up taking it out on the kid."

"I'm
worried about that, too.
Personally, I'd like to see Thomas go into foster care for a while. He
could feel safe for long enough to consider his options properly."

"Well,
nothing we can do until we see the lay of the land at the meeting. It's all up
to him. What time are we picking
him up?"

"WE
are not picking him up. I am. YOU
are going to stay here and recopy all those files you spilled coffee all
over."

"What? Waste of time. I dried 'em off. They're a little stained and wrinkled,
but they're legible. Mostly."

"No,
they're not as legible as you think, and they look like hell. What if someone else needs to
cross-reference them? I'm not
gonna give anyone a chance to say we're sloppy or unprofessional. You spilled the coffee, you make them
look pretty again."

"Aw
Ryo..."

"Don't
argue with me. If you spent the
same amount of time working as you do bitching, you'd be in the Chief's job by
now."

"Okay,
okay. What time does my
file-copying torture start?"

"I'm
picking Thomas up at 1:00 after lunch.
The meeting's at two. You
can get a lot done between one and two."

"But
we can at least have lunch together, right?"

"Nope,
I already made plans to have lunch with Drake."

"Drake! Well, why can't I come?"

"I
think he wants to talk about Megan."

"Well,
then I'M the guy he should be talking to!"

"Yeah,
but you're the guy that organizes betting pools on how long his relationships
are going to last. And you always
give him way too much stupid advice that just gets him in trouble. I think he's a little too fragile to deal
with you right now."

"Ahhh,
maybe you're right. He was pretty
upset yesterday. He doesn't
usually blow up like that. Go on
then, leave me to eat my lonely lunch by myself. See if I care."

"I'm
sure JJ will be available if you're looking for a lunch partner," said Ryo
blandly.

Dee
groaned in response as they entered their office. "I'd rather have lunch with a starving werewolf. At least silver bullets work on
THEM."

Ryo
just sighed and bit back his rejoinder.
Dee could keep this up for hours and if he wanted any work to get done
before they had to head out for their meeting, it would be best for him to just
keep quiet and not offer any encouragement to Dee's imagination.

For
his part, Dee, who had been testing the waters, sat down at his desk with a
considerable feeling of relief.
Ryo was acting normally with him, not shutting him out or being
cold. Perhaps that meant he wasn't
as upset about what he had learned from Thomas last night as Dee had previously
thought. But then he remembered
that his partner was not a fast decision maker. He might still be considering the implications of Bikky's
fight and slowly working his way toward some kind of resolution. His relief faded somewhat. He wished he knew what was going on in
Ryo's mind.

&^&^&^&^&^&^

Dee
kept pace with Eddie on the opposite side of the broad street. It took all his
concentration because of the heavy traffic whizzing back and forth in both
directions that frequently obscured his view of Eddie's sloping, slightly
hunched form. From their
respective vantage points, Dee and Ryo had observed Detective Shaver arrive
just before nine with a surly expression and a crumpled brown paper grocery bag
under one arm. Shaver hadn't
stayed longer than ten minutes, and Eddie had left shortly after him. Dee knew
that Ryo was thinking the same thing he was. Evidently some kind of drop had
just taken place, because now it was Eddie who was carrying the bag, and man,
was he moving quickly.

Ryo,
who was following about 20 paces or so behind Eddie, couldn't wait to get his
hands on whatever was in that bag. He was pretty sure it wasn't groceries, or
even cigarettes. Eddie's urgent pace and the frequent, furtive glances he cast
over his shoulder spoke of barely suppressed excitement and anxiety. Ryo hoped Eddie hadn't realized he was
being followed. He had dressed in
nondescript clothing today specifically because of the meeting between
Detective Shaver and Eddie. He
managed to make full use of the crowds on the busy sidewalk, mostly contriving
to keep other pedestrians between himself and Eddie.

They turned right once onto West 45^th
Street, and then left, and then suddenly Eddie was disappearing through the
etched plexiglas doors of the Westington.
Ryo had half expected to end up here as soon as their quarry had turned
onto Hammersley. He knelt down and
pretended to tie his shoe as he waited for Dee to catch up with him. When his partner arrived, Ryo turned to
him.

"Think
we should try for a warrant?" he asked. "If that's what I think it is in the bag, we could nail
Shaver and find out who he's working for."

"Nah,
whatever's in that bag will be long gone by the time we get one and get back
here. So what if it's inadmissible?
What we need right now is information."

Ryo
nodded in agreement and they walked side by side up the steps of the hotel.
Several unkempt, lounging figures got up and hastily shambled off down the
street as the two men entered the building.

Ryo
glanced at Dee. "Guess we've
got 'cop' written all over us," he muttered.

"I
don't," Dee said. "It's
all you, dude."

Ryo
privately disagreed with that, but he wasn't about to waste time arguing. The desk clerk, a heavy, grizzled
middle-aged man, was glaring at them pugnaciously. He had unshaven jowls and a pouty, red little mouth set
incongruously between them.

"What
the fuck do you want?"

Ryo
slapped his badge on the counter and said, "The guy that just came in,
Eddie Calvetti, what room is he in?"

"Officers,
I'm gonna take a wild guess that you didn't walk in here with a warrant all
signed and ready to go, did you?"

Dee's
hand shot out and gripped a fistful of the man's greasy, stained shirt.
"Listen asshole, just tell us the room number right now this fucking
second unless you want to be arrested for obstruction AND have your business
shut down for numerous violations of city bylaws," he snarled.

"I
ain't in violation of no bylaws."

"Oh
yeah? I could have sworn I saw the lights flicker just now. Betcha got some faulty wiring in the
walls there. Whadda you think, Detective
McLean?"

"Looks
like this place might not be wired to code. If so, it's a firetrap."

Dee
still hadn't let go of the desk clerk's shirt, and the man began to struggle
and strain away from him.

"Officers,
lemme go, goddammit. N-nothing
wrong with the wiring here," he huffed.

"Let
him go, Dee." Ryo turned back to the desk clerk. "I've got a friend
in the building inspection department at City Hall," he informed him.
"If you'd prefer not to get a visit from him, you'd better give us the
room number right now."

"And
the key too, if you don't wanna be replacing a busted door later," Dee
added, cracking his neck and grinning as though the thought of kicking in a
door seemed like fun.

With
a look of resentment, the man slapped a key on the desk in front of them. "Two-seventeen," he
snarled. "If you gotta take
him in, try to save the police brutality shit for when you get outside, okay? I fucking hate cleaning blood off the
carpets."

"You
got it, boss," sneered Dee.

"If
you give him a call to say that we're on our way up, I will personally make
sure that the city closes your establishment for extensive repairs," Ryo
warned him.

"Yeah,
yeah, don't worry," grumbled the man dismissively as he fumbled for a
cigarette. "Man, I hate you
pigs. Think you can walk all over
anyone."

&^&^&^&^&^&^&

The
sudden loud rapping on the door startled Eddie. "Who-who is it?" he called.

"Manager,"
growled Dee in an imitation of the desk clerk's voice that was so uncannily
accurate that Ryo stared at him for a moment.

"Uh...Just
a minute, okay?"

"Emergency,"
Dee growled again. "Come on, right now!" But even as he said it, he
was turning the key in the lock.

The
door swung open to reveal Eddie and a skinny black hooker in a skimpy yellow
dress in the act of stuffing several packages back into the paper bag.

"Shit!"
exclaimed Eddie, and before Ryo and Dee could even open their mouths, he had
dropped the bag, streaked across the room, and yanked open the window. This
time Ryo was right behind him.

"Eddie,
wait! You're not in trouble!"
he cried, reaching for Eddie as the boy ducked through the open window. Unfortunately, the window had jammed
and wouldn�t open wide enough to admit Ryo, who was not as small and thin as
Eddie. They could hear him
clattering noisily down the fire escape. Ryo finally forced the window open
wide enough for him to get his shoulders through, but it was too late. One
glance told him that he wasn't going to be able to catch Eddie now.

           "He's
gone, damn it," he swore and turned his attention to his
surroundings. The small dirty room
was piled high with junk, although there did seem to be a few items with resale
value. Ryo thought he recognized
the two laptops he'd seen the last time they had invited themselves into one of
Eddie's domiciles. An unmade twin
bed sporting greyish sheets was pushed up against one wall. The whole effect was depressing.

The
young girl was staring at them with wide eyes. Well, one eye anyway. The other one was ringed with purple
and swollen closed. It looked like
someone, most likely her pimp, had done a number on her face. Her hands went up
and she started backing away from the two detectives. Presently, she backed
into the bed.

"I
don't know nothin' 'bout nothin'," she said. "I don't even live here."

"Don't
worry, hon," said Dee.
"We're not after you.
We weren't even after him."
He jerked his thumb at the window.
"We just wanted to talk, that's all."

"Well,
scaring the shit out of a person is not the best way to start a conversation,
now is it?"

"Sometimes,
surprise is the only thing that works," Dee retorted, opening the
bag. He whistled when he saw the
contents. "Look at this,
partner."

It
was full of individual packages wrapped round with duct tape so as to obscure
their contents.

Ryo
nodded. "I knew it," he
said.

"That's
gotta be worth fifteen hundred right there."

Ryo
looked hard at the girl. "Did
you take any of this?"

"No
way, sir, there weren't no time! You musta been right behind him. We was only looking inside the bag,
that's all, and then bam, you guys come through the door." She wrapped her arms around herself and
sat down on the bed.

Dee
had fished out a smaller package.
Unlike the others, this one was not protected by duct tape. It was a plastic bag full of coarse
white powder. A label on the bag
contained the word 'Yours'.

"'Yours'.
That's his cut," Ryo said thoughtfully.

"Not
much, is it?" Dee remarked. "That wouldn't last him more than a
couple of days, maybe three if he was careful with it. Judging by the tracks we
saw on him that other time, he really goes through the stuff."

"They
must not have expected him to have all this for longer than a couple of days,
then. Otherwise, he'd be dipping
into the merchandise." Ryo
sighed. "We really need to
talk to that guy." He turned
to Tamara who was watching them both cautiously. It was written all over her face that she was concerned they
might want to take her back to the station for questioning.

"What's
your name, Miss?"

"Uh,
Tammy," she said.

"Have
you known Eddie long?"

"Nah,"
she lied. "I just came home
wit' him last night, that's all. I
gotta be leaving soon."

"Well,
if he comes back before you go, would you please tell him that we just want to
ask him some questions about a friend of his." He handed her his business card, and she took it from him.

"Sure
thing, officer."

"And
tell him we're sorry but we gotta take this stuff away," Dee added with a
grin as he picked up the bag full of drugs.

"Oh,
I'll tell him you're REAL sorry," she said, but her eyes were fixed on the
bag, rather than Dee.

"Ready
to go?" Dee asked Ryo, and received a nod in reply.

"Take
care, Tammy," Ryo called as he and Dee exited the dingy room, leaving her
behind.

Dee
pitched the key back at the desk clerk on their way out. The man was forced to drop the beer he
was drinking in his scramble to catch it.

"Fucking
pigs!" he screamed after them.

&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&

Tamara,
who had been leaning out the window, watched the two handsome plainclothes
officers disappearing down the street.
Why couldn't her customers ever look like that? She smiled ruefully, but
quickly stopped when the action hurt her still-swollen lower lip. Why did she have to meet a couple of
lookers like that when she herself was looking like hell? Life really was unfair. It was also too
bad they had to take all that good stuff away with them before she and Eddie
had had a chance to have a little party.
But then they hadn't got it all, had they? She went over to the bed and
fished out a little plastic bag from under the tangled sheets. There was a small label on it that said
'Yours'.

"Bless
you, Eddie," she said to herself.
"You always were a sweetheart."

&^&^&^&^&^&^&

Dee
banged open the door of the fourth floor office he shared with Ryo, saying,
"Good news, dude. Liz says--"

He
stopped speaking when he realized Ryo was not at his desk. Again. He had barely
had a chance to exchange two words with his partner since they had come back
from the Westington. He was trying
not to be paranoid, but it really did seem like Ryo, normally such a dedicated
desk jockey, appeared to be avoiding him.
He stepped across the hall to the CI room shared by Drake, JJ, Ted and
Marty.

"Hey
guys, have you seen Ryo?"

"Yeah,
he was just here," said Drake.
"He said he was going to get a coffee."

"Didn't
he say he was going to the john?" asked Ted.

"No,
YOU'RE the only one around here who thinks it's necessary to make an
announcement whenever you go to the john," said JJ snappishly. He sprang up from his chair and hurried
over to Dee. "I'll help you
find him, Mr. Studly."

"No
thanks, not urgent. Besides, don't
you and Drake have an appointment?"
Dee started edging away.

"Not
until one o'clock, so I'm all yours till then," said JJ joyfully, taking
back in a single bound all of the distance Dee had managed to put between them.

"Forget
it, JJ. I'm just going back to
wait for Ryo and make a few phone calls.
Jesus, let go of my arm, would ya?" Dee tried to shake him off, but JJ just clung to his arm and
more or less hugged it close to his body.
"Drake! Call him
off."

"Come
on JJ, quit fooling around. I need your help over here," Drake said.
"Can you get the Chief to sign off on this report and then fax this
warrant over to the DA's office?"

JJ
immediately let go of Dee and returned to Drake. He was still feeling a little
guilty about yesterday. "Sure thing, partner," he said.
"Anything for you! I'll be
back soon. And don't worry,
Dee. I'll keep my eyes open for
Ryo on my travels." He
disappeared out the door with the papers in his hand.

Dee
didn't see Ryo again until almost noon, when his partner came in carrying a
clipboard and wearing a thoughtful expression.

"Where
have you been?" he demanded indignantly. "I was looking for you. I've been all alone with this damn boring paperwork for
almost two hours with no one to talk to."

Ryo
looked at him and frowned slightly.
"Doesn't look like you made much of an impression on it," he
remarked.

"Sure
I did, but no thanks to you. Every
time I needed to ask you a question, you weren't here."

"Well,
I'm here now, but not for long because it's almost time for me to meet Drake
for lunch. So if you have any questions for me, ask me quickly."

"Oh
yeah, lunch with Drake," said Dee sulkily. "How could I forget?"

"How
many of those files have you actually done?"

Dee
flung an arm over the pile as though to forestall any investigation of that
point and then threw out a question of his own.

"Hey,
if Drake's buying you lunch, can I buy you dinner?"

"Not
tonight, sorry. I really need to talk to Bikky and I haven't been able to do
that for the past couple of days since Thomas has been staying with us. But he'll be either going home with his
parents or getting sent to a foster home after the meeting today. This will be
my first opportunity since Sunday night to spend some time with B."

"Oh,
hey, it was just a suggestion," said Dee casually, although he could feel
his insides starting to knot up.
"We can do dinner tomorrow or the next day."

"Sure,
whatever," said Ryo abstractedly, as he pulled out a blank file and
labeled it.

"Oh,
I got some good news," Dee said, trying to swing Ryo's attention back
toward him.

But
Ryo just gave him the briefest of glances. "Oh?"

"Liz
says that even though the lab is backlogged, she'll try to get us the results
on that smack we brought in by tomorrow."

"Well,
that's great news if it's true," murmured Ryo, who was transferring the
contents of his clipboard into his newly labeled file. "But maybe she just said that to
get rid of you so she could get back to work."

"Dude,
I'm offended. I've been exerting
myself to flirt with her all these months for times just such as these."

"No,
you've been exerting yourself to flirt with her because you automatically enter
'flirt mode' whenever you encounter any female in a short skirt." Ryo picked up his jacket and headed for
the door.

"Not
true!" Dee called after him weakly. "Tight pants work too."

&^&^&&^&^&^&^&^&

A
couple of hours after his precipitate exit, cold and needing a fix, Eddie slunk
back to the Westington. Surely
those cops would have given up by now.
But it was a certain bet that they would have taken the stuff he'd
picked up that morning. Fuck. This was the latest shitty thing to happen in
what was turning out to be quite a long run of bad luck. He didn't even want to think about what
Mike would say. Eddie didn't
believe that this particular pair of cops would have kept it for themselves,
especially not the one that he knew to be Bikky's dad, although there were
plenty who would. They had probably done the righteous thing and taken it back
to the station where it would eventually get incinerated. Jesus. Just thinking about that made
Eddie's hands shake worse. He had
to somehow get a hold of another hit of something before too much more time had
gone by, or he was soon going to be in a bad way.

He
picked up a key from the front desk clerk, who seemed to have the best part of
a six pack inside him.

"You
got away, eh? Pigs didn't catch
you, huh?' The man laughed
uproariously at the thought of the police being thwarted like that. Finally, he smacked the key down on the
counter in front of Eddie and all laughter abruptly stopped.

"If
the police come back here looking for you one more time, you're out. You got that? I can't have heat showing up here. They're bad for business."

"Yes
sir," said Eddie meekly, retrieving the key and backing away. He took the stairs two at a time hoping
against hope that Tamara would still be there and that she still had some of
the junk he had given her earlier.

To
his surprise, the door wasn't locked.
He opened it cautiously and entered, calling out, "Tamara! Where are you, honey?" When he saw her lying on the bed, he
felt a rush of relief. Thank God
she hadn't left. She was just
taking a nap.

"Come
on, sweetie, wake up," he called softly, so as not to startle her, and
then suddenly stopped, his hackles rising in alarm. He could smell vomit.
She wasn't moving. Oh god,
this was bad. He took another step
closer. "T-Tamara?"

She
lay on her side with her eyes and mouth open. There was puke everywhere. She wasn't breathing.
Eddie felt tears prickling at the back of his eyelids while a million
thoughts sprang into his head at once.
He knew he ought to close the door, but he was afraid to be alone in the
room with a dead body. He had to
get the fuck away from here.
But he had to pack up his stuff because it was worth money and it was
all he had. He needed a hit real
bad. Maybe the rest of the smack was somewhere on her person. Maybe she hadn't used it all. Jesus, he
was going to get blamed for this, he just knew it. And actually, it was his fault. He had given her the drug she had OD'd on. If he hadn't brought her home with him,
this never would have happened.
When was he going to learn to stop meddling in other people's
lives? He had been only trying to
help and look what had happened to Tamara.

Eventually,
he pulled himself together. He
couldn't bring himself to touch her body, junk or no junk. He had to get out and he had to travel
light, so most of his belongings were going to have to stay behind.

Having
reached a decision, Eddie went into action. First he shut the still-open door of his room lest anyone
passing by in the hall took it upon himself to peer in. Then he stepped to a random-looking
pile of his stuff and shook a dusty, dark green backpack out from under
it. Despite the appearance of
disorder, Eddie always knew exactly where every one of his belongings was. He stuffed both of the laptops into the
backpack, along with an extra battery and an adaptor. He added a sweater and
some socks, a package of tea biscuits and a few more items he figured he could
sell for quick cash. Next he dug
out his tool box and hefted it experimentally. It was pretty heavy, but he hated to leave his tools
behind. If worse came to worst, he
could earn a bit of money by doing odd jobs with them. He decided to take them with him, but
stash them somewhere safe as soon as possible. Almost ready to go, he took one
last look around the room and checked his pockets. After all, if he forgot anything important, there would be
no coming back here. He had his
notebook in the inside breast pocket of his coat, his cell phone in the front
right pocket—Where was his charger? He quickly fetched it from out of a
knotted plastic grocery bag and shoved it into one of the pockets of his
jacket. His hand came up and
patted the reassuring lump made by a very old and ornate key that hung round
his neck on a piece of strong string.
If he could get to Queens before 5:30, he could use that key and stash
some of his stuff. It was time to
go. Eddie slung the backpack over his shoulder and vanished down the fire
escape for the second time that day.
His one thought was to disappear for a while. He didn't want to call Mike until he had had time to
think. But it was going to be hard
not to think about Tamara, whom he'd known since she was eight.

If
anyone had noticed a skinny, scruffy young guy loping along the sidewalk with
the tense, desperate look of a junkie in need of a fix, they would have
dismissed the tears running down his face as mere tears of self-pity. No one would have guessed that he was
trying his best not to think of a once-pretty girl in a yellow dress whom he
had left lying cold and still in a pool of her own vomit.

-end of chapter 14-
- 13
- 14
- 15
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FAKE First Year Together: A New Day (May)