Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this
Warning:Male/Male sex, graphic, violence, language
Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this
Warning:Male/male sex, language, violence
After the Manga series
Sidefic for Christmas
In Box
"No!" Dee put his hand over his inbox and glared. "You said until two and it's two o' clock by my watch exactly!"
The Chief let the file drop onto Dee's desk. "You know the force doesn't work that way, Dee. I wanna go home too, but you gotta do your work first. This case came in. It's your turn. Get going."
The Chief walked away and Dee glared at his back. "I promised Ryo," Dee snarled under his breath. "I promised that he wouldn't spend another Christmas alone. I'm going to keep that promise!" He grabbed the file. "Whoever you are, you're about to get your case investigated in record time."
Dee grabbed his coat and his car keys. "Twenty minute drive," he muttered as he hit the front door of the station and trotted to his car. "Fifteen minutes for the interview. Paper work under fifteen minutes. Scope the area; another twenty. Return to the station and file the report; one hour." He checked his watch again as he slid into the driver's seat of his car. "Plenty of time."
Dee turned on his radio as he drove and then impatiently turned it off again. Nothing but Christmas music. He idly scanned the streets and then kept his eyes on the road and the cars in front of him. Christmas was in full swing. Everything was bright and festive and everyone was celebrating... everyone except those people who made the city run and protected it no matter what day it was. Fires didn't take holidays. Crime didn't magically stop. Accidents didn't stop happening. Dee could put off solving the crime for another day, but he couldn't put off the investigation. Evidence and information had to be gathered before leads went cold.
Dee pulled into a parking spot on the street and jumped out of his car. He ran up the steps to an apartment and knocked vigorously. Missing person's case. Foul play suspected. At least there wasn't a body lying around, Dee thought. That would not only have been unpleasant, but it would have required hours of evidence gathering.
A little old lady opened her door and peered out cautiously. She had coke bottle glasses and she blinked at Dee myopically. "Y-Yes?" she asked timidly.
Dee flashed his badge, "Detective Dee Latener, ma'am. I'm here to investigate a missing person."
"Yes, come in!" The woman grabbed Dee by the elbow and pulled him into a tidy little apartment. She motioned him to sit on a couch with doilies on the arms and dithered, old hands wringing together as she explained, "It's Albert. He always comes this time of year, but today, he didn't show up."
"Albert is...?" Dee wondered.
"My brother," she clarified and showed Dee a small picture of a dapper looking man surrounded by a young family.
Dee frowned. "Grandchildren?" he guessed.
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, "That's his wife Donna and his little boys Ronnie and Albert Jr."
Dee felt his gut tighten. He looked from the photo of a young man to the very old woman in front of him. "When did you last see Albert, ma'am?"
The woman looked flustered. "Oh, I'm not sure! My memory isn't what it used to be."
Dee took out his pad of paper and his pencil. "Is there any other family member that has been in contact with him recently?"
"My daughter, Lilla," the old woman told him. "She always goes to see him. She loves her Uncle so much!"
Dee chewed on the end of his pencil, a little relieved. "May I have your daughter's phone number? I think I should call and question her. She might know where Albert is."
"Oh, all right," the woman agreed brightly. "I don't know why I didn't think of that." She went to get the phone number and Dee sighed as he scribbled a frustrated doodle on his notebook. His mind was telling him, 'senile', 'confused', 'Albert passed away'. If he was lucky, Lilla would be able to jog her mother's memory. Dee felt that the end result was going to be very sad, but he couldn't just write down a report and pretend to search for the woman's brother. He silently cursed who ever had taken her report. Obviously they hadn't questioned her thoroughly enough. Even if Albert was alive and missing, a person had to be missing longer than half a day to be investigated.
The woman brought Dee the number and he dialed it on his cell phone. A worried sounding woman answered with, "Mom? Where are you?"
"Uh, this is Detective Dee Latener," Dee interrupted. "I'm with your mother right now investigating a missing person's case."
"What?" the woman exclaimed and then sighed heavily. "Albert, right?"
"Yes," Dee replied looking at the hopeful old woman standing in front of him.
"He passed away last year," The daughter told him sadly. "Mom took it pretty hard. She was supposed to take a cab here for Christmas... Albert and the whole family used to spend it at Mom's."
"I think you should come get her," Dee suggested softly.
"Right away," The daughter replied and then, "Thank you. I know it must have seemed..."
"It's okay," Dee said. "I think she needs to be with her family right now, though."
"We'll be right there," the daughter told him.
Dee hung up his phone and smiled at the old woman. "Your daughter is coming here to get you. She says they are having Christmas at their place."
"With Albert?" The old woman looked confused for a moment and then she smiled. "Oh, I did forget! I was supposed to go to Lilla's house! Silly me! I'm so sorry, officer! I pulled you out here on Christmas day for nothing. I feel terrible!"
"Part of the job," Dee reassured her. "Don't worry about it."
Dee left the house with a sigh. "This is not a good way to start Christmas," he muttered. "Pretty damned depressing, actually."
"Stop him!!" A woman shrieked. "He's got my purse!"
A man ran past Dee, a woman's purse clutched in one hand. Dee swore and ran after him. "Stop, police!"
Dee was given a frightened look by the purse snatcher, but Dee's shout only seemed to give him wings. He ran faster and Dee was hard pressed to keep up.
"Shit! Stop or I'll shoot!" Dee wasn't about to do that, not to a purse snatcher, but it usually had the effect of making most people stop. The purse snatcher, unfortunately, decided that he could out run a bullet. After the third block, Dee was beginning to think so too.
"Damn! You should try out for freakin' track!" Dee shouted breathlessly at the young man. "Not snatching goddam purses!"
The young man vaulted over a chain link fence into a construction area. Dee threw himself over it not a moment behind, caught skin and jacket in the top links, and felt material and skin rip. He howled, but didn't lose momentum as he landed on his feet and kept running.
The kid shimmied up a scaffolding alongside a cement wall to an apartment building being erected. Faster than a monkey, he was on the third floor before Dee could get one foot up on the metal bars. He was starting to count purse and purse snatcher as good as gone, when he heard a hoarse, frightened, shout.
"Help me! Help me, please! Oh, god, help me!"
Dee wasn't sure how he managed to get up the scaffolding so quickly. It seemed like the time between one blink and the next before he was on the third floor as well and racing towards the panicked cry. He almost went over the same ledge. Dee backpedaled, leaning as far back as he could until he saved himself from falling through an elevator shaft under construction. The three story shaft ended in a pile of concrete rubble.
Crouching, panting, and bleeding from deep cuts, Dee glared down the shaft and saw the purse snatcher hanging by his fingers on the lip of one of the metal support beams. The purse was long gone, dropped when the young man had saved himself.
"Help!" the man shouted up at Dee frantically. "I can't hold on, man!"
"I should just let you swing," Dee grumbled as he began climbing down cautiously. "Stealing a lady's purse on Christmas? What kind of punk are you?"
"You're a cop!" the young man wailed. "You gotta save me!"
"I don't 'gotta' do anything!" Dee shot back. "But I will, because I'm not scum like you."
The young man blinked at him with frightened eyes. "Hurry!" he begged. "I'm gonna fall any second. I can't hold on!"
Dee lost more skin and ripped his pants leg on the rough concrete and steel. He almost slipped three times before he reached the purse snatcher. "We aren't going to try and go back up," Dee told him. "We need to go down to the next level. The opening is about.... four feet underneath you."
"I ain't doing it!" The young man wailed.
"What do you want me to do, then?!" Dee snarled back. "Last I checked, I didn't have wings! You gotta climb!" He saw the man's stark fear. He forced himself to calm down. "Look, I'll make sure you don't fall."
"P-Promise?" The young man whimpered.
"Promise," Dee sighed, knowing it was a lie, but ready to do and say anything to get them out of that situation. There really wasn't much he could do if the young man took the plunge.
"O-Okay," The young man stammered. "W-What do we do?"
Dee reached the young man and managed to come up close on his left side. "Do just what I say," Dee told him. "Put your hand here. I'll hold on to you until you do."
He guided the young man downwards. It was slow and tedious. Four feet seemed like four miles. When they finally climbed through the opening and onto a solid surface again, all Dee wanted to do was sit down and catch his breath. He knew better though, he reached for his handcuffs.
The young man suddenly took off like a rocket, none the worse for his ordeal. Dee watched him climb down a ladder to the first floor and then he heard the rapid sound of retreating footsteps. Dee was too exhausted to follow. He sat down and pulled out his cell phone. He called for backup, giving the suspect's description.
"I'm wounded," Dee told the person on the other end of the line. "Not severely, but I should get it checked out. Clock me out for the rest of the day, okay?"
"No problem," the woman on the other end told him. "Merry Christmas."
"Yeah, Merry Christmas, " Dee growled back and jammed his phone back
into his pocket. Levering himself up, he staggered towards the ladder. "Scratches,"
he muttered. "I'll just go home and patch myself up." He checked his
watch. "I still have time. Lots of Christmas left."
When Dee made it to his car, he groaned in relief as he climbed in and started it up. Pulling out onto a major road, the traffic jam was almost to be expected. Dee banged his head a few times on the steering wheel and then sat back with a dark sigh. Time seemed to stand still, as still as the traffic.
A woman suddenly climbed out of her car ahead of Dee. She clutched at a very swollen belly in panic. "Help! Someone! I'm having my baby!"
Dee calmly called for an ambulance as he got out of his car. Pocketing his phone, he approached the woman. "Are you sure? These things take a long time, I've heard, ma'am. Maybe you should just sit down and try and re-"
The woman let out a blood curdling scream and clutched at her belly again. "It's coming!" she shrieked at Dee. "Don't you think I know when I'm having a baby, you moron?!"
"Yeah, I guess you would know," Dee replied, motioning to her car.
"Come on. Back seat. I took a course." The worst course of his life,
he thought silently and then thinking of Ryo, Sorry, Baby. Looks like Christmas
is going to be a bust.
---------
Much, much later, Dee dragged himself to the door of his and Ryo's apartment. He leaned against the door for a moment, gathering strength and trying to lift at least some of the depression that gripped him. The baby had been born quickly and successfully. The paramedics had managed to get through traffic. The man having the heart attack in another nearby car had been pretty damned lucky that they were there. The purse snatcher had been caught. Dee had been forced to file paper work, make reports, direct traffic, and suffer through a doctor checking him out. The Chief had insisted on it. Now it was late evening. The day was over.
Dee checked his watch. It was well past dinner. All his plans of spending at least half of the day having a real family Christmas, had been shot all to hell. Bicky was probably asleep on his pile of open presents and wrapping paper. Dinner was probably cold and mostly eaten. Ryo was probably depressed and lonely. He wouldn't blame Dee for not being there, for having to break his promise, but Dee couldn't help blaming himself. He remembered all too well, the last Christmas that Ryo had almost spent alone. The man had cried when Dee had come knocking on his door to spend it with him. It had told Dee just how important not being alone had been to Ryo.
There was no putting it off any longer. Dee opened the door and then stood, stunned. Ryo smiled and came towards him, hands outstretched to take his. His lover was dressed in a soft sweater and jeans and his dark eyes were shinning. Dee thought that he was the most beautiful sight that he had ever seen.
"Slow poke!" Ryo chided gently. "Bicky's about to bust waiting to open his presents."
"Couldn't help it," Dee mumbled, taking in the sparkling Christmas tree, the unopened presents, and the smell of dinner still warm and waiting in the kitchen. Dee had changed and cleaned up. There wasn't any outward sign of his bad day.
Ryo frowned. "Is everything all right?" he wondered.
Dee smiled. "Fine. Just a lot of paper work today. I thought I was going to miss everything."
"He wouldn't move a muscle without you being here, idiot!" Bicky snarled from where he sat on the floor by the presents. "I'm starving and I want my presents. Sit your butt down and let's get started!"
Dee felt a lump in his throat. "You didn't have to wait," he said to Ryo.
Ryo's smile warmed even more as he slid a hand around Dee's waist and led him to the tree. "Yes, we did," he said. "It isn't Christmas without you. We're a family."
Dee caught Ryo in his arms and pulled him close. "I love you, more than anything, Ryo."
Ryo chuckled softly, "And I love you, Dee. More than anything."
"Cut it out!" Bicky complained. "Do that later!"
Dee glared, but then his glare smoothed out and he nodded as he sat down near Bicky with Ryo beside him. Sometimes it was good, and sometimes it was bad, especially where Bicky was concerned, but Dee wouldn't have traded that moment of togetherness for anything. He looked at Ryo and Bicky, and then looked around him at the warm, glowing, tree and ornaments. No, he wouldn't trade it for anything.
The End