Fake Fan Fiction ❯ Father and Son ❯ Part 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Father and Son

by Nightstalker1

 

Disclaimer: I don't own FAKE, or its characters. If I did, the NYPD would never get anything accomplished.

 

Author's Notes: This story takes place shortly after the Rod Field case in Volume 3 (Diana's introduction), so Ryo and Dee are not a couple yet. Sorry guys, but this story is going to focus on a very different relationship in the FAKE universe.

 

 

“Good morning, Bikky.”

 

“Mmrgrhflmgn,” Bikky grumbled as he slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.

 

Ryo MacLean frowned as he set a glass of orange juice and a bowl of corn flakes on the table by his foster son. Bikky glanced at the proffered breakfast blankly for a moment before folding his arms and laying his head on them. Ryo bristled as the boy refused to acknowledge him.

 

The fair haired detective turned away stiffly as he put the cereal box back into the cupboard. “You know, Bikky, it's not going to kill you to be polite in the morning.”

 

Bikky groaned. His response was muffled by his arms. “Gimme a break, Ryo. I was out late last night.”

 

“So I see,” Ryo raised an eyebrow. “And when exactly did you get home last night?”

 

“Dunno. Two-ish?” He yawned. “You were already asleep.”

 

“On a school night!?” Ryo almost dropped the milk carton in surprise. “What could you possibly have been doing until two in the morning when you know that you have to get up early?”

 

“So it's okay to be up that late on a weekend?”

 

“Yes…I mean no! Just tell me what you were doing.”

 

Bikky half shrugged. “Just stuff. Ya know, doing things, seeing people…”

 

“Doing what things? Seeing which people?”

 

“Nothin' important, and no one you know,” The boy grumbled as he proceeded to spoon his cereal through a hole between his crossed arms.

 

Ryo frowned at that answer. It seemed that they went through the same routine every morning. Bikky would shuffle into the kitchen, half asleep, and then proceed to pick at the food Ryo would set out without saying a word. As soon as he finished, he would grab his bag and leave for school without even saying good-bye. Anytime Ryo tried to engage the boy in conversation, he would be rewarded with a cryptic answer or an incomprehensible grumble. As a result, he had no idea what his foster son did every night; and that made him worry.

 

Ryo sat across from the boy, deciding to take a different approach. “Well whatever you are doing, I hope you at least took a safe route home. You know all too well how dangerous the back alleys are in this neighborhood.”

 

“Course I did. I always use the money you give me to catch a taxi. You don't need to worry.”

 

Ryo immediately frowned. He knew the boy was lying. Diana had spoken to him a week ago about seeing Bikky walking through the back alleys at night while she was investigating the Rod Field case. It was because he was in those alleys that he had almost been kidnapped. If it wasn't for Diana's quick thinking and killer right hook, who knows what would have happened to him. Ryo was not angry because he was out late and unsupervised. The fact that he was in those alleys was not even a factor. The boy had grown up in the hood, so he knew those alleys well enough. What bothered Ryo was that Bikky was deliberately lying to his face. He always tried to give the boy the benefit of the doubt, but Bikky was abusing his trust.

 

Ryo shoved his chair back abruptly, the scraping of the legs against the kitchen floor loud enough to catch Bikky's attention. The boy lifted his head so that one cerulean eye peeked out over his arms.

 

“Hey, what're you all uptight about this morning?” Bikky questioned as Ryo grabbed his coat and opened the front door.

 

“Nothing,” Ryo replied stiffly without turning around. “I'll see you after school.”

 

With that said, the door slammed shut behind him.

 

* * *

 

“I just can't stand it anymore! I try so hard to provide him with food, a nice home life, a sense of family, and a chance to live a decent life. And yet all I get in return are secrets and lies. I just don't know what to do about him!”

 

“Can't you just take him back?” Detective Dee Laytner smirked as he listened to his partner rant. “You know, like at the department stores where you can return appliances for a full refund if you're not satisfied?”

 

“Bikky is not like your toaster!” Ryo yelled as he threw the latest case file at Dee's head; which the raven haired man caught easily.

 

Dee set the file aside and checked that there were no other throwable items within his partner's reach before continuing. “I meant you should take him to child services, but I know you wouldn't do that. You care too much about that kid to let him go for any reason. If he's having problems, you're going to try and fix them. That's just the sort of person you are.”

 

“You're right,” Ryo sighed as he slumped into his desk chair and started to shuffle through his papers. “I'm his guardian, so I have to help him work through any problems he's having. I just wish that he would trust me a little. He shouldn't have to lie to me.”

 

“Yeah. You'd think he'd have learned by now that you are the most God-damn trustable guy on the face of this planet. Guess it just hasn't sunk into his thick-skulled monkey brain yet. Still, it's not surprising.”

 

“What's not surprising?” Ryo glanced up from his paperwork.

 

“The fact that he still doesn't trust you,” Dee said as he leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. “Bikky grew up in the ghetto. Every day he was surrounded by lies, violence, and bloodshed. His own father was killed during a botched drug deal. The orphanage I grew up in was in a similar neighborhood. I learned early on that the only way to survive in that world was to trust no one but yourself. Yeah, you've given Bikky a new home and a new life, but those survival instincts are still there. It'll take a long time before he feels completely safe.”

 

Sighing, Ryo closed his eyes and ran a hand through his blonde hair. “So what you're saying is that he may never trust me.”

 

A sympathetic look settled on Dee's face. “No. He'll learn to trust you sooner or later. It's kinda hard not to when you're so honest and genuine with everyone you meet, you softy. One day he'll realize that. Soon enough, you'll say or do something that'll really hit him emotionally, and then he'll open up. After that, I get the feeling you two will be inseparable.”

 

“Like you and your dad Jess?”

 

A wistful smile passed over Dee's face at the comment, which Ryo could not help but find endearing on his normally brash partner. “Yeah. Although I doubt you'll have to fight off an entire mafia to win Bikky over; although that can't hurt.”

 

“No thanks,” Ryo chuckled. “Too messy. You know how much I hate scrubbing blood out of carpets.”

 

Dee laughed softly before sobering up. Looking Ryo directly in the eye, he spoke. “Listen, if the brat's lying then he must be hiding something. This means that there is only one thing you can do.”

 

“Wait for Hell to freeze over so he'll actually tell me?”

 

“No,” Dee smirked triumphantly. “We're detectives, so we need to find clues. We need to search his room from top to bottom. Go through every drawer and behind every pair of mildew covered sweat socks. That's the only way you'll find anything.”

 

Ryo raised an eyebrow questioningly. “That was disgusting. There is no way that he is going to allow mildew to grow in my clean apartment. And anyway, because we're detectives, we're required to have a warrant before we can search any premises.”

 

“Ryo, you're a parent. You don't need a warrant to search your kid's room! It's an undisputed law of nature that parents can bypass all police protocol if the search requires snooping through their child's underwear. Just wait until you have a later shift and then sneak in there while Bikky's at school. We're both professionals, so he'll never suspect a thing.”

 

“I don't know,” Ryo bit his lip in uncertainty. “I feel guilty for invading his privacy, but I do want to know what is going on with him lately. And since he obviously doesn't trust me, as demonstrated by his lying this morning, then I suppose I'm justified to search his room.” Ryo looked up resolutely. “All right Dee. The two of us will do this together.”

 

“Excellent!” Dee beamed as he opened the case file and actually started to do work. “I've always wanted to find blackmail material for when the kid's old enough to sue.”

 

“What was that?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Ryo and Dee picked the lock to Bikky's room and prepared to enter into previously uncharted territory. Dee had armed himself with rubber gloves, evidence bags, and a camera. On the other hand, Ryo was armed with cans of disinfectant, tongs, and a gallon of carpet cleaner. Much to Ryo's pleasant surprise, the worst thing they encountered was a poster of some shirtless rap artist and last week's load of clean laundry on the floor.

 

“Well, it looks as though you have had an effect on him,” Dee nodded to Ryo in approval. “I always pictured him as more of a slob.”

 

Ryo looked doubtful. “I don't think it'll stay this clean when he gets comfortable here and then hits puberty.”

 

“Oh yeah, I remember when Penguin found used condoms all over my floor when I was a teenager…”

 

“WHAT!?!?!?”

 

“Just kidding,” Dee snickered as he dodged a thrown can of disinfectant. “The old bat would have skinned me alive if I was sleeping around in her vicinity.”

 

At that moment, Ryo firmly decided to ignore Dee for the rest of the day…unless he found some hard evidence. With firm resolution, the two detectives began to poke through the young boy's belongings. The closet revealed nothing worse than a dirty T-shirt wadded up behind some shelves (which Ryo promptly threw in a hamper with the tongs). The desk was crammed with candy wrappers, rusted bolts, and other odds and ends that must have been pulled out of a dumpster; but there was no sign of anything illegal. There was also no sign of the school supplies that should be in the desk either, and Ryo stored a mental note about it in the back of his mind.

 

Pulling back the desk, Ryo began to check the wall and floorboards around it, knocking carefully to find any secret compartments where drugs and stolen cash could be hidden. When his search revealed nothing, he moved on, crawling on the floor with his ear to the ground and listening for any hollow noises. His hands swept behind the rap poster, as though searching for the edge of a hidden doorway.

 

While Ryo was searching, Dee was leaning against the wall and shaking his head in silent amusement. The obsessed look in his partner's eyes made him look like an Egyptologist searching for a hidden vault in a pyramid. Apparently he was so focused on finding Bikky's dirty little secrets that he neglected to remember that New York apartments rarely contained trap doors and hidden rooms. Ah yes, the joys of parenting a preteen. With a smirk, Dee turned to the wastebasket. Based on personal experience, the raven haired detective knew that naïve kids believed the trash was the perfect place to hide things. When he was thirteen, he had thrown away his first cigarette butt and believed that no one would know about it. An hour later, one of his friends had knocked over the wastebasket and the butt landed right at Penguin's feet. Since Ryo had never caught Bikky with something he shouldn't have, the kid would still think that the wastebasket was a safe hiding spot. His hands plunged in and shuffled through the crumpled papers and gooey mess of something he did not want to know about. As his hands went deeper, Dee's fingers felt a very familiar item that should not have been there.

 

“Ryo,” He called nervously, immediately catching his partner's attention. “You might want to see this.”

 

As Ryo watched with nervous curiosity, Dee proceeded to pull three empty cigarette boxes from Bikky's trash can. Ryo stared in shock and slowly fell to his knees.

 

“He's smoking…” Ryo whispered in horror. “Nine years old and he's smoking…”

 

“Hey, these are the same brand I use,” Dee muttered to himself as he examined the boxes in awe. “Kid's an idiot for using these at his age, but at least he's got good taste.” Snapping back to the present, Dee threw Ryo a concerned glance. “It's not over yet, buddy. We still have to check the bed. Porn magazines are usually hidden under the mattress and hard drugs go under the bed.”

 

Ryo glared at his partner. “Porn magazines and hard drugs? How do you know that?”

 

“Hey, that's where all kids hide those things. C'mon, you had to have hidden a nudey magazine or two under your mattress as a kid. The big question is, did they feature women or men,” Dee cringed as Ryo sent him a look that would have frozen the Sahara. “Then again, you would never do something like that. Let's just look over there.”

 

Ryo immediately lifted the mattress and let out a sigh of relief when he did not see any adult magazines.

 

“Don't worry, it'll be there soon enough.”

 

“Shut up, Dee.”

 

As Ryo continued to examine the mattress, Dee got down on the floor to check underneath. The edge of a wooden box was peeking out from under a stack of failed math quizzes that Bikky obviously hadn't shown to Ryo yet. Curiosity piqued, Dee pulled the box out from the shadows of the bed. Ryo glanced down at it curiously. It was a small square box, about six inches long and six inches high, with a large padlock keeping it shut. Upon careful examination, or Dee shaking the box, both men determined that its contents were fairly heavy and sounded like some sort of paper material.

 

“Money?” Ryo wondered out loud as Dee held the box up to his ear. “Could he be stealing money?”

 

“Don't know,” Dee mumbled as he shook it again. Out of curiosity, he held it up to his nose and took an experimental sniff. His head suddenly pulled up so that his emerald eyes could meet with Ryo's obsidian ones. “Ryo, take a whiff of this.”

 

Ryo took the box from his partner's hands and slowly brought it up to his nose. He carefully inhaled a tiny bit of the scent that had alarmed Dee. His brain immediately processed the identity of the strange odor.

 

“Dee, is this what I think it is?”

 

“Yeah, it is.”

 

“Dear God, it smells like weed!”