by Rhys Ford
Ivo’s smile taunted him, and Ruan could practically see the line in the sand drawn in front of him. Now was a moment he needed to take, and as odd as it might have seemed, a declaration was in order… even if it was going to take place in the middle of a vipers’ nest filled with the people he admired, worked with, and sometimes stood for.
“Fuck it,” Ruan muttered and leaned over to press his mouth against Ivo’s slightly parted lips. “Here goes.”
The buzz grew loud enough to make Ruan’s ears ring, or maybe it was the pound of his heart in his chest, but the tiny moment he’d taken to kiss Ivo didn’t seem long enough.
Ivo brought more than the night and food with him. There was sweet promise in his mouth, a hint of freedom and salvation from the dreary bog Ruan lived in. A flicker of something bright swelled in Ruan’s belly, fed by a need to tumble the man he kissed into a soft bed and wring them both dry of any thought and movement. The too-brief touch of their bodies set Ruan on fire, and he pulled away slowly, reluctantly, before he said fuck it to the stack of evidence on his desk, fleeing into the night with Ivo at his side.
“Shit, you make me lose my mind,” Ruan muttered, pressing another quick kiss onto Ivo’s growing smile. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.” Ivo hoisted up the two bags he held in his hands when he got near Ruan’s desk. “I… um… brought dinner. Was hoping you could take a break for a bit. If not, I leave you food and head home. Already stopped by your place and fed the cat.”
“I think he’s got time for food,” Maite piped up. “Man’s got to eat. Conference room two is empty if you guys want privacy.”
“Not sure how much privacy we’ll get,” Ruan snorted. “The walls are glass. It’ll be like eating in a fish bowl with you sharks swimming around outside.”
“Privacy enough. Go eat and I’m going to have dinner with my bride,” Morgan drawled, nodding at Ruan, then slapping Ivo lightly on the shoulder. “Ye let me know if he doesn’t treat ye right, kiddo. There’s a lot of cold case filing to be done downstairs. At least fifty years’ worth.”
“Shit, like he’d survive Mace and Luke if he fucked me up,” Ivo snorted. “And they’re only going to get the leftovers from what I’ve done to him.”
Threatened from all angles, Ruan sighed. “I’ve got time. My eyes are beginning to bleed, and my stomach’s sure I’ve slit my own throat.”
“Good, ’cause I brought… everything,” Ivo said, glancing down at the bags. “Brought a dinner combo for your partner. If she likes chow mein, roast pork belly, and walnut shrimp.”
“You are a man after my own heart. All of that sounds good.” Ruan’s partner held out her hand. “Hello. Maite Suppes. I’m Ruan’s partner.”
“Hey, Ivo Rogers.” He set the bags down on Ruan’s chair, then shook Maite’s outstretched hand. “I’m Ruan’s… something.”
“Whatever we are, it’s good. We’re good,” Ruan interjected. “Or close enough. Tell you what, unpack the troll’s food and leave it here so she doesn’t eat any more billy goats, and head over to the conference room over there. I’ve just got to shut down a few things. I’ll grab us a couple of waters or soda to drink.”
“Shuffling me off?” Ivo cocked an eyebrow, laughing when Ruan nodded. Peering down at the bags, he said, “I’ve got to figure out which one of these is Maite’s. Point me to where you’re hiding me, and I’ll go lay the food out.”
“There.” Ruan pointed toward the conference room’s open door. “Give me five minutes. Six if I have to go hide my partner’s body.”
“Dude, seriously out of your league. Damn, check out that ass and those legs.” Maite’s wolf whistle at Ivo walking away was loud enough to bring a frown to Ruan’s brow, and he turned, scowling down at her. “Don’t look at me like that. You went from sitting in a rocking chair next to your old-man landlord to dating a guy hot enough to make a straight man look twice.”
“You still owe me that forty, Nicholls,” Joan called out from her desk a few feet away. “I didn’t get any dinner.”
“Share with Maite,” he quipped back. His mouth was still warm from Ivo’s kiss, but his spine resonated from Morgan’s chilly grip on his bones. “Suppes, do me a favor and just… try to keep things to a dull roar out here. I’m flailing here. Not like I’ve been in the closet, but—”
“You’ve never had a hot guy who knows the captain bring you dinner during a late-night shift before?” she finished for him. “Yeah, I know. But you’ve got this. I mean, think about it. You’ve got a guy willing to bring you dinner. Most of us are lucky to get a nearly expired chocolate bar and bad coffee. No one here gives a shit about who you date. Just that he brought you food. And maybe is tight with Morgan. Double-edged sword there. Go get some food in you and talk with your boyfriend. I’m going to drown my sorrows and lack of a dating life in chow mein and roast pork belly. And don’t fuck things up with him. I don’t care what Morgan’s going to do to you, but I really like a guy who thinks about a cop’s partner when he’s bringing dinner by.”
“Yeah, that’s Ivo. All about the giving,” Ruan muttered.
“Hey, he fed your cat,” Maite pointed out. “If that isn’t love, then you don’t deserve him. Especially knowing what a pig that cat is when he eats.”
“SO WE finally break in through the back door, and get this… instead of busting into a drug den, we end up going in guns drawn and piling into the kitchen of a bunch of older Portuguese women, elbow deep in sausage meat and cleaned pig guts.” Maite stopped to take a gasping breath. “And your man here—without even blinking an eye—goes, ‘Um, sorry. We were looking for drug dealers. We’ll pay for the door, and we’ll be back for some sausage.’”
“Hey, it smelled like good sausage. Wasn’t my fault Narc gave us bad intel.” Ruan dug through one of the bags, looking for a packet of hot mustard. “And why are you still in here? What happened to that privacy you promised us?”
“Hey, Ivo was the one who offered up some char siu bao and har gow. I’d be a fool to pass that up,” Maite retorted, opening up the container of food Ivo passed over to her. “This smells fantastic. You’re going to have to tell me where you got this from. I’m going to move into their back room.”
“Take a menu,” Ruan groused, shoving one of the trifolds into Maite’s bag. “Now, get out.”
“I like her,” Ivo said after Maite closed the conference room door behind her, stopping long enough to make funny faces at Ruan through the glass partitions before heading to her desk with a plateful of food. “I like how she doesn’t take any of your shit. She’s like a little sister.”
“She’s something,” he admitted, lowering the blinds to block out prying eyes. “I love her, but man, she can be a brat.”
“That’s ’cause she has all of your secrets.” Ivo broke apart a pair of chopsticks clean down the middle, then rubbed at the wood until all of the splinters were broken off. He worked on the next pair while Ruan pulled a chair up, adjusting the height of the seat to accommodate his long legs. “We’re probably going to have to eat fast. I’ve sucked up a lot of your time.”
“Not so much. A break’s good. Everything was starting to blend together.” The food smelled amazing and Ruan’s stomach growled, wondering why it was still empty. “Thank you for this. You’re great for bringing this down.”
“Hey, I get to see you and make sure you’ve got food in you,” Ivo replied, leaning over to kiss Ruan on the corner of his mouth. “And it was great to catch up with Donal. Haven’t seen him in a few months. Had the biggest crush on Connor when I was younger. Then some other cop brought me home when I was seventeen and took his place.”
“Somehow, I can’t imagine me taking Connor Morgan’s place in some guy’s heart,” Ruan chuckled, mixing mustard and shoyu together into a shallow paper cup. “But thanks for the ego stroke.”
“Con’s nice, but he’s too… there’s a lot of him. He needs someone nice. Like, Forest fits him. They’re like ‘sweet apple pie and vanilla ice cream’ n
ice.” Ivo began opening containers, arranging them in front of their plates. “I’m not that nice. Hell, I’m not even pleasant to be around some days. Those two wake up to bluebirds and sugar-candy hearts. Me, I’ve got a one-eyed crow horking up old dog food it’s stolen from Earl’s dish and needing at least five cups of black, syrupy coffee to get my brain working. You I fit with. ’Sides, I love your cat. If we don’t work out, I’m keeping Spot.”
“He’d probably agree. He sure as hell sees more of you than he does me,” Ruan admitted, watching Ivo dish out food for them.
For all of his talk, Ivo was a caretaker, and the scooping out of shrimp from the chow mein onto Ruan’s dish proved it. Life with Ivo probably wouldn’t be filled with grand gestures, but Ruan knew he didn’t need proclamations of love plastered across billboards or lit up in fireworks across a night sky. Discovering he liked being taken care of was a surprise, and Ivo paid attention to the small things in Ruan’s life—tidbits like his love of shrimp or liking hot mustard in his shoyu to dip egg rolls into. It was damned nice to share a dinner with Ivo in the close confines of a conference room. He didn’t need a fancy dinner with candles and violins. The clatter of a detectives’ bullpen as a bunch of cops worked to solve a string of murders was music enough, and the pleasant heat of Ivo’s leg against his thigh was all the fire he needed to keep him company while eating.
He was in love with Ivo—Ruan knew that much—and he couldn’t think of a nicer way to live his life than sharing takeout with the beautiful tattoo artist who threw him for a loop whenever he thought he had Ivo figured out.
“Something wrong with the food?” Ivo held a shu mai a few inches away from his mouth, its flat bottom dripping with chili oil and shoyu. “You’re not eating.”
“I was just thinking how nice this was. How great it is to have you here.” Ruan dug into his noodles, spearing a shrimp. “And how odd it is not to have to share my food with Spot. Bastard will pluck stuff off my plate without even a bit of guilt.”
“Yeah, with a cat, what’s yours is his and what’s his is his.” He chuckled. “I was wondering how I’d feel coming down here… guns and cops and everything. Then, when I got here and Donal spotted me at the desk, I worried I’d maybe gone too far. You might not want me to just show up at your work. I should have called you first.”
“Hey, call only to make sure I’m at the station,” Ruan said through a mouthful of rice noodles. “I was shocked, but mostly because I’d never had anyone come by. It’s good. It’s damned good to see you. Hell, I’ll take any second of time I can get with you during craziness like this. Reminds me what normal should be. Tell me how you know the captain. That was more of a shock than seeing you show up with food.”
“He and Con got tattooed by Bear a while back. The SFPD shield. Because, you know, they’re ubercops,” Ivo replied with a grin. “Kane got one when he made lieutenant, so now they all match. Figure the twins will get the same once they make sergeant or something. I don’t know them. Then come to find out, Damie got his kirin inked by Ichi, who mentored me in the beginning, so it’s like a huge tangled mess of ink and social incest. Lots of lines crossing. Can’t imagine working for Donal. He’s like Connor. A lot of cop. But more of a dad. His wife’s intense. I love Brigid.”
“I’ve met her once. She’s like a tsunami,” Ruan confessed. “I’d be more scared of meeting her in a dark alley than the captain. He’d talk to you first. She’d probably gut you.”
“Yeah, she’d want to feel your blood run over her hands,” Ivo agreed. “No guns for her. She’d want to feel you die.”
“Talk to me about the gun thing. Just curious.” He angled his chair toward Ivo, bumping their knees together. “I mean, I’m a cop. A gun comes with the star. I know you’re not great about them, but I also don’t want to have it stress you out.”
Ivo didn’t answer him at first. Picking through some of the dim sum, he arranged a spread of dumplings across his plate, then took his time selecting one to dip into his sauce. Biting into a gau gee, he sucked on its insides and chewed, looking everywhere but at Ruan.
“I’ve not been shot at or anything,” he finally said, looking up at Ruan. Hooking his leg over Ruan’s, Ivo leaned back into the chair, rocking into its padded cradle. “I think a lot of it has to do with how fucking scary they are. They’re unpredictable, and you’ve got to have faith that the person holding one knows what they’re doing and isn’t drunk or high. A knife you kind of at least know you’ve got a chance or something, but a gun’s not like that. Everything is out of your control if someone’s pointing one at you. And I’m not exactly the most trusting of people.
“You, I’m okay with. You come home, lock it down, and you don’t get drunk or angry. I don’t feel unsafe around you, and I can’t say that about everyone,” Ivo confessed. “Maybe a lot of what I feel is from what Luke’s gone through, but either way, you’re talking about something that punches a pretty big hole through someone. They’re something someone made to kill something else. That’s all it does. That kind of shit scares the living hell out of me. I hate not having control over what happens to me, and I think that’s pretty much the worst thing about guns, I don’t have control.”
“What happened to Luke?” Ruan asked, then shook his head, holding up a hand in apology. “Nope. Sorry. Not your story to tell. I know that about you. I just want you to feel safe and okay with me carrying. It’s a part of the job, and I like guns, but I should never ever point one at you. Or anyone without intending to defend myself or someone else. That’s a part of the job too.”
“So no hunting Bambi and Thumper?” Ivo teased. “Or Daffy?”
“Not really. I went hunting with my grandmother. She was a killer shot, so I grew up with guns, but there’s something I discovered about hunting,” he replied ruefully. “I don’t like killing things, and I sure as hell don’t like dressing a carcass. I can do it if I have to, but I’m not a hunter. For me, a gun’s a part of being a cop, and I’m okay with that. I know where my meat comes from. Not like I think it’s pristine and appears on Styrofoam trays, but I’m fine with not stocking my own freezer. There’s other things I’d rather be doing, like eating dinner with you in the middle of a cop house.”
“Really, ’cause I was thinking this is nice, but I’d rather be fighting the cat off the shrimp at your place so we could get tangled in the sheets afterwards,” Ivo shot back, stealing a piece of pork from Ruan’s plate with a quick grab of his chopsticks.
“Babe, I’ll take you any way I can get you,” Ruan murmured, then leaned over to lick the sweet-and-sour sauce left on Ivo’s lips. “So just remember, it doesn’t matter where we are, so long as we’re in it together.”
Seventeen
WHEN DEATH settled down, Ruan thought bitterly, one murder turned into another and his department was stretched thin trying to extinguish a trail of revenge murders while being a step or two behind. Six days after Ivo came by for dinner, his department was still going full throttle, and it ground Ruan down, but every interview, each scrap of evidence, tightened the case up. And then on the seventh day, as if God himself called for a rest, the whole thing broke open and they’d been able to close the metal-barred door behind the man who’d been terrorizing a neighborhood.
At ten o’clock, he’d called it a night. The paperwork pile they’d been left with was as carved down as it was going to get, and the rest of it could wait until they came back to work day after next. Maite declared her numb brain couldn’t take much more, and he’d agreed. His stomach had a hole in it from gulping down cop-house coffee, and the vending machine’s supply of chips and cookies was stale and lean, picked over until the spiral feeders looked more like an archeological dig than a source for quick and easy food.
“Hell, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.” Maite yawned, sliding on her jacket while they walked to the parking garage. The cold swept back down, bringing with it a bit of fog and enough of a nip that she’d tugged a thick beanie on her head, pullin
g it down far enough to hide her eyebrows. “Think your boy fed your cat so you can just go crash?”
“Not a boy. I keep reminding you about that.” Ruan chuckled, ignoring Maite’s middle finger poking up in his direction. “Drive safe. You don’t get home, your mom’s going to come after me. She’s already warned me she’s got a paring knife with my name on it. Don’t be the Suppes that she uses it for.”
“She should have used it on Dennis. He’s the one who got shot up and needed you to save his sorry ass,” she snorted, unlocking her sports car. “And I don’t get why she’s threatening you. You’ve already pulled one of her kids out of the line of fire. How many do you have to save before she starts blaming Dad for us all being cops and not you?”
“I don’t know. Let me know when you find out. Say hi to Richard for me, and tell him I miss having him as a partner. At least back then, his wife wasn’t threatening to cut off my gonads if someone bruised her babies.” Ruan did a quick scan of his back seat, more habit than threat, then keyed open his door. “Don’t forget. We’re off tomorrow. You come in, you finish the reports.”
“Chances of that happening are slim to none, Nicholls. This mama’s girl has a date with a thick book, a fireplace, and a big cup of coffee,” she shot back, climbing into her car. “I might not even put on pants.”
“Things I didn’t need to know, Suppes,” he called out through his open window as she drove slowly past him. “Shit, this has been a long fucking week.”
