through the grapevine

He might as well have kissed a marble statue for all the effect it’d had on his wife. Joel kept his hands propped on the edge of the table a moment longer, his head still hanging over Jo’s shoulder as she flipped through paperwork on whatever case she was meant to be defending in court that morning. ”I’m gonna be home late again. This case is finally starting to run hot and you know how he gets.” He, like it was his partner drawing him into the fire here.

Jo’s brow furrowed, the flicker of muscle under pale skin the only sign that she’d heard him. Drawing in a deep breath, Joel straightened up and headed for the door. No farewell tossed after him, no absent minded smile suddenly turned on him like Jo had managed to drag herself up from the depths of work for just a couple of minutes. She’d stopped doing even that after they’d moved here. The two of them might as well have existed on separate planes for the amount of time they spent with that wall up between the two of them. It wasn’t ice, that would’ve caused some sensation at least. Glass. Tinted dark enough on Jo’s side that she just couldn’t see anymore.

The jacket he snagged off the hook by the door was the same one that had been in his car on Halloween. Flecks of orange paint remained on the leather, practically a scarlet letter if she’d wanted to look. It felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each as he shrugged into it and left the apartment. His hand dipped in it, fingerprints stark on Dolly’s skin as she’d pulled the part of him that could still feel out into the neon lit dark at the Grill. He’d scrubbed it from his own skin when he’d gotten back that night, emerging from the shower after almost an hour. Jo had come home as he’d padded into the kitchen, some muttered words dropped about it being a long night before she’d slipped into her side of the bed. In the dark Joel had curled onto his side, still feeling the bite of Dolly’s fingers on his skin, the memory sending that shudder rolling back through him.

A buzz in his pocket, the doc’s message about their next session coming through as he drove. Joel avoided looking at it, fingers remaining tight on the wheel as he swung through the square towards the station. He glanced at the club, jaw going tight again. The doc had pushed for news but he’d stopped mentioned Dolly in their sessions, she’d seen something in that, he knew, but one admission was going to blow the damn he knew had cracked that night. Time was growing tight if he wanted to get Dolly out of there, Ricky’s obsession with the place and its owner seeming to grow by the day. It might take him throwing her over his shoulder and physically dragging her out of town but Dolly wasn’t gonna be there when the axe finally fell on Hector Dacre and his pit of misery.

He finally pulled the phone out on the way into the station. Thumbs flying on the way to the office to cancel the appointment for that night. Work, couldn’t be avoided. Maybe they could reschedule. He could imagine the doc’s face going tight as she read it. When you spent your days looking for the lies people were telling themselves, finding the ones they were telling you was easy. Joel had already seen Ricky’s car out in the lot, obviously parked up hours before his shift had started. Another sign of that obsession. The phone went back into his pocket, a hand dragged over his face as he approached their office. He couldn’t let anything other than bright eyed and bushy tailed, a sign that anything wasn’t normal and those dark eyes would fix like some overgrown eagle’s on him.

Joel slipped the jacket off as he strolled in, tossed it down over the back of the chair. Fingers smoothed the collar down, hiding those orange flecks. He dropped heavy into his seat, a weary back of laughter rolling out of him as he thumbed on his computer. ”Not all of us get up 4am,” Joel shot back. He had done as a kid, chores to be done come rain or shine on the farm, but this wasn’t Cunningham, the only bullshit he had to shovel here was his own.

Brows furrowing, Joel lifted his chin towards the paperwork he’d dumped into Ricky’s inbox weeks ago. Pieced together painfully after he’d been sent in, every possible mention of Dolly scrubbed from it. ”That’s what we agreed, wasn’t it, partner?” Only Ricky’s decisions weren’t always of the shared opinion. This had been his case from the start and de la Peña had seemed happy to run in directions he wasn’t allowed to follow. Slumping back in his chair, one leg wanting to start jiggling beneath the desk, Joel shrugged. ”If he’s doin’ what you think he’s doin’ he was always gonna lie about anythin’ suspicious.” None of which Dolly had been willing to admit to him, her loyalty heavily in Dacre’s favour.

Shifting again, Joel pulled the narrow notebook he carried out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d started another as he tried to pry into where Dolly had been all those intervening years – it hadn’t been here for sure, the club was a relatively recent addition – keeping just his official notes in this none. Tossing it down on the desk Joel frowned at his partner. ”All of them. I tried to stick around, see if there was some set up for when the club wasn’t full but they’ve seen me now, I poke around too much and you lose any chance of me being an inside man. Who else have you got watching the place?” His gut started to knot up at that. If Ricky was close he’d know it, had relied on the fact that his partner hadn’t been there or at the Blacklight party. The minute Ricky found out about Dolly his trust was gonna go through the floor.

Tagged: ENRIQUE DE LA PEÑA * Word Count: 1033

There was meant to be a clock on a wall somewhere in the world, counting down to Doomsday like it could be predicted. It had always seemed like bullshit to him but ever since Dolly had slithered into his lap at the club Joel had seen his own coming. Little hands ticking around, speeding up on the night of the blacklight party, thundering towards midnight and the implosion of his job, his marriage and his life. Would the doc be able to put him back together like Humpty Dumpty if he shattered or wasn’t there enough therapy in the world to do that?

Joel had been pushing the thought from his mind continually, trying to wrap metaphorical fingers around the hands of that clock to wrench them out of place. If he could get Dolly out of the club then Ricky could do whatever the hell he wanted to shut the place down – hell, it’d be a blessing if the people running the place weren’t around to come looking for Dolly to point the finger of blame at her. If he could get Dolly out of town without Jolene figuring out how close he’d been to breaking the vows the two of them had said to one another then maybe his marriage would survive this, in the crumbling pieces it was already in. He’d wanted to believe that keeping Ricky’s nose out of the club by throwing himself in there again and again would maybe stop him from looking at him that way.

He met his partner’s look with a frown, Ricky’s sneering tone just a hair thicker than it usually seemed. There might’ve been a lot going on, cobwebs of a life he thought he’d left behind in Cunningham wrapping tight around him, but the reports had still been in on time, albeit in a slightly altered form by necessity. The same couldn’t have been said about his partner, Ricky kept his cards close to his chest, only flipping them when he had to, using them to blindside whoever he was trying to play with that pruney poker face.

Reaching into his pocket all the same, Joel tossed the notebook he kept – with everything pertinent and sharable in it, he hadn’t been stupid enough to note down what had happened with Dolly either time – letting Ricky dig through it to his heart’s content. Joel sagged back into his chair, jamming a knee against the edge of the desk to prop his elbow on. Fingers plucked at his lips, caught at the scruff of his beard beneath his lower lip as he flicked his gaze back and forth between the notebook and his partner. Ricky’s rose to meet his, his movements seemingly calm until he gritted his teeth and those dark eyes narrowed at him. ”Why would I bother duckin’ them when you’re the one plannin’ when to send me in anyway?” The lines deepened between his brows. ”There’s no point in doublin’ up the eyes, if I know someone’s there I can watch somewhere else. No wasted effort.” No eyes seeing him slipping downstairs to Dolly, begging her to leave with him again. No matter how puckered up Ricky got about it he wasn’t about to hand over an innocent woman who’d found herself caught up in the middle of something that was so much more than she’d bargained on.

Shit.

Joel’s heart lurched in his chest, feeling like it was trying to tear itself free of his rib cage. His gut twisted beneath, bile burning its way up the back of his throat. He stilled in the chair now, refusing to flinch as Ricky slammed his notebook back on the desk. The spitting out of that word about Dolly had him shoving forward though, his foot hitting the floor with a bang just as loud. ”You had someone there watchin’ me, not the club huh? Years of workin’ together and you didn’t trust me that damn much? Thanks partner.” The word held disgust this time as he propped elbows on the edge of the desk. ”There was no damn impedin’ and if they’d been watchin’ properly you’d have known that. Dolly[//i] was a surprise. She’s in a bad situation and if you gave a shit about anythin’ to do with the people involved here you’d watch your mouth ‘bout her.” The hands of the clock took another tick towards that final explosion.

Pushing to his feet, Joel turned away from his partner. His hands went to his head, trying to hold it together as he shoved his hair back from his face. Ricky had watched a partner turn before, it had taken him years to convince him he wasn’t gonna do the same and now he was treading a parallel path. ”What are you really lookin’ for there?” As he turned back Joel fixed cold eyes on his partner, his expression going hard. ”It’s somethin’ you weren’t tellin’ me ‘bout huh? After all, it’s your investigation. I’m just the eyes and ears cause you can’t go in there yourself.” He was convenient, right up until the moment he stepped over one of Ricky’s strictly drawn lines.

Tagged: ENRIQUE DE LA PEÑA * Word Count: 1858

Fuck you man. The words didn’t trip off of Joel’s tongue but he wanted to spit them like a bullet and see that shell Ricky built up around himself like a damn turtle shell split. Even now, after years of him proving himself, taking every ounce of doubt thrown his way and showing there was no need, Ricky wasn’t about to stick his scrawny neck out and admit that maybe he was the one seeing all of this wrong.

Joel paused, hunched over the desk, his jaw tight, his head ticking back and forth slowly. He was breathing fast as Cisco after he’d taken him on a three mile gallop, sides lathered and heaving when he’d finally reined him back in. Reining himself in was harder with all those accusations still coming in like buckshot, like Ricky was hoping some would draw blood. Undoubtedly he’d been storing all that ammunition up, just waiting for the day when he’d be proven right and another partner would fail him.

But he wasn’t right.

Shit.

Joel planted his other elbow, dragged the heels of his hands over his face, fingers tangling back in his hair. Ricky was probably relishing this despite the pinched look that seemed ready to drag his moustache back into his mouth. ”Right, cause no one’s allowed to draw outside your lines huh?” he asked sourly. ”This is your operation, not ours and you wanna move me from the list of the good guys to the bad because you think you’ve got a damn clue about what’s goin’ on.” The laugh that boiled out of him was strained, edged with a sharper anger. ”You’d rather I was an alcoholic than a turncoat huh? And you’re not gonna stop with tryin’ to tear me down. Lemme guess, partner, you’ve got proof that Doll had somethin’ to do with Jeanine’s death too but for my sake you weren’t gonna say a damn thing. I didn’t know you cared.” But he should’ve guessed that Ricky’s investigation was like an iceberg and he got to see was the ten percent that was above the dark water.

Getting Dolly out before Ricky drowned the men she was working for had been his only intention. Fuck the rest of them, they could rot in cells, should’ve been, but if protecting the one innocent woman in this was enough proof of his betrayal for Ricky then this was over. His fingers twitched, ready to find the edge of his badge fold as he got to his feet, ready to snap and throw the badge in that smug face in his partner’s face. Joel stared at him, his hands still laced around his head as he started to carve parts of that iceberg away. ”Bullshit.” The accusation was cold, hard. Joel shook his head, a bitter laugh finally rolling out. ”It’s not the only reason. You’ve had a hard on for somethin' in this from the start and it’s not just your undyin' need to clean up the narcotics problem in this country. What’s the other reasons?” He bit down, not flinching at the added accusation.

His face in the crook of Dolly’s neck at the Black Light party, his hands panting her hips, her skin with his touch. Every smear of orange and purple another strike against him. If Ricky had seen it then he’d had a real show, if Jo had … naw, there wasn’t enough of their marriage left for it to even shatter at a betrayal that hadn’t happened yet.

But it had been close.

Joel’s hands dropped then, finding his belt, two fingers landing on his badge fold as he stared mutely at his partner. Options … spread out all of Dolly’s dirty laundry for Ricky to pick over, for him to use as leverage against her. Or. His fingers curled around his badge finally, slowly removing it from his belt. ”I fall on my sword for you, give you things that don’t exist, and you’ll save my career. Real big of you man. Let me guess? You brush me under the carpet then. Take the investigation solo and when it’s all done, we go our separate ways because the trust is gone? Fuck you, Ricky. I gave you everythin’ you needed, every comin’ and goin’, everythin’ Doll told me. I didn’t impede your investigation but you wanna keep believin’ I’m the bad guy in this … you go ahead.” Joel looked down at the badge in his head, considered pitching it like a baseball at his partner’s head but he went to turn instead. Doll didn’t have any choice now, he was getting her out and then he’d burn the whole place to the damn ground. Let Ricky have everything his shriveled little heart had ever desired.

Tagged: ENRIQUE DE LA PEÑA * Word Count: 795