#doohickey

JD: Yeah, I'll fucking say. The guy doesn't feel much more than anger and confusion, I bet he'd explode...

THE ULTIMATE STIM BALL

Kit is really into you.

Doohickey rolls his eyes, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. "Oh, please."

"I'm not jokin'." Beau shrugs one shoulder. "I know. My coworkers know. Jimmy knows."

"You talk to Jimmy?" He looks up incredulously. "You've met him once."

"Mhm. We have a Snapchat streak."

Doohickey huffs, setting down his cup. Stupid family getting all involved with each other. He can't even begin to imagine how much blackmail Jimmy has on him now.

"So what made you realise?" Beau says.

He sighs wistfully. "Seeing him from across the precinct bullpen nearly eight years ago."

"Oh my God, you've been crushin' on him for eight years?!"

"Jesus, no!" He raises his hands in defense. "I... had a small crush on him when we first met, realised he was a dick, hated him for a while, and then it just, ah... kept... happenin'? For, like, a year before we got fired. I—I don't know, I'd be fine for a few months, and then he'd get me my coffee, or help me with a case, and I'd be all sappy about him all over again."

Beau's nose wrinkles. She's either disgusted by any sort of mention of his love life or astounded by his apparent stupidity.

"Relax, I haven't spent a decade of my life pining for some guy. I'm not that sad."

"Could've fooled me." She wiggles excitedly in her seat. "Ooh, you want me to help you ask him out?"

"Hell no! Are you crazy?"

"What? Last I checked, that's what you're supposed to do when you have a crush on someone."

"Yeah, but not when it's me havin' a crush on Kit." He swats the air, like the very idea of it is unthinkable. "Look, he's my business partner, my roommate, and my best friend. We see each other all day, every day. If I fuck things up, I don't think that's something we could recover from."

Beau scoffs. "Wow. Didn't realise your friendship was that fragile."

"That's not what I'm saying! I'm just tryna be practical, Bow-Wow."

They fall into silence. Beau sips her coffee and Doohickey tries not to look at her, knowing he'll only catch her staring over her cup at him with narrow eyes like he's the biggest idiot to walk the Earth. Classic younger sibling stuff.

"So," Beau drawls after a few minutes. "What do you plan to do about it?"

"Nothing. It'll go away eventually, it always does."

"And then it'll come back. Like it always does. And I'll be stuck listening to you whinge about your hotass roommate from Minneapolis where I can't smack you for bein' stupid."

Doohickey levels her with a look.

"There is a bomb right at your feet." Attached to said bomb was a small voice recorder. "I'm not actually here — unfortunate, I know — but I hope one of my dear colleagues has followed through with my plans well enough."

The door that Doohickey entered from was opened, and the light from outside sharply broke through the darkness of the barn as Doohickey spun around wildly. There stood the same figure, dressed in all black, that he just managed to catch in his peripheral before the figure was gone and he was, once again, bathed in the shadows of the warehouse.

"The door is locked, don't even try, it's a waste of your time." She said it as more of a command rather than advice before Doohickey even had the chance to react. "All I want is to play one final game with you. Good luck!"

"For all of us."

Click-!

"Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here.

It will blind you with tears

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife."

The recording included inserts of both Doohickey's and Clancy's voices. Words they shared in the NYPD, in the agency, in public and in the comfort of their home. Words they spoke yesterday or years before, all accents they used to hide their identities from suspects, all the tones they reserved for asshole co-workers. She had been watching them all this time. She never left.

Click-!

"Who wrote the poem? And what is the name of the poem?"

Tick- tick- tick-!

-🔇

[So sorry for being gone for so long, buuuttttt I'M FREE FROM GCSES]

Doohickey flinches away, careful not to kick the bomb and accidentally set it off. That would be a real anticlimactic end to this whole thing.

A part of him just wants to roll his eyes at the sound of his and Clancy's voices speaking back to him. Of course she's been watching the whole time.

"You really have nothing else better to do, huh?"

The words are delightfully romantic, though tragically foreign to him. It sounds like something Clancy would like, the contrarion. He vaguely remember Clancy once reading out a book of poetry to him when he was sick in an attempt to bore him to sleep, but none of the words ring familiar, not even in their voices.

He regards the device on the floor with calm apathy, honed to a point after years on the force. Does she know? Or is she really willing to kill her prey in the first round?

"Bombs, poetry..." Doohickey muses, watching the device curiously. "Yeah, you got the wrong detective for this, lady. That's Clancy's expertise. I was always more of a math guy. Guess you ain't as good at planning as you thought, 'ey?"

Still, the ticking sound isn't exactly calming. His hands fidget nervously and he can already feel his limbs start getting jittery, but he forces his body to quell it as much as he can. She can probably smell fear.

”Well, I’ve actually not watched Law & Order, never did as a kid and then there wasn’t enough time. The lawyer thing isn’t a life-long dream or anything. I just did well in school, did well in debates, liked helping people settle disputes. The ‘dream job’ would’ve been writer, or just something that let me read a bunch. But writing doesn’t pay, and I wasn’t confident enough in it when I was choosing a career. I knew my parents would be happy if I became a lawyer, and, you know, I don’t mind the work itself. It’s sort of like a puzzle, finding all the right documents and laws and statements, piecing them together and trying to moderate between the people involved. The studies were alright, too. I’m a bit of a workaholic, so studying and memorising a bunch of paragraphs and parameters wasn’t so bad, once I got into it.”

As James kept talking about his work, which drifted into writing, which drifted into old books he’d liked, and they both finished their desserts, he thought about how much he’d enjoyed this evening. Jacob seemed like a perfect counterweight to his nervous and flustered way of dealing with romance. He felt like he could relax a bit, with him. There could very well be something more here, if he’d read all the signs correctly.

When the check came, James automatically paid for it. He’d chosen the place, after all. When they left the restaurant, he offered Jacob his arm with a flourish. With just the right amount of sarcasm and jest, he asked, “Would you do me the honour of letting me walk you home?”

Doohickey nods along slowly as James talks. Their stories are surprisingly similar, he thinks—the idea of becoming a cop hadn't even crossed his mind until late high school, when he figured out he wanted to do something that could really help people (jury's still out on that one) and Beau had joked something about him being a nosy brat with a penchant for solving puzzles. Even the way James talks about piecing parts of a case together is reminiscent of how he thinks of his own work. It's interesting to hear another perspective on it, and from someone he didn't used to work with, nonetheless. James' passion is a nice change of pace from some of the more questionable characters from the precinct.

The check comes and Doohickey doesn't put up too much of a fight when it comes to paying, only holding up his hands in defense and chuckling, "Wow. A gentleman," before thanking him more sincerely.

He takes the offered arm with another bright laugh. He's not often the one being escorted. "It'd be my pleasure, handsome."