fandomweekly | [#145] Resistance (FAKE)

Theme Prompt: #145 – Temptation
Title: Resistance
Fandom: FAKE
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 999
Summary: Dee had thought he’d learned to resist temptation, until he’d met Ryo.

Life was full of temptations. Mother claimed it was so that kids could learn to make wise decisions about their behaviour, because how was anyone ever supposed to learn to resist temptation if they were never tempted? It was a good point, but when he was young Dee had wondered why anyone bothered resisting in the first place. It was so much easier and more fun to let himself be tempted.

Of course, as a kid he’d never given any thought to the consequences of his actions. The stomach-aches from eating too much candy, most of it stolen. The lectures and punishments from both Mother and Jess. The injuries incurred because he did something stupid, like falling out of a window while trying to climb into the tree growing just outside… He’d since learned that young kids had no sense of self-preservation. Back then he’d never thought about what might happen to him.

As he’d grown older, the temptations, some of them at least, had changed. He’d still indulged in shoplifting, driven by the voracious appetite of a growing boy, but there’d been pretty girls and boys to chase, steal a kiss from, and more. He’d gotten beaten up a few times when his attentions weren’t appreciated, but he’d always bounced back, and learned to fight back too.

The stealing had stopped when he’d decided to follow in Jess’s footsteps and become a cop, a better one than Jess had been. Seemed adults weren’t immune to temptation either; Jess had been on the take, and how that had happened Dee would never know, but he was determined not to follow that route. With his dying breath, Jess had urged him to live his life honestly, and Dee was trying his best. Not everyone appreciated his honesty, but he’d already figured out that it was impossible to please everyone.

Anyway, he’d gotten into the police academy, made it through training and graduated in the top ten percent. He’d made it through his rookie year too, exposing a fellow uniformed officer’s bullying and criminal tendencies in the process. He’d progressed pretty quickly from uniform to plainclothes, earning his gold detective’s shield only a couple of months after his twenty-fifth birthday.

Being a cop had taught Dee a lot about resisting temptation. It was tough at times, reining in the very natural desire to beat some sadistic asshole to a pulp, or put a bullet between the eyes of a serial rapist or child abuser, but it was his job to apprehend the criminals, not to play judge, jury, and executioner. That was what the courts were for. If he took matters into his own hands, he’d be abusing his power as a police officer, and that would make him no better than the monsters he was charged with identifying and arresting. He had to do the job right, for Jess.

Then Wally Saunders, the detective Dee had been partnered with since his promotion, decided to retire. After a few weeks of working on his own, or with anyone who happened to be available, Dee was handed a new partner, and found temptation staring him in the face again, this time from gorgeous eyes so dark they were practically black.

Ryo Maclean was a study in perfection. A few inches shorter than Dee, slim, long-legged, leanly muscled, athletic, incredible flexible, and with hair the color of honey, he was intelligent, caring, dedicated, and at times, endearingly dorky, a baffling combination of workaholic and airhead, who seemed totally immune to Dee’s flirting.

Dee had gotten a handle on resisting temptation, but Ryo somehow seemed to strip away his self-control simply by existing. Kissing him to say thanks after Ryo rescued him and the brat from the drug dealer’s mansion had been impulsive, almost jokey, but that first taste had ignited a fire in Dee that refused to be quenched.

Despite Ryo’s shocked reaction, that first kiss had led to more. Getting him in a lip-lock in an alleyway while the young pickpocket they were protecting hid nearby so that the gunmen looking for a man and a young girl would pass them by. Smooching him breathless in Ryo’s apartment, just because his partner wasn’t taking his interest seriously. Pouncing on him while on vacation in England…

It was as if Dee was powerless to control himself around Ryo, and since they worked together practically every day, it was a little… distracting. Ryo kept insisting he wasn’t interested, although his body language said otherwise. Dee knew he should probably back off, he wasn’t being fair, but he couldn’t make himself, and he had a feeling that despite everything he said to the contrary, Ryo didn’t want him to.

Ryo was being tempted too; the difference being that he was fighting against it with everything he’d got, just because he was too scared to admit the truth to himself. If Dee stopped pushing Ryo’s boundaries, his partner might never accept his own needs and desires, the ones he’d been ruthlessly repressing since he’d first become aware of them. Ryo was condemning himself to living half a life, all because large sections of society still considered it wrong and unnatural to be gay.

His partner had a whole lot more self-control than Dee had ever been blessed with. Ryo proved that when he couldn’t pull the trigger on the man who’d murdered his parents, and while he berated himself for being weak, Dee could only admire him for his strength. The temptation must have been almost unbearable, but Ryo hadn’t given in to it, whereas a few years earlier, in a similar situation, Dee would have killed the man responsible for blowing up the orphanage and seriously injuring Mother if Ryo hadn’t stopped him.

Ryo is still better than Dee at ignoring temptation, although Dee tests his willpower at every opportunity. His lover still denies himself way too much while Dee denies himself as little as possible.

That’s okay though. Maybe they balance each other out.

The End

[#145] Resistance (FAKE)

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