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It becomes evident early on that the station has a competitive, chaotic sort of energy. Due to visits with Tammy on the extremely-rare occasions that their schedules do, in fact, line up, and lively stories told at home, Debbie Ocean learns this before she even gets transferred. Foolishly, when she first arrives in the police precinct with a captain’s badge pinned to her jacket, she believes that certain circumstances will make it easier to gain the detectives’ respect. Namely, Tammy. Her wife has a steady, undeniable way of influencing people to be better.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it happens. There is a rough transition period from the previous, ridiculously lax captain’s reign to Debbie’s, and the detectives are used to running the show, accustomed to doing what they want, how they want and when they want. The ones who have met Debbie a handful of times before think of her primarily as Tammy’s wife, not as their new captain, which takes weeks (months?) of getting used to. Debbie likes things to be organized, papers filled out and filed correctly, rules followed to the letter; this is, she sometimes suspects, why she and Tammy get along so seamlessly. And then there are detectives like Constance Hong, whose desk always looks like several middle school lockers have exploded there, or Rose Weil, who bakes in all her free time and fills the break room with desserts (which is very nice, aside from the fact that she’s constantly running five to ten minutes late with flour dusting her clothes). Not to mention people like Daphne Kluger, the gum-popping and nail-painting civilian administrator, or Amita Chandra, the sergeant who’s put herself on administrative leave and apparently has no intentions at all to return to the field anytime soon.
On her first Halloween with the 99, she is drawn into a bet. It’s not how she intends for the evening to go, but they’re all stuck working and Tammy is in and out of the precinct while patrolling with an overenthusiastic, extravagantly-costumed Rose, which means Debbie has nobody there to keep her from agreeing to such stupid, childish things.
It all starts when Constance starts bragging about her talent as a detective, egged on by the others – she brings in someone in handcuffs, shuts him up in the holding cell, and spends the next five minutes rambling about how many stupid mistakes criminals make. “I’d make a better thief than any of them,” she announces, arms spread wide. “I could nick anything from any of you, and you’d never even know.”
Which, of course, leads to Debbie agreeing to call her an amazing detective-slash-genius if she can steal the medal of valour framed on Debbie’s office wall. The entire thing is, frankly, sort of embarrassing, as the younger woman spends the entire night creating even more wild and less thought-out plans, and they turn out to only be outrageous and, surprisingly, rather good distractions. At midnight, Constance reveals the whole plan and the group of detectives she recruited to help her – this is sort of cheating, but since they never made an official agreement on whether or not they were to work alone, Debbie is forced to let it slide – and after Debbie replaces the medal’s frame on its hook, she reluctantly makes her announcement to the entire precinct. As if that’s not enough, the terms of the bet also have her bringing Constance’s paperwork (and the paperwork the detective agreed to do for each recruit she made) home for the next week. Tammy finds this quietly amusing and simply shakes her head when Debbie implies that she could help.
The next year, Constance bounces across the bullpen, on time for once, and announces that she wants to make an attempt at the bet again. When Debbie scoffs at the idea, she ups her end of the bargain to a month of free overtime instead of just one week, and they shake hands while Tammy looks on tiredly. “They’re sucking you in, just like you swore they wouldn’t,” she sighs later, outright refusing to join in on the master plan Debbie has been forming since last October.
Her wife does not like Halloween. This is only brought more clearly into the light each October as the stores around New York put up decorations, pumpkins appear in large bins at grocery stores, and boxes of variety candy are lined up on shelves. Once she married Debbie, she gladly relinquished any responsibility for arranging the kids’ costumes, handing over the task to Deb – and, unofficially, her best friend, John. Who practically swelled with pride when Debbie, overwhelmed by finding all three requested costumes for her stepchildren, asked him to help. Every year since, he has taken this job incredibly seriously, procuring pieces of costumes and inventing ways to put them all together into something cohesive, filling Debbie and Tammy’s pantry with candy, and even volunteering for trick-or-treating duty when it’s their year to take the kids.
With a little assistance from their coworkers, a loophole that Constance used last year and she takes advantage of herself now, Debbie takes the win.
So for the third Halloween she spends at the 99, the might-as-well-be-official event is only to be expected. The Halloween Heist, the others have taken to calling it, which does at least have a nice ring to it. Best two out of three, they decide. The winner takes all. Constance sets her sights high this time, perhaps still stung from last year’s defeat. “The object of this year’s heist will be… your watch,” she announces, grand sweeping gesture towards Debbie’s wrist and all.
“Absolutely not,” Debbie rejects the idea with a long-suffering sigh. She’s observant enough to have noticed the way Constance has had her eye on it for months, the silver wristband and Danny etched into the back. And she doesn’t really want to imagine the shenanigans the detective could have come up with in all that time.
Constance pouts. “Come on, Cap,” she pleads. Shortens the title just so, the way she knows Debbie has disliked since the beginning. “I’ll keep the same bargain as last time. And, just to sweeten the pot, we can pick teams. So nobody gets ganged up on.”
So she chooses Amita first, and Debbie picks Lou. She’s left with Rose when Constance claims Daphne, and that leaves Tammy sitting at her desk with her fingers laced smoothly together, looking between the two of them expectantly.
A flicker of surprise lights somewhere inside Debbie at the realization that Tammy has any interest in taking part in the heist at all. Somehow, she has not considered this possibility at all. Evidently, Constance hasn’t thought about it, either; they glance at each other, uncertain, frowns tugging at the corners of their mouths and creasing their foreheads. “No can do, Tam,” says Constance finally, pulling at the end of her braid. “Sorry. It’s just, you know, the whole Debbie thing. Maybe you should be on her team.” This rejection is surprising, in itself. Tammy has known Constance since they were kids, just enough years older that she could be the quote-unquote coolest babysitter Constance ever had, and while the Hongs were often busy working, Constance was left to her own devices – which meant a near-adoption by the Prescotts, complete with a long-standing invitation to family dinners and holidays, and an honorary position as a member of the family.
“Absolutely not,” are the words that immediately fall from Debbie’s lips when everyone looks to her. Shaking her head emphatically, she adds, “You basically consider her your little sister, and you’d do pretty much anything for her. Including pretending to be in love with me for six years only to betray me now–”
Tammy sighs, exasperated. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re married.”
“It’s a risk I can’t take, Tammy. You’re not on my team.”
“Mine, either. Tammy’s out,” decides Constance. Tammy looks offended, and she makes a face in response. “You said it yourself, man. You’re married. It’s not smart to trust you on this.”
The heist starts out just as Debbie expects it to, after that minor hiccup. Constance makes valiant attempts at distracting her, from a small fire to what can only be called something along the lines of a flash mob, in order to get someone close enough to make a play for the watch.
This is something Debbie sees coming, though she supposes she wouldn’t, if she hadn’t already recruited this particular criminal on her own. Constance has been smart, bringing in outside help, but Debbie likes to think of herself as smarter. The detective wasn’t exactly subtle about her intrigue when Lou caught Leslie Stevenson, who describes herself as a hacker but is really more of a jack of all trades. As long as she can go by her code name, Nine-Ball, she tends to go with the highest bidder, as most thieves do. It just so happens that out of Debbie and Constance, one of them is an adult woman with her finances under control, and the other is an impulsive online shopper living primarily off microwave meals. It was easy, then, to get Nine-Ball on her side, snatching her away without Constance even knowing. So while Nine replaces the watch with a replica for Constance, she makes brief eye contact with Debbie, unnoticed in the pure chaos of the bullpen. Ten minutes later, she meets Debbie in the bathroom on the ground floor to trade back. Or that’s the plan, at least. Instead, she turns up empty-handed. “Gave it to the kid,” she shrugs. “Sorry, man.” And then she ducks right out of the room, leaving Debbie standing stock-still, trying to figure out how the hell Constance managed to outbid her and win Nine’s loyalty.
“You’ll never believe this,” she says abruptly when Tammy comes into her office later. She’s been sitting calmly here, trying to look as if she thoroughly believes the fake watch on her wrist is really her brother’s. She can see Constance sitting at her desk, chatting casually with Daphne. Her hand rests as nonchalantly as possible on the handle of her filing cabinet’s top drawer, which is quite clearly where she has stashed Debbie’s watch.
“I can help you get the real watch back,” Tammy says one eyebrow quirked slightly up.
“How did you,” begins Debbie.
Tammy only shrugs and explains, “It’s not a very good fake. I can tell the difference even from here. So your hire didn’t work out, huh?”
This question in particular is what tips Debbie off, and she calls her wife out on it in the next breath. “Constance let you on her team after all, didn’t she?” It’s accusatory when it comes out, and she can see the way Tammy’s shoulders stiffen. Takes that as proof, essentially. “You told her I recruited Nine, too, and she upped her end of the deal to get her to switch sides back again.”
“What? No, I didn’t – you talked to the literal criminal you hired for this thing on the phone at home, where Constance couldn’t hear you.” Tammy sounds exasperated, which is only to be expected. She taps at her own empty wrist, where a watch would be if she liked to wear one. “Do you want my help, or not?”
“Not,” answers Debbie immediately. Holds up a hand in a signal to wait when Tammy opens her mouth, leaving the blonde no space at all to interject. “You’re so clearly working for the enemy. Nice try, Constance.” She directs this last part down, far louder, frowning.
Tammy sighs. “Why are you talking to my chest?”
“Because there’s a camera there,” Debbie answers, slow like it will take away from the dramatics otherwise.
“There’s really, really not.” Every word comes out on a deeper sigh. Sometimes when Tammy gets like this, Debbie worries that she’s close to snapping. Other times, like today, it’s just sort of adorable.
“Really?” She steps out from behind her desk and takes a purposeful stride in Tammy’s direction, locking her gaze smoothly on the other woman’s. “So then you don’t mind if I…”
Already taking a hurried step back and reaching out with her hand for the doorknob before she’s close enough to actually touch it, Tammy shakes her head. “We’re at work, Debbie.”
“That just proves it,” Debbie calls after her when she’s already slid out of the room. Her wife doesn’t even hear her, or if she does, she doesn’t respond. She’s gone in a flash of blonde hair and replaced a moment later by Lou, who wants to go over their revisions to the plan. Debbie settles back in at her desk as Rose slips into her office, focus returning to the task at hand. Wheels are already turning in her mind, filtering through ideas to find the backup solution that can best be adapted to this particular problem. This is where she thrives: Logic.
They’re going to need to prompt Constance to move the watch.
This must be done very carefully, just so, with every detail just right. She has to think that moving it is the best chance of keeping it safe, and it’s during the shift that they will strike. It involves Lou tucking and rolling through the window from the roof with a screwdriver to dismantle the filing cabinet’s back wall and, quite dramatically, getting caught. Once Constance and her team realize that Debbie knows the watch’s whereabouts, it’s only a matter of time until they decide to move it to a more secure hiding spot. Where that spot is doesn’t matter; Debbie’s plan is set into motion as soon as the watch is out of the filing cabinet.
She intercepts Constance in the break room, where the horrible cackling witch decoration snaps to attention at the detective’s entrance. Watches the box she’s hidden the watch in disappear into the trash, keeps herself from flinching because it’s safely tucked away behind cardboard.
Only later, a frantic and wide-eyed Rose sidesteps into Debbie’s office and all but slams the door behind her. “It’s not there,” she reports, and Lou straightens up abruptly from where she’s been lounging on the couch.
“What?” Debbie half-snaps. Or maybe mostly-snaps. One hour and seven minutes until midnight, according to the watch that is not Danny’s on her wrist, and the real watch is out of reach. In an unknown location, so she cannot even begin to plot a way to retrieve it. She pushes back her chair to stand. The heist, however ridiculous and unnecessary Tammy finds it, is something she has grown attached to the idea of winning. If she can have the watch back in her possession by the time November officially hits, she will hold the title twice over Constance. Amazing detective-slash-genius, two years running.
“The watch,” she specifies, though she doesn’t need to. “It’s not in the trash. They must have beat us to it.”
Five minutes later, Debbie stands tall in front of Constance and is just about to threaten to get the watch back another way when the younger woman puffs out her chest and announces, “You know, there’s a whole hour left until midnight for me to get that watch back again.”
Freezing, Debbie can only blink. “You’re the one who has it,” she answers. Her confusion doesn’t make it up to the surface any more than that; she prides herself on that, her ability to remain stoic in almost any situation (though Tammy might pointedly bring up the night that Debbie proposed to her to counter that claim, if she said it aloud).
Constance frowns. Her face energetically shows everything she is thinking when her focus is elsewhere, which is how Debbie knows she isn’t lying when she replies, “No, I’m not.”
They crowd into the security closet to look at the tapes, Debbie and Lou and Constance and Daphne together. There’s a janitor in a baseball cap cleaning the room up, taking his time as he wipes down the table and sweeps the floor before finally pulling the black garbage bag out of the trash can and tying it off with the practiced air of someone who has done so a thousand times. “Pause,” commands Debbie. “Zoom in.” She squints at the name tag on the janitor’s chest, trying to see the letters there.
“Jack,” says Daphne triumphantly, and Constance elbows her in the side. “Ow.”
“That’s hours ago.” Lou props her elbows on the desk, narrowing her eyes down at the screen. “He’s probably gone home now. Does anyone know where he lives? Daph, you can pull up those records, right?”
“What do I look like, HR? I’m Debbie’s assistant,” snaps Daphne, twirling a lock of hair in a tight, dark circle around her finger. “Any of you know anyone nice enough to send Christmas cards to everyone in the precinct?”
The question is barely out of her mouth before Debbie and Constance are staring at each other, the answer evidently clicking into place for both of them at the same moment. Debbie moves faster, only because Constance always sits in chairs cross-legged and it takes longer for her feet to hit the floor. “Get me a head start,” she says to Lou in her way out, and Lou slams the door shut the second Debbie is through it, rolling her chair directly into Constance’s path. Debbie tears down the hall and into the bullpen, skidding to a halt next to Tammy’s desk. “Hey, babe.”
She tries to seem calm, nonchalant, as her wife sets down her pen. Tammy looks her up and down, lacing her fingers together on top of the report she’s in the middle of filing. For a moment, Debbie feels almost bad that she is so focused on something that isn’t work today, when she spends most other days determinedly trying to prove to her police commissioner father that she’s an incredible captain who keeps her precinct running smoothly. Then Tammy speaks, drawing her back to the reason she’s here. “What do you want, Deb?”
“What? Why would you assume I want something?” Debbie widens her eyes just slightly, purposefully, the way that she knows makes her look innocent. Which Tammy is experienced enough to see right through, but it’s worth a shot, anyway. “What I want is to apologize. And just, you know, wanted to say I love you. My wife. A lot. And I can’t wait to go home and eat all the leftover candy John hasn’t handed out at our house. With you. Also, would you maybe have Jack’s address? Jack the janitor?”
Tammy blinks at her slowly, unimpressed expression making a speedy return. She leans back in her chair, taking far too long to answer, and crosses her arms. “This is related to the heist, isn’t it?”
“No, no. Definitely not,” starts Debbie, “why would y–”
But then Constance is there, Lou framed in the wide doorway between the hallway and the bullpen. The detective bounds toward them, grinning broadly at Tammy. Before she can even open her mouth, Tammy turns to look at her, mouth set firmly in a line. “Let me guess, you’re here for the janitor’s address.”
It’s around now that Debbie thinks that maybe, just maybe, Tammy hasn’t been working with Constance this whole time. It’s in the way that the younger woman practically deflates momentarily before the smile comes back full-force. “What janitor? Who? Please, I don’t even think I know Jack.” She waves her hand, dismissive.
One of Tammy’s eyebrows rises just slightly, a telltale sign that she’s caught onto something minuscule. Debbie has seen this hundreds of times, likes the look that sparks in Tammy’s eyes when she’s stringing clues together to solve a case, but this is different. “I didn’t say his name,” she points out, lining up her pen precisely with the edge of her papers and standing. “You know, this is kind of amusing. After you both decided to leave me off your teams, here I am in a position of complete power. I can decide, just like that” – here, she snaps her fingers for dramatic effect – “who wins and who loses your ridiculous little heist.”
Which is how she ends up deciding, just like that, to send the address to both of them. Their phones vibrate comically at the exact same moment, and both Debbie and Constance look to the screens immediately. They are, however, drawn away from the provided information, just for a moment, as Tammy pushes back her chair and steps away. “I hope you’re both happy,” she says, in precisely the tone that says that’s not what she hopes at all. Her heels click on the floor as she disappears.
“We should probably apologize to her,” Debbie admits. She went soft for Tammy years ago, and she knows it. Likes to pretend she didn’t, when she can, but it’s obvious to anyone who sees the way her gaze goes fuzzy at the edges if she looks right at the woman.
Constance nods. “Yeah. You should follow her now, for that.”
They split a moment later, and neither of them goes directly after Tammy. Debbie feels bad for this as she and Rose slide into the car and Lou peels away from the curb, tires squealing, but between Tammy and the watch, one thing has a time limit. She will apologize to Tammy at precisely 12:01am, and not a moment later. For all her wife’s teasing and sighs and eye-rolls about the Halloween Heist, she knows it’s important, in some bizarre way.
At Jack the janitor’s apartment building, Debbie leads the charge for the elevator, Lou and Rose right on her heels. There’s an out of order sign in front of the sliding metallic doors, and she spins determinedly for the stairs. “He lives on the sixteenth floor,” Rose protests, wheeling to follow her.
Debbie and Constance have the briefest of standoffs at the foot of the stairs, and then they begin their journey up. It’s a long way and the adrenaline is what pushes Debbie’s feet to the next step, one landing after another. Rose drops away first, slows increasingly until she just stops for a break (“I’ll catch up,” she calls after the others). Then Amita, then Daphne. Lou makes it the farthest; her long legs cover two stairs at a time, for a while, and she remains close behind Constance, who is close behind Debbie, until the tenth floor or so. The adrenaline has begun to wear off and every muscle in Debbie’s legs burns, and while she makes it to the sixteenth floor first, Constance squeezes past her to knock on the apartment door, and –
And the person who opens it is not Jack. It’s a woman, frowning at the sight of the two of them, breathing heavily with hands braced on the wall on either side of her front door. “Where’s Jack?” demands Constance, not even bothering with a
hello.
The woman sighs. “He went up to the roof for a smoke.”
It’s another nine floors, and Constance leans over the railing to call the news down to the others. The announcement is met with a loud groan from Lou and a “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” from Daphne, the two who have made it the farthest up. Debbie’s thighs and calves feel as if they are screaming while she uses the railing to pull herself up, further, faster. They have slowed considerably; it takes what feels like hours longer to reach the heavy metal door at the top.
The October air is cool on Debbie’s face when they make it outside, Constance just a step ahead of her, triumphant before doubling over to puke in a flower pot; Debbie sidesteps around her. “There he is.” She points. Jack is still wearing his janitor’s uniform, back turned, looking out over the lit-up windows of the city skyline. “You’re Jack? The janitor?”
“Nope,” says Jack, and God, that’s not Jack, Debbie could recognize that voice anywhere. The figure turns, pulls off the baseball cap and a definitely-fake moustache.
Tammy.
“I don’t… I don’t get what’s going on,” mumbles Constance. The door flies open again behind them and the others spill out onto the roof, Daphne absolutely pulling Rose along by her elbow. Lou glances around at the three of them – Debbie, then Tammy, then Constance, understanding flickering in her blue eyes.
Debbie straightens up, ready to take advantage of the confusion. “Tammy’s been working with me,” she starts, but deflates as Tammy casts her a narrow-eyed look.
“You were one-hundred percent not a part of this,” Tammy retorts, arms crossed. The sleeve of the uniform she wears slides up, and the face of Debbie’s watch – the real watch – glints in the dim light mounted next to the door. “You stay right there on the loser’s side.”
Lou tosses her bangs back out of her face, smile growing. She loves a good twist more than anything, Debbie’s pretty sure. “How’d you do it?”
“It was easy,” answers Tammy, and dives into the story. Starting with Debbie thinking there was a camera hidden in her bra, which doesn’t paint Debbie in the greatest light (though she’s not alone, at least, because it turns out Constance had the same hypothesis). She has engineered everything with a grace that only she could, from corrupting Debbie’s agreement with Nine-Ball – who, as it turns out, is here to step out of the shadows with a video camera, documenting Debbie and Constance’s defeat forever – to making sure that the trash can was the only available place for Constance to drop the box containing the watch. “Then I sent you all here, where I’d put an out of order sign on the perfectly functional elevator, asked my cousin to tell you Jack went up to the roof, and made you all walk up twenty-five flights of stairs.”
“Your cousin?”
“Third cousin,” she admits, wrinkling her nose just slightly at the technicality. “But she was at our wedding, Deb. Thought that might tip you off, but I guess you were too distracted to retain the faces of anyone you met for the first time there.”
(Well, can you blame me? is what Debbie might have asked at literally any other time, but she wisely keeps her mouth shut, tonight.)
“You thought I could only get sucked in by what the other person wanted, but I’m my own person, and I’m quite capable of making my own decisions.” Tammy uncrosses her arms only to place her hands on her hips, and the stance reminds Debbie viscerally of how she looks when she’s telling off one of the kids for doing something wrong. “So I decided to humiliate the both of you instead. And hey, it worked.”
The bar two blocks from the precinct, which all the detectives tend to frequent, is crowded enough that they have to push a little to occupy a corner. They shuffle in and set a plastic crown on Tammy’s head, fasten a faux-fur-lined cape around her shoulders, and Debbie stands on one side of her and Constance on the other. “Tammy Ocean is an amazing detective-slash-genius,” they announce in unison, to cheers from their coworkers and a rather large number of drunk, costumed people across the bar who have no idea what’s going on.
Debbie tugs Tammy into the hallway to the bathroom for the tiniest amount of privacy, swiftly removing the watch from her wrist and fastening it back where it belongs. Then she places her hands at Tammy’s hips to pull her in close, sightline flickering across every inch of the woman’s face. “You’re the smartest person I know,” she tells her wife, softer and more lovestruck than she ever would if anybody else was around. “I’m so glad I’m married to you. I hope you humiliate me every day for the rest of my life.”
“I’m still mad at you,” says Tammy, but she kisses Debbie back, anyway.