Chapter Text
Gavin arrives to the location of the tip he got, and just as he’s dismounting his bike, he sees Richard Stern begin to climb into his car 25 meters away.
"Catch you later, Reed." Says the mob boss that he’s been tracking down for fucking months. No evidence ever managed to stick against him, they always seem to disappear or be considered invalid. Every fucking time. It’s starting to get on his last nerve. Oh, oh and this fucker thinks it’s some kind of a cat and mouse game, where he’s on top, the predator, it’s not like Gavin is the one chasing after him.
"I’ll be doing the catching, you asshole." He growls, knuckles turning white with how much pressure he’s putting on his bike’s handle, he doesn’t even get the chance to fully dismount his bike.
"For a detective you’re pretty dumb. You think you’re the one chasing after me, and not me luring you to places?" The ‘I lured you here’ was left unsaid but Gavin can put two and two together. Is there a string this idiot isn’t pulling? Then again what did he expected from a mob leader that’s based most of his operation on stopping and hunting down human trafficking?
"We’ll see about that. Don’t you have to run away? Or did you confuse yourself for a cat?" Gavin calls out, knowing that any second now that car will simply speed off, and true to his assumption it does, with Stern giving him a smile and a wink before shutting the car door, and driving off to god knows where.
"Fuck" Gavin curses, this is like what, the tenth time the Disphit escapes right out of his fingers. He turns to deal with all the bodies scattered around the place. "Goddammit Nines" it’s the name he gave Richard and it kind of struck.
If there is such a thing as a drive of shame, then he’s doing exactly that right now. A drive back to the precinct with no new evidence, no leads, nada. Fuck this sucks. Luckily for Gavin he still has other cases to busy himself with but the RKs operation, mob, whatever is pissing him off. Sure, you could say what they’re doing is, god, can he say it’s not all bad? Though that still doesn’t mean they get to kill whoever they want, they could simply hand them to the DPD to deal with, but of course it’s never this easy.
Everyone can see how sour his mood is, he plummets into his chair, without even bothering to turn his screen on. He rests his forehead against the table surface, taking a deep breathe. This is honestly bullshit, and clearly rigged, how the fuck does Nines always seems to be at least ten steps ahead?
"Hey Gav, you good?" His best friend Tina asks, perching herself on his desk.
“Just peachy" Gavin says through gritted teeth, lifting his head to meet her face.
"Stern again?" She asks. She’s one of the only ones that know about Nines, and everything else. Actually she’s the one that pointed out that the mob boss has been flirting for him for months too, and he still has a part of him that still can’t quite believe that Nines, fucking Nines is flirting with him.
"I literally got there as he was about to leave. This chase is fucking stupid, what’s the point if he’d keep escaping?" Gavin grouses, and rubs his face tiredly. It’s only 10am for fuck’s sake. He needs a cup of coffee.
A cup of coffee catches his eyes, "Did you get me this?" He asks.
“Yup!"
"God you’re the best" Gavin beams, taking a sip of the lukewarm coffee, it relaxes him a tad bit, which is all he needs.
"I know" His humble friend says, patting him on the shoulders. "Maybe Stern is enjoying this little chase you two are doing, but you know it can end if one of you mans up and asks the other on a date"
"A date? With a mob leader?" Gavin asks flabbergasted. "Are you okay? Like in the head?"
Tina rolls her eyes, Gavin is always so crude with his words even if he doesn’t necessarily mean for them to be as mean. "I mean you clearly like each other."
"I’m going to ignore you and drink my coffee cause you are clearly going delulu" Gavin scoffs, gulping down his coffee fast, as if someone would just snatch it from him.
"Oh okay someone’s clearly grumpy if you’re going to start using 20’s Gen z slang with me" Tina jokes, trying to make light of the situation, she knows how hard her best friend has been working on that RK operation case and she knows he genuinely wants to close the case and be done with it, while simultaneously wanting to see his mob boyfriend. She snickers to herself earning herself a glare from the detective.
"Don’t you have a crime scene to go to?" Gavin asks calmly, turning on his terminal, he’d gladly ignore his friend if she’s gonna be infuriating.
She rolls her eyes, sobering up from her little moment of amusement. "Gav," she starts, because she doesn’t know what kind of advice can she give her friend who found himself in a peculiar situation. On many occasions Richard Stern has proved that he means Gavin no real harm, even if he had to shot at him once, but that was partially accidental and partially to save him from a real fight. But the fact remains, Stern is a wanted man, no matter how skewed his morale are. Fighting human trafficking is not a bad thing, quite the contrary, but the way he’s conducting it isn’t.. well legal to say the least.
Gavin looks up from his terminal, clearly exasperated. "What?"
"Just be careful, alright?" Gavin is taken back by the genuine concern in her voice, then again he knows he’s playing with fire, or rather Detroit’s most wanted organization, RK op.
"Yeah, I always am" He brushes her concern easily, mostly to calm her down. "Been tracking him down for months, if he wanted me dead I would have been six feet under by now"
Tina worries her lips, "Yeah, maybe he doesn’t, but we both know Stern has enemies, if not him, then maybe one of them."
"I’m a detective that’s trying to put him behind bars, why would his enemies want me dead? If anything they’d be happy" Gavin tries to go back to filling in an half-assed report ‘cause once again he came up empty.
"Emphasis on ‘trying’" He won’t admit that that has his cheeks burning.
"Fuck off," He snaps, but she’s already gone leaving an echo of laughter in her wake.
Gavin mumbles curses under his breath, this is just bullshit. She’s acting like he and Stern are dating or crushing on each other when he knows it can’t be true.
Richard is industrious, he didn’t become the leader of the RK organization at the young age of 29 if he wasn’t. People feared him, he recognizes how intimidating he can be, and how easily he can control and manipulate a room if needed be.
"You’re up working again?" Connor, his eldest triplet asks, as he stood behind his youngest brother. "You know you can rest and all this will be here in the morning, right?" A brow is raised, knowing his little brother too well to not expect what he would say next.
"I have to finish this, Connor. If you’re tired you can go ahead and sleep but I have a few more things I should finish." Connor hums, remains silent for a moment.
"You’d have more time to finish your ‘work’ if you didn’t play cat and mouse with your little detective"
Richard hums, completely disregarding his brother’s ‘advice’, as if he’s the one to talk while he gets all his information from a police lieutenant. That’s how he’s ahead of his little detective, he has eyes everywhere, how else would his organization have lasted as long as it did? He’s an extraordinary hacker too, he knows his technology, and he even developed some himself.
"That’s different, I only get information, I don’t flirt with him."
Icy blue eyes darts up to meet brown ones, a warning. "What I do with Detective Reed is none of your business."
Connor sighs, who knew his insufferable baby brother would be even more insufferable when he’s in love. Rich can call it a little crush all he wants, but Connor knows the truth. "Of course. Just finish your work and actually get some sleep"
Another hum is all he gets as a respond before he left the room.
Richard admits to himself that the little false tip was a mere ploy to see his detective again after two longs weeks of working hard to take down yet another trafficking group. He miscalculated how fast the little tip would get to the detective and that only resulted in him seeing him for a couple of minutes, and usually they ever meet when Richard is leaving behind a couple of bodies for the cops to collect, but said bodies were in Chicago so he couldn’t have seen the look on Reed’s face once he realized that he was late yet again.
An involuntary smirk plasters his face at the memory, he pulls his tablet close and logging in, a live feed starts playing. It’s the DPD’s facility gym, and he can clearly see Reed doing push-ups, warming up before he starts his usual workout. He notes that Reed tries to stay in shape even with his busy schedule, and lately he didn’t seem to have enough time or energy to workout however today it seems like he did. He sometimes watches his little detective, and sure it’s has started as to make sure that Reed doesn’t get the evidence or leads to catch up off guard, but he realizes too late that he genuinely enjoys watching and learning more about Gavin Reed. He never thought, not in a million years that he will be pining over a police detective that wants to put him behind bars.
‘Nines’ is the nickname he’s given by the detective and he hates to admit that he’s growing to like it more and more especially when Reed says it. No one but him is allowed to call Richard with it.
It’s a slow day, and Gavin didn’t have much to work on so he makes the decision to work out for an hour and half, then shower. It was only 4pm by the time he finished and since he wasn’t exactly needed, he left for the day.
The first thing he hears when he steps into his apartment is his cat mewling at him, demanding food in her plate immediately. He laughs, putting his stuff away before making his way to the kitchen to give her what she wants.
Once all that is done, he makes himself a quick meal, and takes his place on the couch, turning his TV on to watch something while he eats. He doesn’t really have a plan for the weekend, but most probably he’ll be calling Tina and Chris and ask if they want to hang out, which they do more often to not on weekends anyway.
His mind drifts to the day before, to when he saw Nines for a couple of seconds before he ran away. He haven’t heard or seen him him for two fucking weeks but then he just appears. He bets anything that that fucker is the one who fed him false tips just to annoy the shit out of Gavin. Fucking asshole.
The time he was shot by the fucker, he was trying to talk some sense into him. God, he might have even offered a position in the DPD for him, Nines just had to do things the right way, the legal way, acknowledging that what the icy blue eyes man was doing is honorable, but he has a huge fucking issue with the execution of said thing, which is ending human trafficking and kidnapping of women and kids. Do these men deserve to die? Sure. Torture? Maybe. Killed? Definitely not. Bad guys should go through court, and be judged, by proper law enforcement.
On rare occasions he can go to sleep early and actually sleep early, and feel refreshed in the morning, and this is one of them. He wakes up feeling well rested, and he hopes that means the dark circles under his eyes would fade a bit.
Although he miraculously managed to get a good night’s sleep, that doesn’t mean he’s waken up early for work, in fact he’s running late, but not too late to grab a cup of coffee on the way.
He just knew that his good mood wouldn’t last, and he’s proven right just as soon as he sets a foot in the DPD. Fowler calls him into his office, and he walks to his fish bowl of an office after setting his stuff, and coffee on his own desk.
"You called Captain?" He asks innocently, hoping that whatever he’s called for isn’t getting him in trouble. He sure as hell hasn’t done anything that warrants a yelling session with his boss.
"Yes, sit Reed." Captain Fowler orders, leaving no room for arguments, which the detective is known to start.
"Okaaay" Gavin says slowly, unsure what the hell this is all about.
"There is a raid tonight, and we want you to be the head detective of it, it’s more narcotic sure, but we need our best detective on the case, and we have reason to believe this group that we’re raising sells drugs but also kill’s people who don’t pay or are late in payment."
Gavin doesn’t dare for interrupt, but oddly enough, he waits till his boss if done explaining before uttering anything.
"Alright so it’s just a raid?" He asks, for wondering if it’ll be the little push he needs to finally get to Sergeant.
"Basically yes," Fowler replies rounding his desk to now stand before one of his best detectives, even if said detective is hotheaded and foul mouthed. "Go in, arrest a few criminals, make sure no one gets away and no one gets hurt, and then come back here to report,"
Gavin hums thoughtfully, should be easy enough, right?
He should have known it’s never this easy.
The raid itself wasn’t the problem, the problem was that said gang are more dangerous than they initially thought, and from the looks of it, they did more than mere sell illegal substances. Shit. It was chaotic, bullets flying everyone, he told his mean to abort and leave the fucking premises.
When he was almost completely certain all his men are out of the building, he tries to make his way out, when he accidentally came across a room where five men were discussing something he couldn’t make out completely, but he heard ‘sell them’ and ‘they are worth a lot of money, especially young’. He isn’t sure he even wants to know what these guys are talking about, but they saw him, and he saw them, their faces. Unlike the men that were firing at them, these five weren’t covering their faces.
He did not wait to find the odds of him going against them, so he runs toward what he assume is an exit and he was correct in his assumption. Most of the police cars have already left, his red Ducati bike is the only thing left a few meters away from the building, hidden.
The detective wastes no time, he said as out of there within minutes, hoping that this won’t fire back in his face. All the information they got was inaccurate and thus they were under prepared for this damn raid.
He arrives to the station a couple of minutes after his own men, and he makes sure they are all alright before he burst into Folwer’s office to express his opinion, vocally, and angrily, of all the information they have been feed about this raid.
"The fuck was that?" Gavin growls, slamming his open palms onto his boss’s desk. "Was that a fucking trap? They knew we were coming, at least it seems they did, they could have killed us all, it was a massacre!" He’s lucky he didn’t end up in a hospital bed, cause that’s usually where he ends up when things goes south.
Fowler is clearly just as shocked as he feels, he tries to calm him down, but it does nothing. He leaves the station half an hour later, he’s no calmer than he was when he walked in.
Mounting his bike, and just as he’s about to putting his helmet on, his phone buzzes.
Unknown 11:07pm
>Green eyes.
>You’re an idiot.
That’s a weird message. Who the fuck?
Green eyes 11:07pm
>Who’s this?
He as a suspicion. There is one person who called him green eyes, like, twice?
Unknown 11:09pm
>I think you know very well who this is.
>You have to watch your back.
Green eyes 11:10Pm
>This a threat asshole? 🖕🏼
>How’d you get my number????
When he gets no replies for five minutes he decides to head home and deal with the dipshit later. God, he’s too tired for this shit.
No reply, even by the time he arrives home and feeds his cat. That’s so weird, if it’s Nines as he thinks it is, then why is he being so fucking ominous?
His phone is in his hand, fingers hovering over the keyboard, contemplating whether or not it’s a good idea to try and message Nines or not. It didn’t take long for him to toss his phone away, rubbing his face tiredly. What the hell is he thinking? It’s definitely a stupid idea to fucking text a mob/gang/organization boss?
The rest of the evening goes with nothing significant happening, he played a bit on his old ps5 and just as he finally decided to go get some shut eyes, his front door knob rattles. Something is test it, or trying to fucking break in, he can’t tell.
Holding his breath, he scrambles to grab his service gun that he carelessly tossed on his coffee table. He pads toward the door, safety clicked off.
It’s eerily quiet.
He peeps through the peep hole, and he sees an empty hallway.
What the actually phck??
Great, now he’s gonna be paranoid for the rest of the night, and he’d call it a win if he even managed to get an half an hour sleep.
The next morning he walks tiredly to his bike, ready to head to work and work on more reports all day long, basically a long boring day. Maybe even looking into the five guys he saw. He’s written a report about them, and even went it to other officers to look into it and find these fuckers. And maybe throw in an hour of nap if he manages to find the time.
The detective halts by his bike, the hamlet halfway to his head when he saw a white 911 Porsche. Nines’ Porsche.
The window rolls down, and he’s staring at Richard Stern and his silly black sunglasses that’s hiding his beautiful icy blue eyes.
"Good morning, Reed. Care to join me for a stroll?"
Yeah, like he’d trust that. Nines would probably drive him to the middle of nowhere to fucking kill him and finally get rid of the only detective that managed to stay pretty much hot on his tail.
"So I’d end up in a bag tomorrow? No thanks, asshole." Gavin snarls, one hand already on his gun. "How about you come with me to the station?"
"A date?" Nines queries in such a suggestive tone. "I’d sadly have to decline. For now." He winks at the last bit.
Now Gavin’s confused. What the fuck is this asshole planning? And why is he here, at his apartment building- how did Nines even know where he lives??!?- in broad daylight no less!
"You’re crazy if you think I’m hopping into your fancy ass car with you." Gavin’s hand is still on his gun, but he makes no move to pull it out of its holster.
"That’s perfectly fine, you can follow me on your Ducati." Stern says calmly, but clearly in a rush.
"Where are we going?" Gavin asks, he needs to at least know. God knows he’d still go, mostly out of curiosity but partly because he knows Nines wouldn’t kill his. He can’t prove it, but he just knows.
"Outskirts of Detroit, I need to discuss how you managed to get yourself into big trouble, and unfortunately for you, these men mean business, and don’t care if a detective winds up missing or killed on duty."
He has never heard Stern sound so serious and is that worry he hears too? Shit, what did he get himself into?
"Fine. Lead the way. But know that I’ve already texted my friend, and if I didn’t call or reply in a couple of hours she’ll send a while SWAT team." Gavin warns, and finally gets on his bike to follow Nines to discuss whatever this is about.
Gavin halts meters away from Nines’ fancy and expensive car.
"So," He starts, "What’s all this about?" He gestures around. They’re far away from any cameras or any prying eyes.
"You’ve somehow gotten yourself into Zlatko Andronikov’s radar. I don’t know what have you done or said but they are very upset." Stern elucidates, leaning against his car, eyeing Reed.
"Wait-" Gavin crosses the space between them to stand right in front of the mob’s leader. This is their first real conversation. Well kind of. It’s still a nice change to their usual chase. "Don’t tell me they own the building we raided?"
A nod confirms his suspicion. Fuck. Shit. Great. Just fucking great.
"Then why are you here?" Gavin finally asks, a question that kept plaguing his mind ever since they left his apartment building.
"Excuse me?"
"Why are you telling me all this?" This could be a trap, right? Would Nines just hand him over to Andronikov for how much ever amount of money the dipshit asks? "Why warn me?"
Nines hums, like he’s considering it, like he doesn’t even know himself. Head tilted to the side, staring at him with those abnormally pale icy blue eyes. "This might be hard for you to believe, Green eyes, brace yourself." He pauses for effect. "I don’t want you to die"
A bitter laugh escapes Gavin’s lips, and he makes no attempt to stop it. "Yeah, yeah good one, dipshit. You shot me!"
"To save you, you absolute idiot." It was Nines who’s sighing now. He’s clearly pissed or at least more emotional than usual, which is saying something cause this bastard is usually stoic when he’s not teasing and being sarcastic, and that’s saying a lot, Gavin is known for being a sarcastic asshole.
"How is shooting me, saving me, smartass?" Gavin rubs his forehead, feeling a headache approaching. "Why should I even believe you? And even if I did, how can I trust you?"
"That’s an awful lot of questions, Reed. This is not an interrogation, even if it’s something you’ve been daydreaming about doing." Why does the asshole always sound so arrogant and cocky? It makes him want to punch his perfect face.