Chapter Text
Chapter 1
When Dan started his job, he never expected any of this would happen.
When he was four, Dan told his mom he wanted to be a superhero. When he was fifteen, he told her he wanted to be a police officer. Now at twenty-four, he was one of London’s top detectives. Getting the job definitely wasn’t easy. The training he had to go through was rigorous, and he almost gave up multiple times. But in the end it was completely worth it.
When he was first hired, he worked a desk job, filling out paperwork that detailed different cases. He didn’t mind it too much though, since he got a taste of what he would be doing in the future.
Filling out all that paperwork also gave him the ins and outs of some of the detectives, and there was one name that caught his eye, as it appeared at the top of a closed case file about once a week:
Phil Lester.
He was the agency’s golden boy, managing to find the answer to every case he was presented with, and Dan admired him for it. He spent the rest of his desk days pouring over Lester’s files, until the fateful day he got to actually work with him.
It was just like every other Tuesday: he was sitting at his desk, filling out paperwork like usual, when Phil Lester came barging into the room with Griffin, the manager of the Precinct.
“You!” Phil pointed at Dan. “Suit up, you’re coming with me on this bust.”
At the time, Dan had felt honoured, since he had been asked by golden boy himself to help him bust a criminal. It was later Dan found out that Lester’s partner had been shot that morning during a car chase and that he was only supposed to serve as a substitute.
Fortunately for him, the partner decided to retire early and spend the rest of his days working in accounting, and Dan was promoted to be Phil’s partner full time. Now they’ve settled into a routine: Dan will come in on a Monday morning, and Phil will give him a new case file to read over his coffee. Dan usually doesn’t even get the chance to go over the case completely before Phil babbles on about his theories about the criminal.
That’s what they were doing when Griffin called them into his office. “Hey boys, I hope you’ve had a good time working on the Thomas case,” he said casually. “I’m giving it to someone else.”
“What?” Phil asked, like the suggestion was ludicrous. “We were going to stakeout a potential suspect later today! Why are you giving it to someone else?”
“A new case has been brought to our attention from one of the other precincts, and we figured you guys would suit it best.”
“Would we?” Dan folded his arms over his chest. “What makes you think so?”
Griffin gave him a twisted smile and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Don’t you want to hear the case first? It’s a good one. A florist, a baker, and a seamstress all stabbed in the same week, doesn’t that sound like something strange? It’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”
“Those sound like they have no connection,” Dan mumbled.
“They have something in common, don’t they?” Phil guessed, stretching his arms above his head. “Something to do with a wedding?”
“Ding ding ding!” Griffin chirped, flashing them finger guns. “That’s exactly it buddy. They were all stabbed five times in the chest, which led us to believe that they’re connected, but then we found out they’ve all been working with this guy.”
He slid a glossy-looking photo across the table; a balding man in a pinstriped dress shirt was standing under a sign with ‘Austin’s Weddings’ written in bold lettering.
“Austin Pure,” Griffin said, standing up from his leather desk chair. His tie hung down and ended up in his coffee, and Dan heard Phil snigger, but both of them kept quiet about it. “He’s a wedding planner that specializes in same sex weddings, and he’s worked with all three of our victims on separate occasions. He’s the only thing that really ties them together, so we think he could be the next victim.”
“Let me guess, you want us to take him into our care so he doesn’t get killed?” Phil complained. “The Thomas case would be so much more interesting than just watching over this guy for a week.”
“I wasn’t finished.” Griffin sat back down, picking up a stack of files from the desk. “We don’t really want to freak this guy out, since he has a violent history. His ex filed a restraining order against him because he threw their fine china against a wall. You might want to be wary of him– you should investigate him like a suspect, he’s not ruled out yet.”
He handed the files to Dan and Phil. “Here’s what we have on the murders so far, including all the details on the latest victim, the florist Briana Fleure. Inside you’ll find all the information you need about your new identities. Get ready to leave the badges behind boys, you’re now Dan Peters and Phil Patton, and there’s only six months until your wedding. You better get planning.”