Chapter Two

"So tell me, which one of you did the dumping?" Yoren asked him as they walked through the Arryn house. They were currently in the late Jon Arryn's office, where he had been found dead.

Jon pursed his lips as he rummaged through the drawers of Arryn's death, carefully not looking over to where Yoren was surveying the pictures hanging on the adjacent wall. "Shouldn't we be focusing on the crime scene? Has forensics looked it over?

The lieutenant snorted. "Yeah, but you know as well as I do that there won't be many clues here. The butler or maid or whoever will have already cleaned up anything really useful. Right now we're just looking for a clue to motive, but in the meantime, there's no reason we can't get to know each other," he added, giving Jon a cheerful smirk.

"Alright then," he said grumpily, pushing a drawer shut with more force than necessary. "Why don't you tell me about your divorce? It had to have been recent, what with the tan line still on your finger and all."

Yoren surprised him by laughing. "I can see why Mormont pulled you out of vice. That's a pretty good catch for a rookie."

Jon scowled and opened another drawer. "Mormont pulled me out of vice because I grew up with these people and know how they think. It didn't have anything to do with how good a detective I am."

"If you believe the commissioner only has one reason for anything he does, you've got a lot to learn about politics," he shot back good-naturedly. "And I've seen your record myself. You're one of the youngest detectives on the force, and your arrest record is impressive. You're dumber than you look if you think I'm going to let you go back to vice and get killed on some undercover job."

Jon looked up sharply at that. "I haven't gotten killed yet," he said, not really knowing what else to say in response.

"That's because you're still enough of a rookie to think you're invincible," he commented before picking up a picture of a toddler on the desk. "Who's this?"

"Arryn's son, Robyn," he said, barely glancing at the picture. "He's probably a little over ten now. He was born right before I graduated high school."

Yoren sneered in disgust. "Wasn't this guy like 80?"

"Yeah," Jon answered, huffing a laugh. "Lysa Arryn is at least 30 years younger than her husband. She was probably more attracted to his money than him, but she's always been a little weird if you ask me."

"Yeah, I could see that there wasn't much love lost between you and her and her sister," he said with a raised brow.

"Neither of them approved of Robb being friends with a foster kid," he told him shortly, shutting the last drawer of the desk and frowning. "There's nothing here."

Yoren sighed but put down the picture he was still holding. "Of course there's not. We're not that lucky. Come on," he said, making for the door. "I'm sure we've got a mountain of Arryn's financials to sort through waiting for us back at the precinct. Maybe we'll find something there."

Jon straightened and followed him out. He paused at the doorway and glanced back, almost expecting to see Arryn in the leather desk chair, giving Jon the same knowing and reassuring look he always gave him whenever he and Robb were in trouble with Lysa.

Jon Arryn had been one of the most decent men he had known growing up. So who the hell would want to kill him?

#

"I knew it was only a matter of time before they yanked you out of vice," Ygritte told him, a smug look on her face as she slid a beer across the table to him. His vice partner had asked him for a drink after work, and considering he and Yoren had found absolutely nothing in Arryn's financial records, Jon desperately needed a drink.

"It's a pity," she continued with mock sorrow. "I hear there's a prostitution ring that the captain was going to send you in on. Supposed to be connected to the Iron-Borns. I was looking forward to helping you dress up to be a boy toy."

Jon grimaced at that before taking a swig of the beer. He had heard that rumor as well. He was glad he wouldn't be available for the assignment. The Iron-Borns were a vicious and well-organized criminal syndicate that was involved with all kinds of criminal enterprises, from lowly drug deals to high profile murders. It was risky posing as a prostitute on any assignment, but Jon didn't want to think about what would happen if he got caught posing as one in a ring controlled by the Iron-Borns.

"Oh don't make that face," Ygritte said with a roll of her eyes. "I wouldn't have let anything happen to you."

"Like you didn't let anything happen to me last year when we broke up that human trafficking ring?" he asked with a mischievous smirk.

She scowled at him. "I told you to duck."

"You could've told me before you shot at the guys behind me," he countered.

"I'm pretty sure they would have killed you if I had waited," she shot back. "And you were barely grazed."

"The bullet went straight through my right shoulder!" he cried in protest.

"Exactly," she said with a smirk. "It went straight through. Just a flesh wound. You're the one who blew it out of proportion by making me take you to the emergency room and everything."

Jon huffed a laugh and shook his head. That had been an awful night for both of them. They had been ambushed, but Ygritte had managed to get them out alive. Jon hadn't been much help, as he had been busy bleeding out on the floor.

He could still remember Ygritte's face, pale and fearful, as she screamed into her radio for an ambulance.

"Guess you'll have to make sure the next partner they give you isn't so dramatic," he told her sadly, taking another drink of his beer.

She smiled ruefully. "Whoever it is, they won't be as good as you."

"Was that actually a compliment?" Jon asked in feigned amazement.

"No!" she protested. Then she smiled. "Maybe. But you know, they haven't given me a new partner, and the captain said it could be a while. Until then I'm stuck on desk duty so, you know, if you ever need a hand…"

He smiled back at her. "Thanks. Hopefully this investigation won't take that long though."

Ygritte gave him a searching look. "What happened to make you hate these people so much? What'd they do to you?"

Jon gave her a surprised look. "I don't hate them. I've never hated them. I just never belonged there."

"Bullshit," she said, narrowing her eyes. "You forget I've seen you drunk before, and every time you're drunk, you go on and on about Robb fucking Stark. If you loved him enough to hang on to it for ten years, something you hated had to have kept you away for so long."

He snorted derisively and finished his beer. "The only person who's ever kept me away from Robb is me. So maybe I hate myself."

"Jon…" she murmured, looking pained. He stood before she could say anything else, giving her a forced smile.

"It's late. I've got an early start in the morning. I'll see you later, okay?"

He left the bar without another look at Ygritte, knowing that if he stayed another second, she would only pester him with questions he didn't want to answer.

As boring as going over Jon Arryn's bank statements and hedge funds had been, the mind-numbing task had been a welcome respite to thinking about Robb all day, but of course, Ygritte had to bring the man up again.

When he got back to his apartment, he went straight to bed. No use staying up any longer when he knew what he was going to be dwelling on.

#

They were both doubled over laughing after they had made their escape to Robb's bedroom, Arya's shouts of outrage and vows of vengeance still audible from downstairs. They both knew that she wasn't that mad at them. She didn't want to go to Myrcella's birthday party, and if she had to go, she definitely didn't want to wear the pretty pink dress her mother had bought her for the occasion. She had complained about all the ruffles and bows on it for weeks.

Really, they did her a favor by turning the sprinklers on as soon as she stepped outside.

"Mom isn't going to be too happy with us," Robb managed to get out between bouts of laughter, straightening up and wiping tears from his eyes.

Jon just laughed some more. "You can blame it all on me, if you want. She's never too happy with me anyway."

Robb sobered up at that and frowned as he looked at him. "I don't like it when people blame things on you."

"Oh, come on," he scoffed, shaking his head and nudging the other teen with his elbow. "Don't get so serious on me. I was just joking. Besides, the worse your mother could do was ban me from the house, and that just means we'd hang out somewhere else."

"Well, I'm not joking," Robb told him solemnly. "I don't like it when people look down on you."

Jon swallowed uncomfortably and looked away, Robb's gaze too intense for him to meet. His heart was pounding in his chest suddenly, half-afraid that this was all a dream and sure that he was misinterpreting that look. Because there's no way Robb could be looking at him like that.

"Robb, I—"

"Shh," he murmured, stepping closer and bringing a hand up to cover around the back of Jon's neck. Jon inhaled sharply at that, staring into those blue eyes, convinced that this couldn't be happening. "You're going to say something self-deprecating and I don't like that either."

Before Jon could reply, Robb's lips had covered his own in a soft kiss.

Jon's eyes snapped away. He blinked away tears at the memory of his first kiss with Robb. First kiss ever, really.

He sat up in bed and brought his hands up to fist in his hair. He should have expected to be haunted by dreams of Robb tonight. Today was the first time he had seen the other man in a decade. How was it still possible to love him so much after so long?

He snorted to himself mockingly. He knew exactly how it was possible. It was hard to get over someone when you pretty much stopped living after leaving them.

After he and Robb broke up, he had thrown himself into his studies with even more rigor than he had before. It was easy, as the only friend he had senior year had been Sam, and the shy boy hadn't really put much demand on Jon's social life. He finished college in three years, taking on heavy course loads to distract himself from the loss of Robb, and had dedicated himself to his job as soon as he was taken by the police academy.

There had been no time to deal with his Robb-shaped emotional baggage, let alone get over the man. And a hand-full of one-night stands could never really make him forget his first love.

Fuck, why did he take this assignment? He may have been pathetic before, but at least then he could package it all away and shove it deep into a dark corner of his mind, never to think about it. He had been perfectly functional, thank you very much.

He didn't know if he could pack it away again after seeing Robb Stark again in the flesh.

#

"We're interviewing Tywin Lannister today," Yoren told him as he walked into the bullpen, not even letting Jon get settled before he was grabbing his arm and pulling him out the door again. "I figure we might have better luck with Arryn's business partner than we did his wife."

"Joy," Jon muttered, getting into Yoren's car.

"You're a ray of sunshine this morning," his partner quipped.

He rolled his eyes without answering, letting the silence stretch between them as they drove through the streets occupied by the wealthiest people in New York. He was pretty sure the Lannisters were probably the richest of the rich, and he didn't remember them ever having any problem with using the power that came with so much money.

He was certain they wouldn't find Tywin Lannister anymore helpful than they had found Lysa Arryn.

"What do you know about Lannister?" Yoren asked as they pulled into a curb-side parking space near the house.

Jon shrugged. "Not a lot. I don't even really know what sort of business he and Arryn had. I didn't pay any attention to that sort of thing. His grandson was a couple of years younger than me and was the most annoying little prick that I've ever met, if that's any help."

"Not really, but I guess we'll get to see if he takes after his grandfather," the lieutenant said with a laugh.

Two minutes into the interview with Tywin Lannister, Jon had pretty much decided that the man was a dick. A dick that was very good at hiding that he was a dick, but a dick all the same.

And they had barely gotten through their introductions.

"I can't imagine why anyone would want to kill Jon," Lannister was saying, a carefully-schooled expression of grief on his face. Jon may have believed that man was truly grieving for his dead business partner, if his flinty eyes hadn't given him away.

This was a cold man, a calculating man, and a man that probably saw no value in grief.

Unfortunately, it didn't necessarily make him a killer.

"Did he mention anything odd to you in the weeks leading up to his murder?" Jon asked.

Tywin shook his head. "Nothing comes to mind." Then those sharp eyes narrowed at Jon. "Do I know you from somewhere, detective?"

He fought to keep his face impassive as he answered. "I grew up in the neighborhood," he answered simply. "I went to Westeros a few grades ahead of your son."

Recognition dawned on the old man's face. "Oh, yes. You were the foster boy Senator Targaryen took in."

Jon fought back a wince at his foster father's name but nodded. "Yes," he replied before quickly changing the subject. "What did you think of Jon's relationship with his wife?"

Tywin snorted. "Jon doted on his crazy wife, and she worshiped him in return. If that's the angle you're pursuing, I doubt you're going to get very far."

"Then where would you start looking?" Yoren asked.

Lannister smirked at them before he answered, his piercing eyes making it clear that he thought they were both idiots and far, far beneath him.

"Petyr Baelish."

tbc...