There Are Days Like This Too

by The Lady Ley

Ryo is struggling to keep his sanity while he starts picking up bad habits he developed when his parents died. Mix in a psychopathic murderer, a traumatized Bikky, and Dee who's patience is about to wear thin, you too would have a hard time keeping sane!

18. Thoughts

There Are Days Like These Too

Author: Irish Kaoru

Disclaimer: I do not own FAKE, I am poor, I do not make enough money, and you have no reason to sue me.

Warning: this is yaoi, that means male on male relationships. If you don't like it then don't read it. Thank you for your continued cooperation.

A/N: I've been a little discouraged due to the reviews of this story. Although, that is not to say that I will stop writing it. I just want to make a few things clear. I wanted to let you know my reasons for taking absence so often. For those of you who don't know, I'm in the U.S. Army. It's a full time job, and I take classes at night. The time that I do have to myself I usually end up either doing homework or preparing for work the next day. Because of that the time that I actually have to write the stories is very slim. If I take a absence it's normally because I'm trying to catch up on homework or I'm in the middle of nowhere with the rest of my unit training. I try to make sure that you will know when I'm not going to be around. Although sometimes it's springs up unexpectedly on me as well. For that apologize. If you notice a time taking a leave of absence, checked my profile I'll try to at least leave you some sort of message to let you know when I'll be back.

Chapter 18

Thoughts

Ryo's POV

My days at the hospital were as mundane as ever. It seemed to me that they thought that I could make anything into a weapon that could harm me and because of it my room contained nothing but a bed and a window... which of course had bars on both sides AND was made of unbreakable plastic. I wasn't even allowed to have a television, in fear that I may take the plug and try to hang myself with it! I understand that it is meant to protect me, in case that I did start that line of thinking but in all honesty it just annoyed me because I hadn't been suicidal from the start. All I wanted to do was punish myself.

I had a meeting with doctor McCullen this afternoon. I liked him... to an extent. He was a lot younger than I expected him to be, in fact he was only two years older than me. A family man himself, he understood the feelings that I had with not being able to be home with my son to help in through this. I had talked to Dee about him every time that he had come to the hospital and in all honesty I was worried about Bikky and his mental state. Although it was different than mine, he was sure to be headed to the same place that I am. He refused to talk, had to be begged to eat... Dee said that he was a ghost of his former self.

Although I have to admit that I have full confidence in Dee when it comes to taking care of Bikky. I was not his only father figure, as much as Bikky may not like to admit it. I know that he looks up to Dee and sees him as just as much his father as I am. I believe that if there was one person that could help Bikky more than anyone it would be Dee. Hell, I know that Dee would be more help than me when it came to a situation such as this. After all they have backgrounds that are similar and in the end I think that is the bond that Bikky needs with a person to get over her death.

The only thing that I can do to pass the time is sit here in bed and look out the window... at nothing. There is only endless sky out it, a reminder of the freedom that I once had but was now stripped away from me. I need to get out of here... I have to, if I wasn't crazy already I felt that this would be the action that pushed me to the edge of sanity, and possibly over it.

I heard the door open and didn't even bother to look, I knew judging by the time of day that it was only Danny here to check up on me and make sure that there wasn't anything that I was in need of. Yeah, I needed something... but it was something that he wouldn't be able to give me, freedom.

"Ryo" his voice made me turn my head to acknowledge him because I knew that if I didn't then I would never get out of here. It wasn't that I didn't like Danny, I did, after all he was the one that was helping me beyond what his call of duty was, it was just that I didn't really want contact with anyone other than my boyfriend and son. Selfish? Perhaps, but it was just the way that I'm feeling at the moment. I know that I was liable to snap at just about anyone right now, this was to much to digest in the period of a few short days. I mean I was found out, Carol was killed, and now Bikky had locked himself in his own little world refusing to let anyone in. It was ll to much to take in and expect me not to lash out at someone who was just trying to help me.

For as long as I can remember I have always be the kind of person that would lock away their anger as deep away as they could. I feel that the emotion is useless and normally only leads to trouble. But at the same time I know that it is an emotion that all humans have, and because of this it is only natural that I too have anger once and a while. However, one of my major faults is that I don't worry about venting or letting it loose as soon as I get it... it always just sits and stews for a while adding up until one day BOOM! Something sets me off and everyone within a twenty mile radius is just another person for me to yell at; another person who's goal for that day is to annoy me.

Today was one of those days. I knew that it was because I felt my jaw tighten and my lips press themselves into a tight line. I just hoped that I would some how manage to keep things under control, at least until I got out of here. The last thing that I needed them to see was that I had a slight anger problem... if that is what it would be classified as.

Danny looked me over for a minute almost looking as if he was afraid to say to much to me. I almost laughed at the very idea of me having a ready to kill look. It just wasn't me, or at least it was hardly ever me. And for someone who had never been on the receiving side of my anger I am sure that it is a look that would be enough to scare them away. Not that it was my intent to do so, or perhaps it was. After all, people were a lot safer when they were not near me and I was angry.

"You have an appointment with Dr. McCullen right now." He said with a fake smile plastered on his face. Danny was easy enough to read, it took me a day or two to really see through him, but I picked up on a lot of the same old habits he had when we were in school together.

When he was upset he would show it in his eyes, when he was happy he would be beaming and it was something that was contagious, and when he was nervous he would shift from side to side much like he was doing now. I gave him a paper thin smile that matched his before standing up and walking out into the hall way.

The hall was really my only moment of freedom for the past week. It was only when I had to see Dr. McCullen they left me alone and trusted me enough to walk to his office ten doors down. Well perhaps it wasn't so much that they trusted me as it was there were always a multitude of doctors that were in the halls and thus it would have been impossible to do anything without one of them knowing. Either way it felt nice to be able to walk someplace by myself for once. Even the trips to the bathroom and shower were monitored by someone. It was suffocating and being like this, like I am at this very moment was a breath of fresh air.

I lightly knocked on the open door peeking around it's frame to see Dr. McCullen sitting at his desk looking over a few papers. When he saw me he smiled a genuine smile, the first that I had seen all day, and told me to come in and shut the door behind me. I walked over to the oversized leather chair and took a sea, no longer feeling uncomfortable about sitting before being told to. After all it had been the same routine day in and day out for the past eight days.

"What's up?" he asked as he moved from behind his desk and took a seat across from me. I smile politely.

"Nothing really. Same thing, different day."

"Well I have some good news and some bad news, which would you rather hear first?" he asked.

"Good news please. I feel that I am in the need of some." I don't know why I felt more free and less angry the second I started to talk to him. But Dr. McCullen seemed to have some kind of a calming effect on me every time that I saw him. It was something that I was thankful for.

"Well, as soon as you are ready we are going to let you head back to your house." I couldn't help but smile at this. It was what I had been wanting to hear since day one. Not that eight days is all that long to be locked away but still it was nice that I would be able to go back to my own home, sleep in my own bed, and take a shower in peace.

"The bad news, however, is that you will still have to come and see me for a little while. Normally it is only for about three to six months, sometimes longer and in rare cases shorter. But either way I don't want you to think that you are getting away from seeing me all together." He smiled a little. "Now the only thing that I want to know is your living situation. I need to know who I can get a hold of should I need to, as well as having to set up a few ground rules. Normally I would ask that the person come in personally so that I can make sure that they understand what I need them to do, but in your case I don't think that I can." He sat back and was quiet for a moment but I didn't say anything. It wasn't that I didn't want to, it was that I was unsure of what I should say. I wanted to let him know that I lived with Dee, but what would I sat to him about it. I mean Dee is Dee, he is the man that I am living with because we are in love with one another. But I am still insecure enough about things that I am not sure if I really wanted to let him in on that little tidbit of information just yet.

"According to your papers you are living with your work parter... Dee Laytner correct?" I snapped back out of my thoughts when I heard him talking to me again.

"A-ah yeah." I said lamely. Deep down I felt bad because once again I had denied Dee the right to call himself my lover when we were in the public eye.

"Well, if you think it is possible I would like to meet Dee at some point. It seems that he means a lot to you if you live with him, even if he is just your partner." I smiled weakly at him I felt a blush creep across my face.

"Th-That is... Dee is my partner, urm... at work... as well as..." I let my sentence fall dead. I couldn't say it. I was still scared of people thinking differently of me because of it. All I could do was sit there and look at the floor like it was the most interesting thing that I had ever seen. That was until I heard Dr. McCullen laugh.

"Ryo, I knew that, don't worry. I just didn't want you to feel like it was something that I shouldn't know about, and I didn't want you to think that I was trying to nose my way into things that don't really pertain to what I am here for. I am not going to think of you any differently. If I was then I would have to take another look at my profession right?" I looked at him feeling both relieved and embarrassed at the situation. Was it really as easy as all this. I mean, could I really live out and open like this? It seemed to me that everyone who knew or found out about me and Dee being together were supportive or at the very least not bothered by it.

"Thank you" I said quietly and looked back up at him.

"Well, do you think that Dee will be able to meet with me at some point soon. It is very important that I talk with him so that I can get a better feel of what kind of situation you are going back home to."
"I don't see why not." I replied, "I am sure that if I talked to the commissioner he would be able to be here in an hour or so. After all, Dee was told to make sure that I get back on me feet just fine."

"So I take it that the commissioner is not going to do anything to ban you from being able to work?" I looked at him for a second. I hadn't been told, and really it was still possible.

"I don't think so... Berkeley is one of the kind of people who is strict when it comes to following protocol but there are a few things that he lets slide by. I think that because of the history that both Dee and I have as partners, I should be spared. Although I will more likely than not be pushing papers for a while."

"Well that was the other thing. Although I didn't directly ask your boss anything about reassigning you, or perhaps making it so that you would have to find work elsewhere, he did make it sound like he was waiting for you to go back to the precinct. That is all well and good... but I don't think that it is a really wise idea for you to jump back into your job as a detective just yet. After talking to you these last few days I think that it is your job that has led to a lot of your mental stress. Because of that, I would rather that you do nothing other than paperwork. Although I also told him that I really don't have a problem with you working on light cases. At least not for the first month. I wouldn't want you to be deemed "better" just to wind up back here in a few weeks." He used his fingers to make quotation marks around the word better.

"On that note," he said spoke again changing the subject, "would you like to use my phone to call? I originally thought that he wouldn't be able to come over right now because of work, but if you say that there is a possibility then I would like to take that chance. Although you are free to leave now, I cannot let you sign the papers until I have spoken with Dee." I nodded and he pointed out the phone. After a few words with Berkeley, I was told that Dee would be there within the next half an hour.

"So," Dr. McCullen started once I had sat down again "tell me a little more about your job. I know that you are a detective, but what really do you do on a day to day basis?"

"Well, I guess I spend some time in the office in the mornings going over case files until we have our brief, from there it is anyone's guess. Normally we work on whatever cases we have been assigned which could mean anything from talking to witnesses to combing over the scene of the murder a few more times. Dee and I have the best arrest rate in the precinct and we are second in the city it's self. I think we were rated withing the top five for the state, but that was a while back so I am not sure. But basically it means that the cases we end up with are the ones that have a lot of dead ends or murderers who have been classified as "mass murderers," or "top priority" cases." He looked at me for a moment and I could thought that I could see his the wheels turning in his mind.

"You mean to tell me that you work in the homicide division?" He sounded a little astounded at this. I thought that it was common knowledge, but then again I had never told anyone. I figured that Dee or perhaps the commissioner had said something when they had talked the hospital staff.

"Yeah."

"I didn't know that. I thought that you were a street cop." He leaned forward a little placing his hands on his knees. "Are you able to talk about the cases that you and Dee are working on now or would that be against the rules?"

"Well, I guess that I can, so long as I don't give out name and such. Like I said I work on high profile cases so it's in the news. There's nothing that you could leak to the press that hasn't already be said in conferences."

"How many cases do you normally work at once?"

"It varies, normally anywhere between two and five. Unless there is a major case that involves the FBI or something of that nature then we work on that one case and leave the others to the rest of the precinct."

"What about now, how many are you working on now?" He sounded interested in this, far more interested than he had been in anything else that I told him.

"Before I came here we were working on two, but Dee told me that we were knocked down to working on one case because the FBI had been sent to help us." I told him.

"You said that it was in the papers so I am guessing that you are talking about the murders that included the lawyer and his family as well as the school teacher?" I nodded my head. He sat back and I thought that I saw his face blanch a little but decided to say nothing about it. "How has that been going?"

"Well, there have been four victims so far, at least that was before I came here. Dee said that there was a fifth that we were looping in with the case because it matched the killers MO."

"So they have determined an MO for your killer?" he said quietly, almost as if he was a little shaken up.

"Well, all of the victims have been between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-five and they have all been male, so we are saying that he is going for males in their late twenties to mid thirties." I knew that there was more to the MO but I also knew that I couldn't say anything about it because that information had yet to be told to the public, at least to my knowledge. The MO was actually something that had been bothering me since the other night when Dee first filled me in on it.

Not only were they all males ranging in that age group but they all had connections in one way or another to the members of the precinct, in particular the homicide division. Meaning that this piece of information would never really be leaked to the media because it would hinder cooperation when it came to working on other cases. If all the murders had been linked to the twenty-seventh then people wouldn't want to talk to us in fear that they could be the next to be killed. That was something that we couldn't afford. We were already having a hard enough time keeping up with the cases that came through our office with the help of people, there was no way that we would be able to get to every case if they stopped giving us their help.

"I see," he laughed a little, "I am sorry, but I have always been fascinated by your line of work." there was a hint of admiration in his voice. "when I was little I wanted to be a detective, but I never really did all that well with gore so there was no way that I could handle being a detective." He was about to start talking again when there was a knock on the door. "Come in."

I knew I had a huge grin on my face, even if I felt bad about the look of worry that was on Dee's. Dr. McCullen motioned him in. Dee took a seat in the chair that was next to me and gave me a smile before turning to Dr. McCullen. They exchanged greetings and Dee sat back ready to listen to what the doctor had to say.

"Well, we decided that Ryo was ready to leave and head back home." I glanced over at Dee and caught him glancing back at me with a big smile on his face. "However there are a few things that I need to make sure of and a few ground rules that need to be set in order for this to happen." Dee nodded in understanding.

"Firstly, I know that he is going back home to a son that... may not be in the best of mental states at the moment because of his girlfriend's death. This is something that worries me, but I think that so long as he doesn't start showing signs of being under to much stress because of the situation, things will be fine."
"The boy needs his father to help him along. Not that that makes you any less of a father yourself Mr. Laytner, just that he needs to have more than one parent there to help him. Something which he hasn't had since to ordeal started."

"Secondly, Ryo has not showed any signs of harming himself, but that doesn't completely erase the possibility that he could." He turned to face me, "Not that I am implying that you will mind you, just that it is a possibility. Because of that he still needs to be monitored when he is around sharp objects, be it a razor when he is shaving, or a knife if he is cooking. I am not telling you that you need to stand over his shoulder when he does these things, but make sure that if something was to happen you would be able to know it."

"Lastly, I need you to come with Ryo once a month here to have a visit with me. Ryo will be coming once a week, but a lot of the information that we find most helpful comes from the third part person that has been put in charge of watching over him. That, in this case, would be you Mr. Laytner." Dee nodded.

"I think I can manage that."

"Also, not that this is a requirement, and I know that things are a little hard at the moment, but if you want to, you can bring Bikky to these meetings as well. Who knows, perhaps seeing someone would be the best option for him. But then again I am not the one that should decide that because it is the two of you that know him best. Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah just one, lets say that I needed to get a hold of you...like to cancel an appointment or if something was to happen, how would I go about that?"

"Easy, before you take Ryo with you, I will be giving both you and Ryo my cell number and pager number so that you can get a hold of me anytime. If it is during work hours call the hospital and they will put you through to me." He stood up and grabbed two cards off of his desk and handed one to me and one to Dee.

"One more thing before you go, at some point I want to set up a home visit. It is standard procedure, just so that I know what kind of environment he is living in. Which from what he has told me isn't bad at all." I nodded and Dee save some kind of a grunt that I guessed was supposed to be a yes. "Well then, Ryo your next appointment is here with me in one week at three. With that you are free to sign the papers at the front desk and head on your way."

I smiled as I stood up, actually I don't think that I had stopped smiling since the moment Dee had walked in the door. It felt good to know that I was heading back home. All of that anger that I was feeling before just vanishes and relief took it's place.

After about five minutes worth of paperwork and me grabbing what little belongings I had, we were on our way out the doors and back home. It felt good.

Dr. McCullen's POV

I peeked out the door about ten minutes after Ryo had left. I liked him and was happy to see him on his way, even if I knew the road that was in front of him wasn't a good one. I waved good bye to him and Dee again before catching the attention of Dr. Fuller who was standing there watching them head to the elevator.

"Dr. Fuller, can you come to my office for a second, I need to talk to you." he turned around and let his smile drop as he walked towards me.

"This better be good doctor, I have other places to be right now." His voice dripped with annoyance.

"I have some information that you will find interesting." I sat down and motioned for him to do the same but he ignored me opting to watch out the window for the two that had just left. "Did you know that Ryo works in the homicide division?"

"Yes." came the reply.

"Did you know that he was working on the case that involves the Lawyer's family and that teacher that were killed?"

"Yes."

"Did you know the FBI had become involved?" He turned around and looked at me for the first time with nothing short of surprise plastered on his face. "Apparently he and his partner had one of the top ten arrest records in the state. Because of that they work with the FBI when there is a case that they need help with. And this case that they are working on now... happens to be one that the FBI wanted to get involved in."

"That is an interesting turn of events." he murmured before beckoning me over to him. I walked towards him only to be pulled into a deep kiss.

"You know Justin, there are just days that you out do yourself." he laughed before he kissed me again, pushing me back into the chair that was behind me.

"T-The door..." I whispered as he started to kiss down my neck.

"I locked it when I came in."

It amazed me that this was the same man that I despised for the way that he treated both me and his daughter. Yet at the same time I was under his spell. Times like this made me forget that he was the cruel man that had ordered me to kill, the same man that said he would kill me if I didn't do as he said. Then again, times like this made thinking a little difficult.

A/N: Wooo implied office sex!!

Anyway, i hope you liked it... let me know! Till next time!