Demons

WARNINGS: This is not a typical story from me, or for this genre. I wrote it in reply to a challenge regarding men in DPs who have... a different set of rules. There is murder in this story, but not gory. Also, a reference to rape - no details again, but didn’t want you to be shocked.

Nelson



"Don't kill me." Casper's alabaster countenance went paler still when I ignored his request for clemency, taunting him with the anticipation of taking his last breath by running the smooth side of my lucky blade's cold metal surface against the skin of his face.

"I'm sure that's what your victim said to you," I gave a dramatic pause, "when you refused to listen to her."

The smell of his fear was thick in the dank darkness, and my stomach turned over in disgust as I reminded myself that a jury of this shit's peers - no, not his peers. Upstanding citizens who more closely aligned with the victim than with Casper. A jury that had its hands bound by the Law, just like Casper's were now, and were not allowed to hear damning evidence that proved this man's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

My favorite dance partner rose from the shadows in our darkened basement, his velvet voice firm and purring to finish my thought, as he is so aptly able to do after twelve years together. "When you... took her life and threw it away like so much wasted trash," he icily concluded.

"Please," the phantom whimpered, his eyes darting between me and Daniel's shadow. His mouth fell open, recognition washing over his face when Daniel stepped into the light for the first time since I brought our bound guest home. "You..." he stammered, "but you...Please, don't..."

My lover smiled and leaned toward the man, closing the distance. His eyes were set, his jaw strong. I'd seen that determination on his face before. There was no turning back. Daniel never wavered, not once his mind was made up, not that I would have let him.

"I don't think so," Daniel replied, true to form. "You see, this is about justice. This is about... consequences for your actions."

A chill ran down my spine as he recited the words of explanation he favors for our subjects. I looked to Casper to see if the same chill gripped him as it does me from time to time, when I find myself in Daniel's displeasure. The growing dark spot on the front of Casper's beige khakis told me that it did. My thoughts flashed to earlier that same day, when I was faced with a different form of Daniel's justice and determination, but I didn't dwell on that. It was over, and now, it was all about the present.

"The law failed for Shannon Veriday," Daniel continued. "The law said it was ok that you raped that young woman, robbed her of the rest of her life, stole her from her family. And killed her." I smiled as Daniel explained how he saw things.

I added, "The law is flawed. We're only here to help. To make it right."

"We can't give back what you've taken," Daniel said, "but we can sure as hell make sure you never do it again. Do you understand me?"

"You..." his voice quivered, "you were supposed to protect me. You're my lawyer for Christ's sake! It's your job to defend me!"

Daniel shrugged as he pulled his own knife from its sheath, intently focused on gliding the flat surface of the blade across the tip of his fingers. "Didn't I?" he asked indifferently.

I gave my lover a crooked smile. "I think you did a fine job. My cop buddies were plenty mad at you, you know."

We were an unlikely couple, he a defense attorney and me a cop. My friends never understood, and truth be told, neither did we. We shouldn't fit, but we did, in more ways than anyone else knew. We had more in common than what met the eye, things that transcended occupational choices.

"Hmm," he snorted shortly. "Usually a good sign that I've, in fact, done my job." Daniel looked to me and nodded, giving me the cue that it was time to end it. He knelt down and started to loop the rope snugly around Casper's ankles. "I took an oath. An oath to do my job." He continued to talk even as he prepared our prey. "I don't break my vows, do I Anthony?"

"You never have to me or anyone I've known."

Casper looked anxiously down at his feet. "What are you doing? Wha-what are you going to do?"

"We're going to finish what you started," I told him, as I placed the hook from the ceiling under the rope Daniel knotted around the man's feet. I gave Daniel a nod, and he slipped on his work gloves, a pair that matched the ones I wore. Together, we hoisted the man up, putting our weight against the pulley we had designed for this very purpose. Turning Casper's world upside down, he found himself facing the basin of our dog washing station.

I looked to Daniel and our eyes locked. "One more who won't do it again," I whispered to him fervently. I saw the fire flash in his eyes, the emotion playing over his face like it was only yesterday that his own mother's killer was set free. A killer who gave us our first chance to set things right in the world.

Daniel reached for my hand and gripped it then kissed me hard. "For justice," he said.

We wordlessly raised our blades to either side of Casper's neck, and stopped him from hurting anyone ever again.

~~~~~~

I petted our 85 pound German Shepherd on the head as I passed sleepily through the bedroom, and he whined in acknowledgement of my caress before he flopped over on his side. He was as tired as we were, yet had contributed nothing to the evening's affairs, except his bathtub.

"Goodnight, Doc," I told him. He looked up at me, and licked his chops, not bothering to raise his head again.

I collapsed into the bed and threw an arm overhead with a weary sigh. "God, I'm tired."

"Adrenalin." Daniel pulled me to him and I let him envelop me as I molded against his firm bare chest. "You'll catch up tomorrow night," he said in my ear. "I promise."

I growled in the dark. "Daniel!" I ground out through clenched teeth.

He laughed softly behind me. "You're being punished Anthony. I thought I made that clear earlier today."

I clenched my butt that was pressed against his groin, and remembered what happened that afternoon before we carried out the plans to rid the world of Casper. Daniel had felt the need to deal with me before we dealt with him. He had made up his mind. "You made it painfully clear," I confirmed for him. "I just hoped, knowing we had planned a special night, that maybe..." My voice trailed off.

We had only taken the law into our own hands about half a dozen times. No, it was exactly half a dozen times. It isn't something you ever forget. And there was something about our ritual that drew us closer. Something about 'executing' on our own personal means of justice that made us feel as one, and that somehow, we helped to set the world more right.

Daniel said, "You hoped that maybe your punishment would go away because we had one of our special experiences?"

I sighed. "Something like that."

His lips pressed firmly against the back of my head. "When have you ever known me to change course with you? How would that be right?"

"Changing course wouldn't be so bad, especially if it's away from a promised punishment. It would actually be appreciated on occasion," I told him.

It was always about what was right in Daniel's mind, though. From his perspective, it wasn't right that I lashed out at him when I was frustrated about work. It especially wasn't right that I kept it bottled up to the point of explosion. I knew it but I couldn't stop it. I missed the streets, hated being stuck at a desk and sometimes, it got to be more than I could take, because I knew I couldn't go back.

I wondered sometimes why I agreed with him to take a desk job about as often as I wondered why I agreed to let him discipline me. The former of those decisions sometimes led me straight to the latter. I knew they were both the right decisions, I really did, but sometimes, I questioned my judgment.

Funny how time can make you forget the fear of losing your life, the sheer terror that this may truly be "it", while your body grows cold with the loss of its life's blood, pooling under your limp body. Lying in a hospital bed after narrowly surviving the gunshot wound to my side, I eagerly jumped at the chance to park it at a desk when Daniel suggested it.

"I can't bear the thought of losing you again," he had said, his eyes red-rimmed and shimmering. He held my hand in a vice between his, crushing my fingers in the process, but I didn't care. The pain confirmed the reality, and convinced my brain that it wasn't the Morphine talking, but my partner. "You won't sit for a week if you ever scare me like that again," he vowed.

I laughed and immediately regretted it as pain coursed through my body from the hole in my side. "It's not enough that I got shot," I rasped on a throat sore from tubes and whatever else they did to me while I was unconscious.

"Please get out of the field," he begged sincerely. "I'll never get anything done if I have to avenge my mother *and* you."

I smiled. He'd do it, too. "Isn't that blackmail?" I croaked.

His mouth crooked upward in a watery grin. "Actually, it's pure manipulation. I can't blackmail you without implicating myself."

"Good," I said. "Don't worry. No blackmail or manipulation needed. Scared the shit out of me."

Even after many years, I still got a chill when I thought about how close I came to meeting my maker. But it frustrated the piss out of me that I couldn't get past it, couldn't work in the field because some snot-nosed pantywaist of a druggie almost took my life, and then couldn't even remember doing it when the fog of the drugs cleared.

Daniel's answer to my frustrated eruptions is always the same: turn me over his knee and spank my bare butt to meet the dual goals of getting it out of my system while teaching me that sharing and self-control are treasured traits. And it worked. Me. A cop. A grown-up cop who, for whatever reason, responded to his form of discipline.

"If you can't talk to me before we get to this point," he had said this time with a firm downward yank to the back waistband of my slacks, "you can talk to me after we get here."

I stubbornly held onto my irritation and anger despite the cool breath of the air kissing my upturned and bare buttocks. "You don't understand!" I yelled angrily to the carpet under my nose. "You *can't* understand!"

The first driving smack made me gulp a gallon of air, and my mind began to swirl as it started to clear with the spreading sting across my butt. "All I need to understand is that you, my partner, are upset," he explained to me.

Two more heavy swats began to loosen the grip on my anger, and I started to have the good grace to panic about the situation. "Wait," I gasped as my breath started to quicken. I squirmed uselessly across his lap while he held me firmly in place. "It's not that easy! Daniel!"

"Talk to me," he said firmly, delivering a swat with each word to make sure his request was getting through.

His hand paused, heavy and hot, against my skin, prickling from the attention Daniel had paid to it. I opened my mouth a split second too late as it rose and fell again several times. "I hate it!" I shouted, not sure whether I was more passionate in my ire around the current situation or the one that landed me in it.

"Hate what?" he asked calmly. "Tell me."

"That the son of a bitch cost me my career! That I can't turn back time and have it not happen!" Tears began to choke me, and my voice cracked as my sight blurred. "He almost killed me, and I hate that it scares me to this day!"

"It's perfectly normal for you to feel that way. What have I told you?"

I couldn't answer right away. I knew what I was supposed to do, and I knew I hadn't done it. I finally found my voice, and raised it barely above a whisper. "Talk to you about it."

He heard me loud and clear. "And you chose not to, and let it build up, knowing what happens when you do that."

He started spanking me, lecturing me on what partnership is about while his hand punctuated his words. Sobs tore out of me, releasing with them the tightness in my chest, washing away the pent up anger.

Daniel didn't even try to remind me afterward that we could have avoided that confrontation. We both knew we had to wrestle my demon every so often, less frequently as time went on. Daniel considered it a win.

"How long has it been since the last time we dealt with this? Six months?" he asked me while I was curled against him that afternoon, naked below the waist. His hand stroked my exposed hip and leg, carefully avoiding the area he had so recently paid a great deal of attention to. "That's progress."

"I can't help it," I said, languidly. The demon had been purged for a little while longer, and I relaxed against him in the relief of it.

Daniel's arms encircled my shoulders in a death grip, and he kissed my temple hard. "That's quite all right."

"I'll feel more..." I struggled to find the right word. "Adequate? After I help you take out some of the city's trash later on. I can't believe you spanked me, knowing what we have to do tonight."

"It was your choice, not mine," he pointed out, and I sighed. "We do have a busy evening ahead of us," he contemplated. "The stage is set. Tomorrow night, you'll need to go to bed early."

"Daniel..."

"Don't start with me, mister." He patted my sore behind more firmly than I cared for and I instinctively curled away from the punishing palm.

"Stop it," I demanded.

"You stop it," he ordered. "Are you in a position to deny you haven't been sleeping while this was building? That you, my zebra, have learned to change your stripes?"

Denying it would be lying, and he was right in pointing out I was too vulnerable to risk crossing that line. I had messed up enough for one day. "Early bed, master. As you wish."

"That's better," he chuckled. "And what I thought."

There was something comforting in the fact that he knew me so well.

Later that night in bed together, I knew I had done my part to help him wrestle his own demon, to give him some level of relief just like he had done for me earlier. It had been quite a day, but one where we shared secrets with each other that no one else was privy to, and hopefully, never would be.

"You know, Casper probably thought you really did throw the case so we could handle him in our own way," I said, nestled next to him at the close of the day. "But I know you didn't."

"Casperelli. And I took an oath," he repeated his earlier words to our prey.

"He looked like an albino. Casper fits better."

"He doesn't look like an albino now." He had a point. The memory of the acrid scent filled my mind, almost strong enough to see the smoke. Casper was nothing but ash now. Harmless ash.

Daniel continued, "Besides, we always give the law the first shot at it, you know that. We have rules."

"Oh, I know." I laced my fingers between his. "You're the only lawyer in the city who wins no matter what happens."

"It's not about winning," he said after some thought. "It's about justice."

His job. His duty. His mission. What he deemed 'right'. "Casper will never hurt anyone again," I spoke his thoughts. "He won't take anyone's sister or daughter. Or mother."

"If only we could save them from all the monsters," he said in a heavy tone.

"Frustrated?" I asked, tying the afternoon to the present. He didn't miss the parallel.

"Yes. And I'm talking to my partner about it." I could hear the smile in his voice.

"Point." I shifted so I could kiss him. "I love you," I said with my lips brushing his.

"I love you, too."

Our demons were gone, at least for the moment.

End