A Random Fic
AUTHOR: Lucky.
DISCLAIMER: Except for the creations of the author, all characters, characterizations, situations, and locations described in this unsolicited and not-for-profit work of fiction are the property of ABC Television, Capitol Cities, Inc., Steven Bochco Productions, the many talented people who created the world of NYPD Blue, and the actors who have made that world such a lively place. The author would also like to extend her personal gratitude to Mr. Scott Cohen for his light, his vitality, his inspiration, and for being such a compelling muse. Thank you, sir.
FEEDBACK: To Lucky
I can't give you a title or anything else because it would totally give it away, other than to say that I have *no* idea where this idea came from or why I felt compelled to write it down... and that the surprise is that nobody within or observant to the story is really all that surprised when the surprise happens. The doorbell rang.
Diane dusted muffin particles off onto the butt of her skintight gray leggings and started moving, her eyes still glued to the New York Times, reading until she came to the period. She straightened then, plucking at her floppy black turtleneck to make sure it was on properly.
"Coming."
She blinked through her peephole for a second, seeing two men in courier uniforms, standing about three feet apart, looking in random and opposite directions. Recently acquired instinct made her look at the uniforms closely.
Fed-Ex. These guys were the real thing.
Diane undid her bolts and opened the door. "Hi. Can I help you?"
An electronic clipboard was immediately thrust into her face, but not before she'd caught a glimpse of the delivery. "Sign here, ma'am."
"Wait a second." She put out her hand and pushed the clipboard up, eyeing the box on the ground in the hallway. "What the hell is that?"
The one with the clipboard gave a little snort. "We don't know what you're used to with the city couriers, ma'am, but Fed-Ex doesn't go through people's mail."
"This is not mail," Diane murmured commentarily, taking in the two delivery people. The one with the clipboard seemed professionally demure, but the other one wasn't looking at her at all. Not at her, not into her apartment, and certainly not at the three by three by four wooden crate at his feet. She returned to narrow her eyes at Clipboard Boy.
"Who put you guys up to this?"
Clipboard flapped his mouth in indignation for a second, then broke into a grin, reaching out to poke his buddy in the arm. Buddy just turned and smiled nervously. Clipboard slid a folded piece of paper out of his hip pocket, setting his clipboard down on top of the crate. He opened the paper and cleared his throat.
"Dear Diane: Because you're smart, I had to come up with a contingency plan in case you figured me out. Please accept my apology for being such a baby," Clipboard stressed the word 'baby', glancing up at Diane for a moment as he read it, "this not too small gift, and my sincere hope that someday you'll believe in me enough to try again. Until then, Guess Who."
Diane passed a hand over her hair and nodded, smiling in spite of herself. "Danny... Okay, what did you want me to sign?"
Clipboard grinned and shoved the note back into his pocket and picked up the clipboard. "Here. Seen one of these before?"
"Yeah." Diane unclipped the metal tipped stylus and traced her signature across the magnetic strip, watching her name come up in digitized dots on the little LCD screen above it. She handed the clipboard back to its owner. "Thanks."
"Um," Buddy finally sounded up. "Where you want we could put this in your place, lady?" He spoke with a gentle, Cuban lilt.
"That's okay. I'll get it." Diane flapped her hand at him, just wanting to be left alone with the box and her curiosity.
Clipboard laughed. "I know you women are all independent now, but trust me, there are two of us because there's no way anyone can move this on their own."
Diane crossed her brow at Clipboard, wondering exactly what the hell Danny could have sent her that would take two Fed-Ex guys to get up into her apartment, but stepped aside, saying, "Set it in front of the couch in the living room, please."
Clipboard and Buddy both looked at each other with 'are you ready' eyes, then reached down and seized the crate, lifting it with clean- and-jerk grunts, both panting and growing red in the face as they shuffled it over to Diane's living room and set it on the rug carefully. As they were in progress, Diane pulled two bottles of water out of her refrigerator and handed them to the guys on their way out, saying, "If it was that hard to get it from the door to my couch, I can imagine what it was to get it from the street up to my door. Thanks, guys."
"No problem," Clipboard grinned and accepted her offering. "You might wanna check that out right now, though. There are handling instructions on the crate."
"Okay." Diane handed the second bottle to Buddy.
"Gracias."
"Nada."
Diane watched them go, closing and locking the door behind them. Then she pulled a third bottle of water from the fridge for herself and set off into the living room.
She loved this feeling. It was almost better than sex. There had always been something vaguely erotic to her about a mystery. Maybe Freud was right and sexuality really did drive everything because this strange feeling in her belly whenever the unknown was within her reach is what made her a detective in the first place. But as a detective, there was a new mystery every hour or so. Once she opened the box, this game would be over.
So she took her time. It would overwhelm her soon enough.
"What are you?" she asked the box in a quiet voice. "What are you that's so big that it comes in a crate, so heavy that it needs two people to lift it, and demands instant attention upon delivery?" She circled the crate, looking at it's markings. It said "This Side Up" with big red arrows on all four sides and in multiplicity across the top. Scattered around the big, bold, red words was another red word that Diane had to stare at before she could make it out enough to read.
Live.
She read the word aloud and at that moment, something inside the crate moved. Just a tiny rustle of packing material, but there was no way it was a fluke. Diane shrieked and it took her a few seconds to realize that she was crouched like a scared billygoat in the corner of her couch.
"Okay," she said, breathing in forcedly steady breaths. "Whatever you are, you're still in the box." She unclamped herself and stepped off of her furniture, circling the crate again. She restarted down her path of deduction. "You're in a crate, heavy enough to require two men to lift you, and alive... And you're from Sorenson. What in the hell could you possibly be?"
She could taste her curiosity, bright and metal like blood in her mouth, and suddenly her brain gave her the piece of information she was looking for.
"There are no depot markings on you. Whoever sent you knows exactly where you are." She took a few light steps over to the window, half expecting to see Danny's moony, smiling face beaming up from the street below.
He wasn't there.
Whatever was in the crate moved again. Diane turned to look at it.
"No."
The rustle inside the crate became almost constant, like the rush of water.
"No, no, no, no..."
She jumped, screaming aloud as the telephone rang. She panted for a few seconds, patting her palm over her racing heart in the rhythm that she wanted it to be going. "No way," she said to the noise. "I'm not taking calls right now."
Her machine picked up and spoke in Bobby's voice. "You've reached 555-1219. Nobody's available to speak on the phone. If you want a return call, you have to leave a telephone number. Bye." Beep
"I tol' you she wasn't gonna be there, Danny..." It was Andy's voice, fading away as he hung up on her machine.
The crate in front of her fell completely silent. Or at least it seemed silent. Diane's curiosity hit her in the back of the head with the force of a minor explosion, blowing past her ears like a March wind and spinning around her like a taunting cocoon.
"If that's not what I thought it was in there..." Her own voice sounded like a distant echo, her movements felt like they were someone else's dream of her. Her hand fell on the crate as she knelt beside it, feeling the warmth from whatever was inside penetrate the wood and flow into her hand. Reason finally kicked her in the ass, beating her out of her self-induced haze of 'what if'.
She shook her head, rapping on the crate with a little laugh. "You're a dog. You're a puppy or a kitten or something and Danny's just messing with my head. He's put so much starter-animal crap in with you so I wouldn't have to go to the store to care for you that nobody can lift the damn crate anymore, and he just called to check up on you... On me... On us." She drummed her fingertips on the crate, glancing around the room to see if she had anything to open it with. Finally, she remembered the mini pry bar in Bobby's old toolchest tucked away in the bedroom closet and pushed herself upright, stroking her hand over the crate for a second, speaking in soothing baby-talk as she did.
"Hold on, puppy. Momma's gonna get you out of there, okay?" She walked back to her dressing closet.
As she was digging through the bowels of her closet, she heard a very distinct, human sneeze, but didn't think much of it. The back wall of the closet backed up against the back wall of the bedroom closet in the next apartment. If Martin or Clary were in their bedroom, she'd certainly be able to hear them from here. Lord knows they'd both heard her and Bobby enough.
She came back into the living room, foot long pry bar in hand, and began to study the lip of the crate, looking for the best place to start working at it. She didn't want to hurt the animal inside, but she knew she might have to put a little shoulder into the wood to get him out.
"Okay," she set the bar down on her couch. "I need to figure out where you are inside that big box, baby." She got down on all fours and began to listen for breathing through the wood. The whole box seemed to sound like breathing, but she heard it most clearly in the upper far right corner, away from the couch. She tapped on the wood and got a little scratching noise in return, letting out a childish giggle of delight. She tapped again and got another scratching noise, this time accompanied by a tiny, high-pitched whine. "Okay, baby," she offered in a soothing lilt. "Okay... we're gonna get you out of there. Just give me one second, 'kay?"
She got up and retrieved her pry bar, starting in on the corner farthest from where the puppy inside the crate was, speaking to it in a gentle patter. "I hope you're not as cute as you sound, because I'm probably gonna have to take you right back to the pet store tomorrow." One of the staples popped and she wiggled it out, setting it on her endtable. "Maybe not, though. Nobody bothers me up here... and I have been lonely lately. Maybe somebody like you could be a good thing, hm?" The second staple popped and she pulled it out, setting it next to the first. Carefully, she slid the flat of the bar into the little space between the lid and wall of the crate, trying to be as gentle as she could. "I just hope you're not one of those cute little puppies that grows into a big, bulletproof goofball in a year, although I've always wanted a big, black lab. If you're one of those, I'll keep you. If you're anything that drools, you can stay for as long as it takes me to find a nice home for you. Deal?"
The animal inside the crate had begun to move constantly now, and Diane figured it was because he knew she was coming in after him.
"It's okay... I'm here... I'm gonna get you out in a second..." She rammed the bar down and the wooden lid gave over with a rattle and squeak. She lifted it from the crate and saw a layer of tiny white flowers, not baby's breath but something else. Allysium. She'd never noticed before, but in such a quantity, they smelled like rain and green and morning. She moved around the box, staring at the massive amount of white, looking like a warm sea of snow inside the crate.
It moved, just a little. It moved like it was breathing. Like it was alive.
Diane came to where she had last believed the puppy to be in the box, dipping her hand carefully into the allysium, pressing it aside as she did.
As soon as her fingers met it, she saw it. Jet black and shiny, silky and warm to the touch, scattered through with the tiny white dots of allysium petals.
But there was no way it was a dog.
"If you do this one more time, I swear," Diane gathered the handful of hair and flowerpetals up, tugging on it a little, eliciting another whimper, this time entwined with a pattering giggle. She stood quickly, stepping away from the box.
He came up to rest on his bare bottom, his lower half completely blanketed by little white flowers, shaking his head until tiny petals rested like the dust of a vanquished halo, scattered through his hair, dripping down his shoulders and into the dark fur on his chest.
She rolled her eyes at him. "Why do you do this to me?"
He gazed up at her with his pretty green eyes. "We've discussed your 'bulletproof' theory before, and I'm afraid I can't promise you anything in the 'drooling' department, but I believe I meet your 'big' and 'black fur' requirements quite well, and I hope you'll consider keeping me... at least for tonight."
As he spoke, she could picture the series of events that led up to him being naked in a crate of allysium blooms in her apartment. He got someone at the house to call Federal Express and give two guys maybe fifty bucks apiece to immediately deliver the crate to her address and not ask any questions about it, even setting up the misdirection in the note. She racked her brain to figure out exactly who would work with him on such a thing, and all her roads led directly back to John, who'd been looking at her funny all week in the first place. Come to think of it, he always looked at her funny for about a week before Denby pulled his little stunts.
"I'm gonna start talking to John a little more often."
His brow creased in mock disappointment. "Then I'm gonna have to start talking to him a little less often." He gathered two handfuls of allysium and tossed them out of the crate like a petulant child throwing sand around the playground.
"You're making a mess," Diane scolded. "Stop that."
He pouted at her and tossed two more handfuls onto the rug. "The more on the rug, the less in the box," he growled in soft warning. "What are you going to do about it... Momma?"
Oh, she couldn't stand him... and just how right he had been about that. She ripped at her clothes.
"You're really gonna get it this time, Harry."
He hooted gleefully, wobbling himself back in the crate to make room for her, clearing out a little spot for her and all her needs, waiting impatiently as she joined him in the crate.
"Just like I get it every time."
The End.
