Title - Tung Doi Mot

Author - Lucy Hale

Sequel to Hu Roi va Trong

Rating - NC-17 eventually

Pairing - Darian/Bobby

Notes - Sorry it took me years and years to get this out.

Disclaimer - Not mine. No money, no sue.

Tung Doi Mot
by Lucy Hale
***

The faces were spread out in front of him. Two-dimensional black and white representations of endangered lives.

Smiling school photos. Candid snapshots on a couple of boys. One mugshot. Mostly, though, the school pictures.

The Official sighed and pushed at the pictures, sliding them into a messy pile. Of course the one face he least wanted to dwell on stayed at the top.

Jason.

Damn it all.

The door opened softly, and he glared up at whoever dared interrupt him.

The hesitant face of his right-hand man peered back at him.

He waved Eberts in with a sigh. "Hobbes was discharged without a problem?"

Eberts nodded. His eyes wandered from the Official to the pictures on his desk, to the shut blinds on the windows keeping the room in shadow. "I left Agent Hobbes in Darien's…er. Capable. Hands."

The Official would have smirked if he'd felt at all like smiling. "What will it take to get them back on this case as soon as possible?"

"I don't think that'll be a problem, sir. Agent Hobbes put in an official request to see it through. I imagine he will be in first thing tomorrow."

"Good." The Official's eyes went back to the pictures of those smiling boys. Most of them were already dead. For the others, for Jason, it was just a matter of time. "I want this solved. Tomorrow."

"I don't think you're alone in that desire, sir."

And until then, those boys were in the hands of monsters. And he had to go home and get on the phone and tell his sister that she simply had to wait and hope that she get her son back alive.

Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

***

Darien groaned and flopped onto his back.

He felt royally wrung out. It was still dark outside, so no wonder, but it was more than just sleepiness.

The stress of the last few weeks, probably. The last couple of months had been one horrible moment after another. And it wasn't over yet. They were still knee-deep in this case, this gruesome slave-trade that was killing young, innocent boys.

He hadn't had much chance to relax lately. At the hospital it was one worry after another –even when the surgery was over, and his partner was out of danger…even then Darien hadn't slept through a night. Hospitals made him paranoid suddenly.

Not that that should have been a surprise. Not with doctors stealing brain cells from homeless people, conducting secret surgeries, cutting into Bobby's brain and sabotaging him. Reducing Bobby to a frightened shell who could only sit by and feel his mind slip away little by little.

Darien would never forget that, not as long as he lived. For all that Bobby was annoying and paranoid and obsessive, he was the strongest man Darien had ever known. To see him helpless and scared, to watch him fade away…

Darien shuddered as he lay there. He would never forget it.

He would never forgive. Trouble was, the person responsible was already dead. There could be no revenge for this. No retaliation.

Well. No. Because Bobby lived through it all. He was strong, and he survived. His mind was his own again, intact and, hopefully, none the worse for wear.

And the whole horrible thing had gotten Darien one good thing – Bobby was not only healthy and alive, he was right there in that bed beside Darien.

It felt odd, waking next to someone. Darien hadn't done it often in his life. Casey was the last, really.

He turned his head and squinted through the darkness. Barely he could make out his partner's shut eyes and relaxed face.

He smiled and let the disturbed thoughts of brains and evil doctors leave his mind.

Bobby was nothing if not a constant surprise. For him to be there, to be in love with Darien the way Darien was in love with him, it was amazing. Darien had never considered himself to be gay. He enjoyed women, more than was healthy most of the time. But Bobby was different.

It sounded trite to say that. Darien wouldn't have understood someone else saying it, not before meeting Bobby. Before working month after month with Bobby, getting to know him, getting to trust him…

It was a strange thing, being a partner like that to someone. At first he hadn't trusted Bobby to tell the correct time, much less keep him safe in a fight. But he had learned fast that his partner wasn't what he appeared to be.

Well. No. In a lot of ways he was exactly what he appeared to be. He was on the edge most of the time, extremely devoted to the job he nonetheless bitched about constantly. Paranoid, yeah, and extreme.

But Darien thanked God every day that he was there. He had grown to trust him very quickly, as he realized that for all his talk Bobby was almost scarily good at his job. Even more once he realized that Bobby would go to any length at all to protect Darien despite their fights, and their very different world views.

After trust came it was easy to like Bobby. Different world views or not, their personality quirks seemed to match up in a way Darien had never felt before. For every bad joke Darien made, Bobby was there to grin and back it up, and make one of his own. Darien's skewed sense of humor fit with Bobby's. Their similarities made them friends, their differences made them perfect partners.

Bobby was a lot of things to Darien – safety, friendship, fun. Partners. And so the rationalization that Darien could be straight as a rail and still love Bobby didn't seem odd at all.

And if Darien found himself getting turned on from the solid hardness of Bobby, the dominating personality and macho behavior, well…

Okay, maybe he was a little gay.

He couldn't help but think that was a good thing, laying there listening to Bobby breathe. Feeling the warmth of him under the sheets. Seeing the gleam in his brown eyes as they…

Oh.

He smiled sleepily. "Hi."

Bobby smiled back, blinking heavy eyes. "Wh're you doin' up?" he mumbled, barely parting his lips.

Darien grinned. "Just thinking."

"Dangerous."

Couldn't argue there. "I woke you up?"

"Nah. Been sleeping for weeks, feels like." Bobby's eyes opened wider as the sleep drifted off of him slowly.

Darien almost shuddered. For weeks, yeah. He'd spent way too much time the last few weeks watching over Bobby as he slept.

Bobby chuckled lowly. "If you're gonna think bad thoughts I'm going back to sleep."

"Yeah? What would it take to get you to stay awake?"

Bobby just wagged his eyebrows, looking like his old self again.

Darien fell back on his back, sighing. "I promised myself I'd wait. You just got out of the hospital yesterday."

"But I got out of surgery like two weeks ago. I coulda gone home last week if you'd've just listened to me instead of the doctors."

"Forgive me if I doubt you'd be completely honest about your state of being."

"You think I'd lie?"

"To get laid? I think you'd lie, cheat, steal…"

Bobby laughed. "You're getting the two of us confused, my friend."

Darien swallowed, ridiculously pleased to hear that husky laugh. The humor fell out of his voice. "I'd do more than that."

Bobby hitched himself up on one arm and looked down at Darien seriously. "You don't have to."

Darien swallowed, hoping he wasn't pushing. "Prove it."

Bobby's reaction was tangible. His eyes darkened so much Darien could see it through the dimness of the room. His throat seized in a swallow, and his body tensed. "You mean that?"

"I shouldn't," Darien answered after a moment, reluctant. "You just got home. You've been through a lot. And tomorrow we've got a hell of a hard day ahead."

"But?"

Darien smiled again. As usual, Bobby read him like a book. "But yeah, I mean it. I very mean it."

Bobby grinned. "Good."

Darien put up a hand to stop him as Bobby moved in close. "We can't."

Bobby's look of surprise was almost comical. "What?"

"Just because I want you to…you know…doesn't mean we can."

"'You know?'" Bobby repeated with a snort of amusement. Then all amusement was gone. "Why not?" And he sounded suddenly more like a sulky little boy.

Darien was serious, though, and he'd make Bobby see that. "Because I won't take any risks with you. Not so soon."

Bobby swore under his breath, sitting up with some difficulty and glaring down at Darien. "You picked a hell of a time to go responsible."

Darien met his eyes. "I've just spent more time than I want to think about sitting in the hospital scared to death about you. I won't do anything to put either of us back there."

Bobby reached out for him, moving a hand in deliberately slow, firm strokes over his arm. "Give me some credit, Darien. It takes more than a romp in the sack to put Bobby Hobbes in the hospital."

Darien sat up, shaking off his arm reluctantly. This was important. "Yeah, but Bobby Hobbes doesn't have life-or-death brain surgery every week, either. I'm not gonna risk it."

Bobby opened his mouth to respond.

Darien cut him off, squeezing his arm tightly. "I thought for a while there that I was going to lose you just when we finally understood…everything. Us. You know? I had it, and then just as fast
I was going to lose it. I'm not risking that again. It was too fucking hard to breathe when you were laying in that hospital, and I'm not gonna do that again. Okay?"

Bobby met his eyes, looking surprised.

Darien sighed. "You don't get it. Not that we've really talked about it at all, I guess, but…" He leaned in, speaking intently. "The minute I put together how I really felt about you, things changed.
You're already the best friend I've got in the world. But then you were more than that. You know? Suddenly you were everything I ever needed to be happy, wrapped up in one short little package."

Bobby glared half-heartedly at the word short, but his eyes were glittering with the same deep emotions Darien had racing through his brain.

Darien smiled faintly. "You're it, Bobby. Everything. If you're with me, boom, I'm happy. Simple as that. If something happens and you're not here anymore, I can wave bye-bye to ever being okay again. And I know you feel the same way. I know you. You would never take this lightly. So I'm not gonna give in to a romp in the sheets hours after you get out of the hospital, just because I might be a little… a lot horny. And I'm not gonna let you push yourself on me because you think that's what I want."

Bobby searched his expression, his eyes driving into Darien's as if able to see right into his head, see the lies if they were there.

But they weren't there, so Darien didn't worry. "I'm going to wait, because it's safer. And believe me, I'm the last person in the world to ever say something like that, but. You mean more to me than sex." He sat back, twining his fingers with Bobby's loosely. "The Keeper and Doctor Dylan said to take it easy for a while. So that's what we're going to do."

Bobby's eyes still showed his surprise. "Damn, Darien."

Darien smiled sincerely. "What? Didn't think I could be all deep like that?"

"About me? So soon?" Bobby shrugged, honest as always. "No."

Darien leaned in and angled his head to kiss Bobby warmly. Nothing heavy, because Darien really was a whole lot of horny, and it wouldn't take much to blast his self-control far away from that bed. But something real enough that Bobby would be able to feel what he felt.

He pulled back after a minute, staying close enough to feel Bobby's breath on his skin. "Believe it."

Bobby's eyes glittered in the darkness. "Yeah. Okay. Me, too, you know?"

"Never doubted." Darien moved in, cupping a hand around the back of Bobby's neck and tugging him close for another kiss.

It really felt so unbelievably good to be close to him like that. Too good.

He had to pull back again, but couldn't stop his thoughts from racing in a dangerous direction, and couldn't stop his mouth from voicing his thoughts. "Besides, when we do this…God, Bobby, I want
to fuck you until you pass out `cause it feels so good. I want to make you scream, make you lose that self-control you've always got. Want to watch you go wild because of what I'm doing to you. Want to make you feel better than you ever thought a person could feel. And I want you to give it right back. Fuck me until I can't see, until I'm nothing left but nerve endings, and I forget how to speak unless it's your name." His voice was low and hoarse by then, his body throbbing. "Never want to worry about hurting you when we do it."

"Fuck." Bobby grabbed him and pulled him close, not to kiss, just to hold. He buried his face in Darien's shoulder and breathed raggedly. "Darien. Fuck."

Darien wrapped his arms around Bobby and held him tightly. His skin already felt way too sensitive to Bobby's touch, and after that little pep talk it was even worse. He was so turned on, so intent to fight it, that he was trembling. "Love you, Bobby."

"Got a funny way of showing it. Fuck, are my balls gonna be blue in the morning."

Darien laughed, pushing him lightly. "We need sleep."

"After that? Jesus. I wish you'd've told me you were so sadistic before we started all this."

Darien met his eyes, grinning. "Would it have made a difference?"

"Nope. Just nice to have some warning." Bobby settled back reluctantly. "This is gonna hurt tomorrow, you asshole."

Darien lay back beside him, pulling the covers tightly around them and resting against Bobby with a sigh. "I'm gonna be feeling it to, you know."

Bobby grunted, sliding in closer.

Darien willed his blood to stop racing quite so fast. He could hear the slightly faster race of Bobby's heart, feel the warmth coming off of him.

It wasn't helping to get his head clear, that was for sure.

"Hey, Darien?" Bobby's voice was already thicker with sleep despite his protests.

"Hmm?"

"Love you, too."

Darien smiled against his chest. "I know."

***