The Dynamic Duo and Jinggo waited just outside the emergency ward, waiting for Joned’s results of the operation to come out. When he was taken into the hospital, Joned lost so much blood that the doctors thought he couldn’t make it. But they tried their luck anyway. Jinggo’s blank eyes have returned to normal but he was still silent throughout the whole wait. None of Ryo or Dee’s questions did he respond to. Ryo and Dee were a little worried about him.
Soon, the emergency light above the ward door was turned off, signaling that the operation was over. Ryo and Dee quickly stood up and rushed towards the door. Jinggo followed suite a minute later. The doctor came out with a slightly relieved face.
“So, doc,” Dee asked. “How’s Joned?”
“He has lost a lot of blood and we almost ran out of blood from the blood bank,” the doctor replied gravely at first, then smiled and said, “but he pulled through. He’s OK now. The bullet is out and he’s all taken care of. He does have a strong spirit now, doesn’t he?”
“Asians. They never fail to surprise us,” Dee grinned.
“Can we go and visit him?” Ryo asked.
“I don’t see why not. But not for too long though; he needs his rest,” the doctor replied. “He’s in Room 601.”
“Thanks,” Ryo replied before turning towards the slightly dazed Jinggo and said, “Hey, Jinggo. He’s OK. The doctor said the operation was a success. You wanna go and visit him for a while?”
It took Jinggo 5 minutes to register everything in his head before he slowly replied in his cold voice, “Maybe later. I want to go and freshen myself up first. I need some time alone.”
The Dynamic Duo stared at him as Jinggo disappeared into a junction towards the direction of the toilet. After a while, Dee gave Ryo a nudge on his waist, gesturing him to go follow him. Ryo frowned.
“What? Me? Why me?”
“He’s gonna blow up in there, as in going into buckets and buckets of tears,” Dee said. “I can tell. Go on. Besides, I think he’s what you Japanese—or what’s half of you—call a uke like you. I think you can get it through him.”
“Then what about you?” Ryo looked at his boyfriend suspiciously.
“I’m gonna do a little ‘personal investigation’ on this Joned guy,” Dee replied naughtily. “Go on, run along. You can brief me about what you heard and I’ll tell you mine!”
Before Ryo could protest, Dee has already given him another encouraging shove and bounded off towards Joned’s room. Ryo sighed and shook his head helplessly. Soon, he found himself walking towards the toilet looking for Jinggo. Once he stepped in, as he expected, only one cubicle was occupied, just like the one in the NYPD. Ryo didn’t bother to keep his presence secret anymore. He walked directly towards the door and knocked.
“This…This toilet’s taken,” it was Jinggo’s voice, and by the sound of that he could guess that he was trying to control his crying.
“Jinggo, it’s me, Ryo,” Ryo called. “Are you OK?”
“I’m…I’m fine…I just need to be alone for a while. Please go away.”
“Come on, Jinggo. You know you can talk to me. No need to bottle it all up to yourself. It’s not healthy,” Ryo said as he continued to knock on the door. “Come on, Jinggo. Let me in and let’s talk.”
It took about 5 long and silent minutes before Ryo heard Jinggo unlatch the door and opening it for him. He was fairly surprised to see Jinggo with his dark eyes red and sodden and went about sniffling, close to another verge of breaking down. Ryo smiled and went into the cubicle.
“Now would you tell lil’ ol’ me what exactly is the matter here?”
Dee peeked into Room 601 and saw Joned sleeping on the bed. He walked quietly in and dragged a chair so that he could sit beside the bed. The slight sound of the chair being dragged woke Joned up. he turned to see who it was and smiled when he saw that it was Dee.
“Sorry if I woke you,” Dee apologized.
“It’s OK. I can’t sleep forever now, can I?” Joned said. He looked around and asked, “Where’s Jinggo and Ryo?”
“They’re in the toilet,” Dee replied briefly before showing him a solemn-looking face. “You know, it’s about time you’re being a little honest with me.”
“Wha…What do you mean?” Joned asked, taken by surprise.
“You know what I mean. We’ve been working together for a while now and I don’t seem to buy that excuse about you and Jinggo just being partners.”
“Wh…What makes you think anything’s going on between us?” Joned averted his eyes, blushing.
“I can see whether someone is in love with a person or not, and I’m guessing that you have a crush on our Jinggo Kilimano here, aren’t you?”
“That’s stupid.”
“Oh, you think so? Because my gay instincts never fail me before, nor does my expertise in reading people’s faces.”
“You’re…You’re gay…too…?” Joned’s eyes were looking at Dee in surprise and belonging.
“Mmhmm,” Dee nodded. “No point of being ashamed about it anyways. In fact, Ryo and I are lovers. Having the hicks for him ever since he became my partner. Didn’t you notice?”
Joned shook his head. “I must admit, I don’t have your talent in reading people’s faces. Besides, if I know I wouldn’t want to bother. It’s your private life.”
Dee smiled and told him a little bit about him and his relationship with Ryo and how it came to be (A/N: Well, I guess we all know about their story through the manga, so I won’t have to say much about it and cut the long story short). He ended his story by saying, “Now that I’ve been honest to you about me and Ryo, how about you share a little of your side of the story? We never get to actually talk to each other. It’s just work, work, work. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”
“I guess I should be having a little heart-to-heart talk with you by now,” Joned replied. “Yes, I do have the hicks for Jinggo. No, to be even more honest…I’m seriously in love with him. He’s so smart and good-looking and knows everything in life and practically more street-smart than I am. I was raised in an orphanage, you see, and I didn’t get much exposure towards the outside world until I was old enough to leave the orphanage. No one wanted to adopt me, I just don’t know why. I was so new to the outside world that I didn’t know where to start.”
“So then you met Jinggo?”
“No, not yet. At first I tried to live my own life and try to get by. I’ve done loads of odd jobs and all, but it could only feed me, not shelter me. I slept wherever I can sleep, bathed and cleaned myself wherever I can find clean water, ate whatever my poor salary could afford to buy and such. I practically lived in the streets. Then one night, I witnessed a gang trying to take protection money from an old man. I tried to stop them but they beat me into a pulp. I was badly wounded and was close to unconsciousness when I heard a loud gunshot and the incoming blows leaving me one by one. I opened my eyes and there he was, holding his hand out to me and asking if I was alright, and I tell you, I almost thought that God has sent an angel to rescue me. He took me to the hospital and paid my medical bills for me. I was in debt with him since. I asked if there was anything I could repay him and he offered me a job as a partner in his private detective agency.”
“He sounds like the great Samaritan and all. So you’re telling me that you’re just feeling grateful to him and that’s why you followed him around all day?” Dee wrinkled his nose at upon hearing the story. “You have just got to be kidding me! That’s not love at all!”
“No, no, there’s more to this than just gratitude,” Joned said hurriedly. “I was his partner for quite a while and we did hire another helper named Kido into our agency. He was running away from his multimillionaire father because he didn’t want to live the life of ‘captivity’ and chose to work in our agency. He was the one to make me realize that my feelings towards Jinggo were more than just mere gratitude. It was that fateful day when our country was hit by the most terrible scandal of all. Do you remember the internal war between the president and the vice-president?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it before,” Dee recalled the news he watched about 5 months ago. “What about that?”
“Well, we were hired to become the vice-president’s bodyguards. Somehow, the president came up with some sort of a device and put it into Kido’s brain, making Kido turn against us. He was completely brainwashed and he was ordered to kill the vice-president. We fought really hard to both stop him from killing and bring him back to reality, but he was in too deep. He fired the shot and I instinctively shielded the vice-president. But that was when I realized that Jinggo jumped over and shielded me. He was hit at a very critical spot and was going down fast. He would’ve not been able to make it into the hospital if the paramedics didn’t do the bullet extraction and the blood transfusion in the ambulance. Since then I knew I would never live another day without Jinggo around.”
“Ooh, now’s that’s interesting,” Dee complimented. “What happened to that Kido boy?”
“The doctors couldn’t cure him. He was too brainwashed and at the nick of time when he realized that he had fired the shot to his boss, he snapped. The device put in his brain malfunctioned and the docs couldn’t take out—it was too deep into his brain. He became a vegetable and we had to send him back home to his multimillionaire father. You can say that he had finally got his son back.”
“No wonder he had that blank reaction…” Dee muttered to himself before looking up at Joned. “So, uh, does Jinggo know about you liking him?” Dee tried to ask him, even though he could tell from Joned’s face that he didn’t. As expected, he shook his head.
“No…I can’t tell him that. He’ll throw me out of the team. He looks like a straight guy and he totally acts like a straight guy. He would never tolerate someone of my ‘kind’. And if he found out that you and Ryo are like my ‘kind’, he’ll definitely be so sorry that he had taken my advice to come here.”
Dee rolled his eyes and sighed, “You didn’t even try, darn it! Don’t you see? You’ve been trying so hard to catch his attention and make him like you, but you’re just not doing it right! You made it as if it was obvious but you can’t see that it wasn’t obvious to him at all. Your ways doesn’t work! You gotta try another approach! He’s not going to see it if you keep using the same way!”
“Then what do you suggest I should do?” Joned asked, curious.
“Tell him,” Dee said solemnly. “Tell it directly to his face. That’s the only thing that Jinggo will ever get the message into his head. The way to make him see things your way is to shoot it directly into his face. That should make him through. Just like I did with Ryo, and look how happy we are together.”
Joned stared at the grinning Dee for a while before replying, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I suppose I am a little too old to be beating about the bush when I’m supposed to be barging through it.”
“Now that’s the spirit!” Dee replied, chucking Joned’s chin playfully.
“One thing though…how do I exactly tell him to his face?”
“So that’s why you’re acting so strange just now! You like him, don’t you?”
Ryo and Jinggo had finally come out of the toilet and were in the lobby where Jinggo finally let go everything that was bottled up in his heart. Thankfully Ryo was a great listener.
“I just can’t handle it anymore,” Jinggo said between tears. “I mean, I’ve been a goody-good figure all my life and I want Joned to like me that way. Joned has always liked me like this—cool, suave, street-smart, knows everything, cold and unconcerned. That’s what he liked in me! I’m putting up this kind of figure because I want to impress him! Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“Not if he doesn’t know that you’re doing this for him,” Ryo replied. “You never told him you liked him, did you?”
“No…” Jinggo looked down at his shoes. “I…I want so much for him to hold me in his arms and take me, claim me and control me, just for once. I want him to be in charge over me just for once. I…I want my body to be his forever. I know, it might sound crazy for a tall, manly guy to be, like you said, the uke…but…I…”
“Don’t worry, everything will pull through,” Ryo said as he handed him another tissue paper. “We’ll figure out a way. Just leave it to me and Dee. Why don’t you go and visit Joned now? I’m sure he’s wondering where you are now.”
Jinggo nodded and, after blowing his nose, steadied himself and made his face into the ever familiar cold and cool expression before walking side by side with Ryo towards Room 601. As soon as he entered the room, Dee came out and took Ryo to another corner outside the ward, leaving the Asian recruits alone.
“I just got the scoop of the century!” Dee said excitedly.
“So did I! My gosh, we’re actually having a mission we can actually relate and have fun on!” Ryo admitted, his face flushing red in gladness.
“Talk it over a nice hot cup of latte?”
“Sure!”
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