MLB PD 2
I hate you all. This is definitely turning into a series. I'm going to have to make a fucking icon.
Second installment of the MLB PD AU. If you haven't read the first installment of this AU ( Bust), I suggest you do so, because although this one goes into some of the background, the first one sets the premise, introduces the characters, and some references are made here to some things that happened in the first fic. Also, there are pictures for the first one!
Mark Mulder/Dan Haren, Albert Pujols, various cameos. PG-13. 5,139 words. Goddammit.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true. Obviously. If you think Mark Mulder is actually a police officer in a fictional city, you have problems.
Meet the team.
Haren made his first major drug bust three months after joining the Deebak PD, still so wet behind the ears that he was going home and polishing his badge up every night so it’d shine brightly under the station lights when he reported every morning. The target was a mid-level dealer named Radomski who acted as a kind of rotary for the bigger dealers: almost all of Deebak's dope supply was siphoned through him at one point or another, distributed all over the city and surrounding areas by his underlings. Radomski himself hadn't been too dangerous, but because of his unique position he had a lot of major dope dealers backing him, all very, very interested in keeping him alive and out of police custody.
He had been a remarkably difficult man to track down, but Haren had recognized a pattern in his paperwork-- he was processing paperwork from the incredibly minor busts his low status in the station had had him on-- and had seen a weird sense of connectedness in among all the petty quantities and minor possession charges. Patterns in dates and times of arrest, in locations, it was all there, and he'd gone into the paperwork of his colleagues: a week back, a month, two months, laying it all out on his desk and the floor and the desk of Officer Drew, who had the misfortune of being closest.
A week later he'd drawn up a series of planned operations, the very first such plans he’d written by himself. He’d gotten all the arrest and search warrants he needed approved, signed, and filed. He'd made a couple of stings, been grazed by a couple of bullets, had landed in the hospital once with a graze that was a little more than that. He had beefed up his requisitions to include more firearms and light bodyarmor. He'd made more stings, more arrests, tracked and tagged and wiretapped, and eventually he'd gotten Radomski.
Three months normally wasn't nearly long enough for a new cop to integrate into the force, but Haren had hit the ground in Deebak running, and half the drug task force had seen him take a bullet to the arm or leg by the time they'd surrounded Radomski in the old abandoned Snakeskin Plant (a former fake leather manufacturer who'd long since left town, sending all their factory jobs overseas). He hadn't been the head of the drug task force back then, not yet, but it was still as though they were his men and women. They’d all stepped back as one, covering him when it came time for someone to break out the handcuffs, giving him the moment.
Radomski was a big guy; his neck alone was about the same size around as one of Haren's thighs, and Haren wasn't that skinny. The handcuffs had been almost tight around his wrists, even though they'd brought the largest size, because they all knew that minor and mid-level dope dealers were often users as well. Haren had been elated, very nearly giddy with joy as he secured the cuffs. His very first major bust, all his own. The dull throb in his left bicep from the most recent bullet graze had seemed suddenly rewarding, like he could be happy about it now that he hadn't gotten it for no good reason.
There had been handshakes and congratulations all 'round, back at the station. So many people had wanted to slap him on the back that it had taken him half an hour to get out of his strike gear. It had been unheard-of for a rookie to take on such an enormous operation; that such a large, rookie-run operation should be successful had been almost unthinkable.
There hadn’t been any resentment, though. Thinking back on it, Haren can wonder at it, can see how unusual this might be in other stations, but in Deebak they were so happy to be making inroads against the dope market that they had long ago stripped off petty concerns like tenure and ego. Which was not to say that he didn’t get shit from some of the older cops, and there were still plenty of ways he had to prove himself on the force, but nobody ever mistrusted him because of his age or his appearance. When they talked to him, they looked at his eyes and not his hair. They trusted him-- Chief Melvin trusted him-- based on what he had and had not done, and, once they’d seen him in action a couple of times, based on what it seemed likely that he could do.
Haren supposes that he’s been spoiled. His time in the Academy had been as smooth as could be expected for one of the top students, and he’d gone straight into the Deebak force after graduation. Lucky, lucky all the way, until the day the temporary transfer came in for the Cardnalis job, and his luck all seemed to run out at once.
----
As head of the drug task force, Haren had his own office in the corner of the large open floor where his officers had their desks. He almost always left the door open and the blinds raised, though-- he’d been out there on The Floor, as they called it, capital letters always verbally implied, not that long ago. And anyways, he liked to monitor the noise level. It was almost possible to tell how things were going in the Deebak drug world simply by listening to the tone of the cacophony on The Floor. When it was quiet and slow, the drug world was trucking along peacefully. When it was fast and loud, a drug lord was in serious trouble. There were all sorts of noise gradations in between, and Haren had grown fairly adept at reading them.
He had been sitting in his office, going over some paperwork for one of their latest busts, one that had resulted in a lot of seizures. Of course he was happy when they managed to seize drugs and paraphernalia, because it meant getting it off the street (that, of course, being his job), but it always meant exponentially more paperwork. The noise level on The Floor had been the middling hum of discussion that followed a successful bust, with a slight upswing of noise in the far corner, near the Seized Property and Evidence room.
The knock on his doorframe had jerked him sharply out of his contented paperwork-induced concentration, although when he saw that it was Chief Melvin himself, he swallowed the annoyed sound he’d almost made and stood up at his desk. Chief Melvin had waved him down, closing the door and leaning against it. Haren had looked at the thin folder in Chief Melvin’s hands, the mild but not entirely happy expression on his face, and immediately started to worry.
“You’ve done some real good work for us the past couple of years,” Chief Melvin had said, turning the file over in his hands.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Real good. Real good,” he’d repeated. “Especially with the dope guys, and you know the kinds of trouble we’ve had with them.”
“Yes sir.”
Chief Melvin had looked at him solemnly. “The dope’s a problem all over the country right now, and we got it as bad in Deebak as ‘most anyone else does. City of this size, you can’t expect any different. But there’s places have it worse. ‘Specially on the coasts.” Unlike a lot of what they called organics-drugs extracted from some plant product-the dope was artificially manufactured and thus usually produced within the US. It still was a bigger problem on the coasts than inland, because even though there was no import business, there was a booming export economy in it, and it made sense to have the majority of your operation near the coast if you were going to be shipping something overseas.
“Of course, sir,” Haren had said, wondering what any of it had to do with him and getting a nasty sort of feeling about it.
“You do good work, kid.” Chief Melvin had sighed, then, a big tired sigh. “There’s places that need that kinda good work on the dope markets real bad right now.”
“I’m being transferred out of Deebak?” Haren had blurted. “Sir?” He hadn’t even thought they could do that.
“Not a transfer, exactly. Nothing permanent.” Chief Melvin had turned the file over in his hands again, looking down at it. “More like a cop exchange program kinda thing. A loan.”
“But sir, I. The team, sir.”
“Oh, they ain’t exactly happy ‘bout it.” Chief Melvin had finally looked up and grinned wryly at him. “And I won’t exactly be happy to see you go neither. But this city, they’re having dope problems. Big dope problems. And they don’t got no one over there you’d call an expert.” He had stepped forward, then, dropped the file flat onto Haren’s desk.
Haren had flipped it open, looking down at the grainy black and white photo paperclipped to the criminal profile papers. He had seen the broad jaw, the heavy brow, the dark hair, the small eyes a dark smudge in the low resolution, Canseco, José printed across the bottom.
“I’ll talk to the Chief of Police in Cardnalis,” Chief Melvin had said. “Chief La Russa. He’s kind of a hard-ass, but he’s a good cop. You should be in charge of the drug unit over there. Won’t be no different from your setup here.”
“Cardnalis.”
Chief Melvin had leaned forward, palms flat on Haren’s desk, looking him right in the eyes. Haren had appreciated that-it wasn’t every cop who could do that when delivering unpleasant news.
“This guy needs to be taken off the street, Officer Haren. His dope needs to be taken off the street. And you… you do real good work.” Chief Melvin had straightened up. Rubbed his hands on his uniform pants, then clapped them together briskly. “They need you out there, Haren. Do the Deebak PD proud.”
Haren had nodded, closed the file decisively, stood up as tall and straight as he could. “Sir, yes sir.”
----
Haren still remembers the first time he met Mulder and Pujols, that interrogation of Roberts. Before then, most of his interaction with the Cardnalis cops had consisted of shooting ideas back and forth across their desks with Schumaker, taking in-person reports from Isringhausen and Ankiel and Duncan and Molina, fending off Looper when he wanted to hear another story about the time Haren busted this or that big drug baron. He had gone out a few times with the beat guys-- mostly Isringhausen and Ankiel-- and it was OK, he could get done what he needed to get done, but he just couldn’t work with them that much.
Out on the street, it wasn’t ever enough to work tolerably well with someone. Tolerably well got guys injured, out there, or worse.
After the Roberts thing, though, Haren had put in a request to work his next stakeout with Mulder and Pujols. It was probably something he could have done on his own; a zero-engagement, observation only, information gathering mission. Chief La Russa never let any of his cops take stakeouts alone, though, and if they weren’t part of the beat force they had to tag along with a regular beat team.
Before, maybe Haren would have asked for Isringhausen and Ankiel. But he had seen the way Mulder and Pujols operated, the smoothly effortless teamwork, and had wanted to give it a shot. Just to see how it would work out.
----
The warehouse is dark and empty and dead silent. Haren sweeps his binoculars across the doors again anyways. The guys they’re waiting for could show up in five minutes, or in five hours. This is why a stakeout with the wrong beat team could be unbearable. They’ve been at this for two hours already, and so far neither Mulder nor Pujols has shown an inclination for show tunes, which already makes this better than his last stakeout. Someone should have warned him about Officer LaRue, but he has a feeling that it was his new-guy status working against him again.
Pujols twists around in his seat and offers the donut box to Haren again. “Thanks,” Haren says, grabbing one of the chocolate glazed. That’s one advantage Cardnalis has over Deebak-- the local coffee and donut shops are so grateful for the increased police presence that they’re always giving out free food and drinks to any cops who come in.
“So.” Mulder doesn’t turn, keeping his face aimed at the warehouse. Haren can see his eyes flick back to him in the rearview mirror, though. “Who d’you think is gonna win the Superbowl this year?”
“Gotta go wit’ th’Card’nls,” Haren says through a mouthful of donut.
“Seriously? Seriously?”
Haren swallows. Chuckles a little. “Aw, c’mon. Like there’s anything else to do in Arizona come football season ‘cept watch those poor bastards take the field every Sunday.”
“Di’nt ask who you wan’ to win,” Pujols points out. “Ask who you t’ink is gon’ win.”
Actually, Pujols didn’t ask at all-- it was Mulder who asked the question. They do that a lot, Haren has noticed; one of them will say something and the other will act like it’s as good as his having said it, like they’re on the exact same wavelength most of the time. Haren can’t decide if he finds this kind of admirable or kind of freaky.
“Probably the Patriots again,” he says, leaning back in his seat and licking some of the glaze off the top of his donut.
Mulder’s eyes detour to the rearview mirror again. “That’s fuckin’ disgusting. And yeah, there’s always a shot the Pats’ll win it these days. I think this is San Diego’s year, though.”
“What? You never eat your donuts like this? Best way to get the most outta the glaze, man.” Haren waits until he knows Mulder is looking at him again, then sticks his tongue all the way out and drags it slowly across the donut. Mulder finally turns around in his seat to make a gagging noise at Haren, who leans back and licks his donut primly.
“’Ey, action.” Pujols shoves Mulder’s shoulder and points out the windshield. Mulder turns around and Haren immediately brings his binoculars up again. Sure enough, a black SUV is pulling up in front of the warehouse. Three men get out. Haren ups the magnification on his binocs, hearing the click click click of Pujols photographing them with his big nightvision telephoto lens.
Another car pulls up and Haren spots the buyer Roberts had told them to look for-- a long-faced white guy, this one named Gibbons, who occasionally served as a go-between for the dealer they were looking for, Raffy. It’s doubly good to spot Gibbons, because it means that Roberts was on the level with his information, and, if Pujols’ photos come out, it means that they’ll be able to feed Gibbons’ image into the facial recognition software back at the station, and they’ll be able to track him much more effectively, hopefully leading them to Raffy.
The four men conduct their transaction furtively, but they seem unaware of the concealed, unmarked cop car. It’s a pretty small dope deal, nothing worth breaking up when compared to the relative importance of keeping their presence here secret, but Haren can tell that it’s killing Mulder to watch it without interfering. What he can see of Mulder’s shoulders could be a study in tension, and every so often Pujols will reach over, gently touch Mulder on the arm, murmuring something to him so quietly that Haren can’t make out the words, even though he’s right there in the back seat.
Procedure demands that they wait at least half an hour after all involved parties have left the scene before driving back to the station, to avoid arousing suspicion. Haren has upped this to a full hour, because he doesn’t want to take any chances, not with the stakes as high as they eventually will be. The more careful you are early in an operation, the more likely you are to succeed in the end; that’s always worked for him in Deebak, and he doesn’t see any reason to change in Cardnalis.
“You OK?” he asks Mulder. Mulder shrugs, still staring straight ahead.
“He never been someone who like watchin’ the law get broke wit’out arrestin’ the people who do the breakin’,” Pujols offers. He turns to look sympathetically at Haren. “Sorry. He can be real bitch for stakeout sometime.”
“You’re a real joy to be stuck in a car with for hours yourself, buddy,” Mulder mutters. “Could you chew any louder?”
Pujols stuffs an entire half a donut into his mouth and chews it up noisily. Mulder punches him in the side, but the tension is draining out of his shoulders, and Haren finds himself suddenly, sharply missing the hell out of his team back in Deebak.
----
Things are, perversely, a little better after the botched sting. Most of the Cardnalis PD seems to have decided that things would have gone differently if Haren had been allowed to run it, and although a few of the Sergeants are still treating him like his haircut is a personal affront to decent human beings everywhere, he’s getting a lot less shit than before.
Detective Carpenter actually goes so far as to come over to his desk, shake his hand, and earnestly apologize for being so mistrustful early on. It’s pretty awkward for Haren, for Carpenter himself, and for everyone within hearing distance, although Haren does on some level appreciate the gesture. No one else feels the need to repeat it, thankfully.
He goes to the hospital to visit the officers who got shot; the ones he can visit, anyways. Encarnacion is still in intensive care and Clement, though stable, still has a tube down his throat and is more sedated than not. Detective Glaus is only a couple days away from being released, though, and Officers Johnson and Kinney are both awake and bored enough to appreciate the visit. Haren doesn’t say anything about how he might have done things if he had been there, and none of them bring it up.
The night shift guys are just starting to filter into the station when Haren gets back. He goes to sit down at his desk and finds that he can’t, because Mulder is in his chair. “Uh, hey,” he says, hovering a little awkwardly. Schumaker pauses in the process of packing up his stuff for the night and Haren can almost feel his gaze through the back of his head.
Mulder clears his throat. Schumaker makes a whole bunch of scurrying noises as he hurries to pack up the rest of his stuff and get out of the station. Mulder has that effect on some of the guys, although he’s never really had it on Haren. He’s too hard to impress, Haren thinks, seen one too many insanely bulked-up drug lords up close and personal to get all that freaked out by a fellow cop, no matter how tall or intense he might be.
“So,” Haren says, once Schumaker’s gone.
“So,” Mulder agrees.
“You’re in my seat.”
“Sure looks that way.”
“Did you want something?”
Mulder taps at Haren’s keyboard with the back end of a pencil. “You didn’t have to go to the hospital. Those guys weren’t your responsibility.”
“I know.” Haren shifts uneasily, wishing Mulder wasn’t in his chair so he’d have somewhere to go, wishing Mulder wasn’t poking at his computer so he could pretend that he had something to do. And Haren’s not just saying it-- he does know that it’s not his fault that the sting went bad, that people got hurt. Still.
Mulder looks up at him, eyes staring right into Haren’s own, and it almost knocks the breath clean out of Haren. He's not expecting it. He’s not used to Mulder looking at him with his eyes wide open; Mulder’s the kind of guy whose eyes are usually just a little bit squinty, almost half-hooded. And Mulder hasn’t really looked him full in the face anyways since that night with the hooker on greenies.
But Mulder’s looking at him now, his eyes clear and blue, aimed up from Haren’s own chair, and Haren opens his mouth to say something, although he’ll be damned if he knows what.
“’Ey, Mulder!” Pujols shouts, walking in the front door and spotting them both immediately. “All sign in, cruiser ready, you gon’ come or what?” He heads over, then stops, looking from Haren to Mulder and back again. “OK, you know what, I wait in th’ cruiser.”
“No, I’m coming.” Mulder gets up out of Haren’s chair with none of his usual grace, knocking a few of Haren’s pens and pencils to the floor, not looking Haren in the eye anymore-- not looking at Haren at all, in fact. He gets one step away from the desk before Pujols puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves him back down. The chair squeaks backwards on its wheels a few inches and Mulder blinks in surprise, legs splayed in a pose that would be hilarious if Haren wasn't busy experiencing some kind of Mark Mulder-induced whiplash.
Pujols pokes Mulder in the chest with a finger. “No. I am not gone spend ‘nother night doin’ rounds listen to you moan an’, an'...” he waves a hand, his ‘searching for the word’ gesture, “...an’ pine.”
“I don’t pine!” Mulder hisses. Pujols crosses his arms, an impressive sight on him. Mulder shifts his head as if to look at Haren again, and ends up looking somewhere just to his left. “No pining.”
“You so fulla bullshit, ‘migo,” Pujols says, but fondly. “Look. Go out back, take smoke break. You both.”
“I don’t smoke. He doesn’t smoke,” Mulder says, still not looking at Haren but indicating him with a jerk of his thumb.
“T’ink you need smoke break anyway.”
Pujols and Mulder glare at one another. They’re doing that thing where they’re obviously communicating on some level without talking, holding an argument with only their eyes and faces and body language. They keep glaring, completely blocking out the rest of the station, and Haren starts to feel kind of like a third wheel.
After a full minute and a half of staring (Haren watches the clock on his computer) Mulder’s shoulders slump. Pujols looks triumphant. “I wait wit’ the cruiser,” he says, already turning on his heel, his boots perfectly polished.
Mulder gets up, still not looking at Haren, and heads towards the back of the station. Haren looks around, because it seems impossible to him that whatever the hell just happened could have happened without the entire station watching, but nobody’s paying any attention to them at all, and since Schumaker left there’s no evidence that anyone in the station even particularly noticed that they were there.
Haren shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair in a vague attempt to corral it for... well, he doesn’t quite know what for, but he does it anyways. He takes a deep breath and follows Mulder.
----
“So.”
“So.”
“What’s this about, uh, pining?”
“There’s no pining. Pujols is just. God.” Mulder hisses out a breath through his teeth, thumps a hand against the brick wall. They’re both leaning with their backs against it, looking at the shooting range that takes up most of the area immediately behind the station. “That fucker.”
Haren nods, but doesn’t say anything. He’s starting to feel like he’s walking on shaky ground here, like in some of the older, crappier warehouses and slum tenements, where every step could send his foot plunging through the floorboards.
Mulder is tall, with wide shoulders and a slim waist and short, spiked-up college boy hair. The gun holster looks uncomfortable on a lot of cops, but not on Mulder, where the weight of the gun holds it against his hip as snugly as if it was made to be there. Mulder wears his watch with the face on the inside of his wrist, his big hand held open and the inside of his forearm slightly paler than the other side whenever he checks the time. Mulder has that long straight nose and a narrow smile and a jawline that’s just this side of sharp.
Haren hasn’t even dared to think about Mulder. He may be one of the best drug task force officers in the western half of the US, but there are some things that are clearly out of his league.
“There’s no fucking pining,” Mulder repeats. “It’s just.” He closes his eyes and tips his chin up, letting the back of his head thunk lightly against the brick wall.
Haren wavers nervously next to him. The bricks are cold through his uniform shirt, making his shoulders stiffen up a little. He lets a couple of minutes pass before saying, “It’s just...?”
Mulder hisses through his teeth again. “Just. Fuck. You remember that kid we pulled in the night of the Canseco sting? The one... the one with the greenies?”
“Yeah.” Of course. Like Haren could forget that, forget the way Mulder has barely been able to look at him since.
“Pujols wasn’t kidding. About the kid asking if I, you know. Wanted to give him some work.” Haren is nodding, he hadn’t assumed Pujols was making that up, when Mulder suddenly turns and gets in Haren’s space. He puts his hands on either side of Haren’s shoulders, fingers clenching futilely at the brick, his face maybe half a foot away. Haren’s eyes fly open and he knows he looks startled, knows he looks funny and stupid when he looks startled, but Mulder doesn’t seem to notice, only watching his eyes.
“I almost took him up on it,” Mulder hisses. “I almost took him up on it, Haren, I’m a cop, I was out on the beat, in uniform, with the cruiser, radio lines open, my partner right there, and I almost took him up on it. What the fuck, Haren?”
Mulder is the clean-cut, all-American kind of cop that Chief La Russa loves. Haren’s only been with the Cardnalis PD a little over 8 months and already he’s seen how Chief La Russa tries to direct their publicity, the way he’ll try to get Mulder photographed for the newspapers and websites whenever he has the chance. Pujols always rolls his eyes and Mulder grumbles, and Haren had always assumed Mulder’s good-boy image was just that-- mostly image.
The look on Mulder’s face now is a mix of confusion and indecision and, somewhere under it all, a tantalizing hint of maybe lust that Haren realizes he would do just about anything to bring to the front. Not all image, then, Haren thinks, a little inanely, and then, oh, what the hell.
He grabs Mulder’s face with both hands-- well, it’s right there-- and presses their lips together, dry and hard. He moves Mulder’s head away but doesn’t lower his hands, rubbing the tops of Mulder’s cheekbones with his thumbs.
“I would guess,” he says, “that’s why.” He hopes like hell that he’s right, because if he’s not... well, he just hopes he’s right, that’s all.
Mulder stares, breathing wildly hard and not showing it anywhere except for the flare of his nostrils. He’s silent for so long that Haren starts to feel like his entire body is draining down into a small, cold pit at the bottom of his stomach. He lifts his hands away from Mulder’s face. He has no idea how he’s going to play this one off.
Mulder grabs his wrists. “Wait. I. Wait.” He doesn’t look any less confused, but the indecision has gone, and that’s either a very good thing or a very bad thing.
“Maybe,” he admits. “Maybe that, OK.”
“OK,” Haren says, stupidly. They stare at one another for a bit before Mulder seems to suddenly remember that he’s holding Haren’s wrists and lets go like he’s been burned.
“I gotta. We’re on the beat tonight,” Mulder says. He swallows hard, and Haren watches the bob of his Adam’s apple with a kind of deranged concentration. He’s never really been much of a neck or throat guy, but wow, apparently he’s an everything guy when it comes to Mulder.
“Should go,” Mulder says, still staring. “Definitely. Should get going.”
“Yeah. And I should... there’s still paperwork... uh, from the sting...”
“Yeah...”
Mulder hooks his thumbs into his belt. Takes them out again. Looks at Haren, then quickly away, then back again, almost shy. “OK. So, uh. Are we. I mean, we’re... we’re OK, right, this isn’t gonna, I mean...” He licks his lips nervously, tongue flashing out, and Haren really, really can't be expected to behave after that.
Haren grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him back, kissing him hard. This time Mulder’s hands fly up and curl into his hair, pushing his head into a different angle so that Mulder can, god, shove his tongue into Haren’s mouth. They’re OK, they have to be OK. Mulder tugs on Haren’s hair to tilt his head again, sucks on his lower lip, teeth just barely scraping, and Haren can’t think of any kind of world in which this is not OK.
----
“All night long,” Mulder grouses, unnecessarily loud. He throws the cruiser keys down on the front desk and stomps over to Haren. “I had to listen to him crow about how right he was for the entire fucking shift.” Sergeant Wellemeyer looks up at his desk, eyebrow raised. Haren smiles innocently and shrugs.
“You lookin’ at a genius,” Pujols beams, right on Mulder’s heels. Wellemeyer rolls his eyes and goes back to his paperwork. “Should promote me to Detective.”
Mulder massages his temples. His always carefully gelled hair is still mussed from earlier, and it gives Haren a delicious little shock of warmth at his core to see it.
“Def’nitely genius. Smartes’ man in the district, prob’ly.” Pujols grins hugely at Haren. Haren can feel his face turning a little red, but he grins back, because, yeah. Oh yeah.
Mulder closes his eyes, as though in pain. “I hate you so much.”
“T’ank you Off’cer Pujols,” Pujols says, slinging an arm over Mulder’s shoulders and squeezing companionably. “’Welcome, Off’cer Mulder.”
Mulder tries to punch Pujols, but can’t quite manage it with Pujols plastering him to his side. Pujols laughs at him again, and Mulder starts shouting about what an irredeemable asshole he is. Wellemeyer, halfway across the station, yells at them to shut up. Haren fills out another warrant request form and doesn’t even try to pretend that his smile has anything to do with drug busts.
Second installment of the MLB PD AU. If you haven't read the first installment of this AU ( Bust), I suggest you do so, because although this one goes into some of the background, the first one sets the premise, introduces the characters, and some references are made here to some things that happened in the first fic. Also, there are pictures for the first one!
Mark Mulder/Dan Haren, Albert Pujols, various cameos. PG-13. 5,139 words. Goddammit.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true. Obviously. If you think Mark Mulder is actually a police officer in a fictional city, you have problems.
Meet the team.
Haren made his first major drug bust three months after joining the Deebak PD, still so wet behind the ears that he was going home and polishing his badge up every night so it’d shine brightly under the station lights when he reported every morning. The target was a mid-level dealer named Radomski who acted as a kind of rotary for the bigger dealers: almost all of Deebak's dope supply was siphoned through him at one point or another, distributed all over the city and surrounding areas by his underlings. Radomski himself hadn't been too dangerous, but because of his unique position he had a lot of major dope dealers backing him, all very, very interested in keeping him alive and out of police custody.
He had been a remarkably difficult man to track down, but Haren had recognized a pattern in his paperwork-- he was processing paperwork from the incredibly minor busts his low status in the station had had him on-- and had seen a weird sense of connectedness in among all the petty quantities and minor possession charges. Patterns in dates and times of arrest, in locations, it was all there, and he'd gone into the paperwork of his colleagues: a week back, a month, two months, laying it all out on his desk and the floor and the desk of Officer Drew, who had the misfortune of being closest.
A week later he'd drawn up a series of planned operations, the very first such plans he’d written by himself. He’d gotten all the arrest and search warrants he needed approved, signed, and filed. He'd made a couple of stings, been grazed by a couple of bullets, had landed in the hospital once with a graze that was a little more than that. He had beefed up his requisitions to include more firearms and light bodyarmor. He'd made more stings, more arrests, tracked and tagged and wiretapped, and eventually he'd gotten Radomski.
Three months normally wasn't nearly long enough for a new cop to integrate into the force, but Haren had hit the ground in Deebak running, and half the drug task force had seen him take a bullet to the arm or leg by the time they'd surrounded Radomski in the old abandoned Snakeskin Plant (a former fake leather manufacturer who'd long since left town, sending all their factory jobs overseas). He hadn't been the head of the drug task force back then, not yet, but it was still as though they were his men and women. They’d all stepped back as one, covering him when it came time for someone to break out the handcuffs, giving him the moment.
Radomski was a big guy; his neck alone was about the same size around as one of Haren's thighs, and Haren wasn't that skinny. The handcuffs had been almost tight around his wrists, even though they'd brought the largest size, because they all knew that minor and mid-level dope dealers were often users as well. Haren had been elated, very nearly giddy with joy as he secured the cuffs. His very first major bust, all his own. The dull throb in his left bicep from the most recent bullet graze had seemed suddenly rewarding, like he could be happy about it now that he hadn't gotten it for no good reason.
There had been handshakes and congratulations all 'round, back at the station. So many people had wanted to slap him on the back that it had taken him half an hour to get out of his strike gear. It had been unheard-of for a rookie to take on such an enormous operation; that such a large, rookie-run operation should be successful had been almost unthinkable.
There hadn’t been any resentment, though. Thinking back on it, Haren can wonder at it, can see how unusual this might be in other stations, but in Deebak they were so happy to be making inroads against the dope market that they had long ago stripped off petty concerns like tenure and ego. Which was not to say that he didn’t get shit from some of the older cops, and there were still plenty of ways he had to prove himself on the force, but nobody ever mistrusted him because of his age or his appearance. When they talked to him, they looked at his eyes and not his hair. They trusted him-- Chief Melvin trusted him-- based on what he had and had not done, and, once they’d seen him in action a couple of times, based on what it seemed likely that he could do.
Haren supposes that he’s been spoiled. His time in the Academy had been as smooth as could be expected for one of the top students, and he’d gone straight into the Deebak force after graduation. Lucky, lucky all the way, until the day the temporary transfer came in for the Cardnalis job, and his luck all seemed to run out at once.
----
As head of the drug task force, Haren had his own office in the corner of the large open floor where his officers had their desks. He almost always left the door open and the blinds raised, though-- he’d been out there on The Floor, as they called it, capital letters always verbally implied, not that long ago. And anyways, he liked to monitor the noise level. It was almost possible to tell how things were going in the Deebak drug world simply by listening to the tone of the cacophony on The Floor. When it was quiet and slow, the drug world was trucking along peacefully. When it was fast and loud, a drug lord was in serious trouble. There were all sorts of noise gradations in between, and Haren had grown fairly adept at reading them.
He had been sitting in his office, going over some paperwork for one of their latest busts, one that had resulted in a lot of seizures. Of course he was happy when they managed to seize drugs and paraphernalia, because it meant getting it off the street (that, of course, being his job), but it always meant exponentially more paperwork. The noise level on The Floor had been the middling hum of discussion that followed a successful bust, with a slight upswing of noise in the far corner, near the Seized Property and Evidence room.
The knock on his doorframe had jerked him sharply out of his contented paperwork-induced concentration, although when he saw that it was Chief Melvin himself, he swallowed the annoyed sound he’d almost made and stood up at his desk. Chief Melvin had waved him down, closing the door and leaning against it. Haren had looked at the thin folder in Chief Melvin’s hands, the mild but not entirely happy expression on his face, and immediately started to worry.
“You’ve done some real good work for us the past couple of years,” Chief Melvin had said, turning the file over in his hands.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Real good. Real good,” he’d repeated. “Especially with the dope guys, and you know the kinds of trouble we’ve had with them.”
“Yes sir.”
Chief Melvin had looked at him solemnly. “The dope’s a problem all over the country right now, and we got it as bad in Deebak as ‘most anyone else does. City of this size, you can’t expect any different. But there’s places have it worse. ‘Specially on the coasts.” Unlike a lot of what they called organics-drugs extracted from some plant product-the dope was artificially manufactured and thus usually produced within the US. It still was a bigger problem on the coasts than inland, because even though there was no import business, there was a booming export economy in it, and it made sense to have the majority of your operation near the coast if you were going to be shipping something overseas.
“Of course, sir,” Haren had said, wondering what any of it had to do with him and getting a nasty sort of feeling about it.
“You do good work, kid.” Chief Melvin had sighed, then, a big tired sigh. “There’s places that need that kinda good work on the dope markets real bad right now.”
“I’m being transferred out of Deebak?” Haren had blurted. “Sir?” He hadn’t even thought they could do that.
“Not a transfer, exactly. Nothing permanent.” Chief Melvin had turned the file over in his hands again, looking down at it. “More like a cop exchange program kinda thing. A loan.”
“But sir, I. The team, sir.”
“Oh, they ain’t exactly happy ‘bout it.” Chief Melvin had finally looked up and grinned wryly at him. “And I won’t exactly be happy to see you go neither. But this city, they’re having dope problems. Big dope problems. And they don’t got no one over there you’d call an expert.” He had stepped forward, then, dropped the file flat onto Haren’s desk.
Haren had flipped it open, looking down at the grainy black and white photo paperclipped to the criminal profile papers. He had seen the broad jaw, the heavy brow, the dark hair, the small eyes a dark smudge in the low resolution, Canseco, José printed across the bottom.
“I’ll talk to the Chief of Police in Cardnalis,” Chief Melvin had said. “Chief La Russa. He’s kind of a hard-ass, but he’s a good cop. You should be in charge of the drug unit over there. Won’t be no different from your setup here.”
“Cardnalis.”
Chief Melvin had leaned forward, palms flat on Haren’s desk, looking him right in the eyes. Haren had appreciated that-it wasn’t every cop who could do that when delivering unpleasant news.
“This guy needs to be taken off the street, Officer Haren. His dope needs to be taken off the street. And you… you do real good work.” Chief Melvin had straightened up. Rubbed his hands on his uniform pants, then clapped them together briskly. “They need you out there, Haren. Do the Deebak PD proud.”
Haren had nodded, closed the file decisively, stood up as tall and straight as he could. “Sir, yes sir.”
----
Haren still remembers the first time he met Mulder and Pujols, that interrogation of Roberts. Before then, most of his interaction with the Cardnalis cops had consisted of shooting ideas back and forth across their desks with Schumaker, taking in-person reports from Isringhausen and Ankiel and Duncan and Molina, fending off Looper when he wanted to hear another story about the time Haren busted this or that big drug baron. He had gone out a few times with the beat guys-- mostly Isringhausen and Ankiel-- and it was OK, he could get done what he needed to get done, but he just couldn’t work with them that much.
Out on the street, it wasn’t ever enough to work tolerably well with someone. Tolerably well got guys injured, out there, or worse.
After the Roberts thing, though, Haren had put in a request to work his next stakeout with Mulder and Pujols. It was probably something he could have done on his own; a zero-engagement, observation only, information gathering mission. Chief La Russa never let any of his cops take stakeouts alone, though, and if they weren’t part of the beat force they had to tag along with a regular beat team.
Before, maybe Haren would have asked for Isringhausen and Ankiel. But he had seen the way Mulder and Pujols operated, the smoothly effortless teamwork, and had wanted to give it a shot. Just to see how it would work out.
----
The warehouse is dark and empty and dead silent. Haren sweeps his binoculars across the doors again anyways. The guys they’re waiting for could show up in five minutes, or in five hours. This is why a stakeout with the wrong beat team could be unbearable. They’ve been at this for two hours already, and so far neither Mulder nor Pujols has shown an inclination for show tunes, which already makes this better than his last stakeout. Someone should have warned him about Officer LaRue, but he has a feeling that it was his new-guy status working against him again.
Pujols twists around in his seat and offers the donut box to Haren again. “Thanks,” Haren says, grabbing one of the chocolate glazed. That’s one advantage Cardnalis has over Deebak-- the local coffee and donut shops are so grateful for the increased police presence that they’re always giving out free food and drinks to any cops who come in.
“So.” Mulder doesn’t turn, keeping his face aimed at the warehouse. Haren can see his eyes flick back to him in the rearview mirror, though. “Who d’you think is gonna win the Superbowl this year?”
“Gotta go wit’ th’Card’nls,” Haren says through a mouthful of donut.
“Seriously? Seriously?”
Haren swallows. Chuckles a little. “Aw, c’mon. Like there’s anything else to do in Arizona come football season ‘cept watch those poor bastards take the field every Sunday.”
“Di’nt ask who you wan’ to win,” Pujols points out. “Ask who you t’ink is gon’ win.”
Actually, Pujols didn’t ask at all-- it was Mulder who asked the question. They do that a lot, Haren has noticed; one of them will say something and the other will act like it’s as good as his having said it, like they’re on the exact same wavelength most of the time. Haren can’t decide if he finds this kind of admirable or kind of freaky.
“Probably the Patriots again,” he says, leaning back in his seat and licking some of the glaze off the top of his donut.
Mulder’s eyes detour to the rearview mirror again. “That’s fuckin’ disgusting. And yeah, there’s always a shot the Pats’ll win it these days. I think this is San Diego’s year, though.”
“What? You never eat your donuts like this? Best way to get the most outta the glaze, man.” Haren waits until he knows Mulder is looking at him again, then sticks his tongue all the way out and drags it slowly across the donut. Mulder finally turns around in his seat to make a gagging noise at Haren, who leans back and licks his donut primly.
“’Ey, action.” Pujols shoves Mulder’s shoulder and points out the windshield. Mulder turns around and Haren immediately brings his binoculars up again. Sure enough, a black SUV is pulling up in front of the warehouse. Three men get out. Haren ups the magnification on his binocs, hearing the click click click of Pujols photographing them with his big nightvision telephoto lens.
Another car pulls up and Haren spots the buyer Roberts had told them to look for-- a long-faced white guy, this one named Gibbons, who occasionally served as a go-between for the dealer they were looking for, Raffy. It’s doubly good to spot Gibbons, because it means that Roberts was on the level with his information, and, if Pujols’ photos come out, it means that they’ll be able to feed Gibbons’ image into the facial recognition software back at the station, and they’ll be able to track him much more effectively, hopefully leading them to Raffy.
The four men conduct their transaction furtively, but they seem unaware of the concealed, unmarked cop car. It’s a pretty small dope deal, nothing worth breaking up when compared to the relative importance of keeping their presence here secret, but Haren can tell that it’s killing Mulder to watch it without interfering. What he can see of Mulder’s shoulders could be a study in tension, and every so often Pujols will reach over, gently touch Mulder on the arm, murmuring something to him so quietly that Haren can’t make out the words, even though he’s right there in the back seat.
Procedure demands that they wait at least half an hour after all involved parties have left the scene before driving back to the station, to avoid arousing suspicion. Haren has upped this to a full hour, because he doesn’t want to take any chances, not with the stakes as high as they eventually will be. The more careful you are early in an operation, the more likely you are to succeed in the end; that’s always worked for him in Deebak, and he doesn’t see any reason to change in Cardnalis.
“You OK?” he asks Mulder. Mulder shrugs, still staring straight ahead.
“He never been someone who like watchin’ the law get broke wit’out arrestin’ the people who do the breakin’,” Pujols offers. He turns to look sympathetically at Haren. “Sorry. He can be real bitch for stakeout sometime.”
“You’re a real joy to be stuck in a car with for hours yourself, buddy,” Mulder mutters. “Could you chew any louder?”
Pujols stuffs an entire half a donut into his mouth and chews it up noisily. Mulder punches him in the side, but the tension is draining out of his shoulders, and Haren finds himself suddenly, sharply missing the hell out of his team back in Deebak.
----
Things are, perversely, a little better after the botched sting. Most of the Cardnalis PD seems to have decided that things would have gone differently if Haren had been allowed to run it, and although a few of the Sergeants are still treating him like his haircut is a personal affront to decent human beings everywhere, he’s getting a lot less shit than before.
Detective Carpenter actually goes so far as to come over to his desk, shake his hand, and earnestly apologize for being so mistrustful early on. It’s pretty awkward for Haren, for Carpenter himself, and for everyone within hearing distance, although Haren does on some level appreciate the gesture. No one else feels the need to repeat it, thankfully.
He goes to the hospital to visit the officers who got shot; the ones he can visit, anyways. Encarnacion is still in intensive care and Clement, though stable, still has a tube down his throat and is more sedated than not. Detective Glaus is only a couple days away from being released, though, and Officers Johnson and Kinney are both awake and bored enough to appreciate the visit. Haren doesn’t say anything about how he might have done things if he had been there, and none of them bring it up.
The night shift guys are just starting to filter into the station when Haren gets back. He goes to sit down at his desk and finds that he can’t, because Mulder is in his chair. “Uh, hey,” he says, hovering a little awkwardly. Schumaker pauses in the process of packing up his stuff for the night and Haren can almost feel his gaze through the back of his head.
Mulder clears his throat. Schumaker makes a whole bunch of scurrying noises as he hurries to pack up the rest of his stuff and get out of the station. Mulder has that effect on some of the guys, although he’s never really had it on Haren. He’s too hard to impress, Haren thinks, seen one too many insanely bulked-up drug lords up close and personal to get all that freaked out by a fellow cop, no matter how tall or intense he might be.
“So,” Haren says, once Schumaker’s gone.
“So,” Mulder agrees.
“You’re in my seat.”
“Sure looks that way.”
“Did you want something?”
Mulder taps at Haren’s keyboard with the back end of a pencil. “You didn’t have to go to the hospital. Those guys weren’t your responsibility.”
“I know.” Haren shifts uneasily, wishing Mulder wasn’t in his chair so he’d have somewhere to go, wishing Mulder wasn’t poking at his computer so he could pretend that he had something to do. And Haren’s not just saying it-- he does know that it’s not his fault that the sting went bad, that people got hurt. Still.
Mulder looks up at him, eyes staring right into Haren’s own, and it almost knocks the breath clean out of Haren. He's not expecting it. He’s not used to Mulder looking at him with his eyes wide open; Mulder’s the kind of guy whose eyes are usually just a little bit squinty, almost half-hooded. And Mulder hasn’t really looked him full in the face anyways since that night with the hooker on greenies.
But Mulder’s looking at him now, his eyes clear and blue, aimed up from Haren’s own chair, and Haren opens his mouth to say something, although he’ll be damned if he knows what.
“’Ey, Mulder!” Pujols shouts, walking in the front door and spotting them both immediately. “All sign in, cruiser ready, you gon’ come or what?” He heads over, then stops, looking from Haren to Mulder and back again. “OK, you know what, I wait in th’ cruiser.”
“No, I’m coming.” Mulder gets up out of Haren’s chair with none of his usual grace, knocking a few of Haren’s pens and pencils to the floor, not looking Haren in the eye anymore-- not looking at Haren at all, in fact. He gets one step away from the desk before Pujols puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves him back down. The chair squeaks backwards on its wheels a few inches and Mulder blinks in surprise, legs splayed in a pose that would be hilarious if Haren wasn't busy experiencing some kind of Mark Mulder-induced whiplash.
Pujols pokes Mulder in the chest with a finger. “No. I am not gone spend ‘nother night doin’ rounds listen to you moan an’, an'...” he waves a hand, his ‘searching for the word’ gesture, “...an’ pine.”
“I don’t pine!” Mulder hisses. Pujols crosses his arms, an impressive sight on him. Mulder shifts his head as if to look at Haren again, and ends up looking somewhere just to his left. “No pining.”
“You so fulla bullshit, ‘migo,” Pujols says, but fondly. “Look. Go out back, take smoke break. You both.”
“I don’t smoke. He doesn’t smoke,” Mulder says, still not looking at Haren but indicating him with a jerk of his thumb.
“T’ink you need smoke break anyway.”
Pujols and Mulder glare at one another. They’re doing that thing where they’re obviously communicating on some level without talking, holding an argument with only their eyes and faces and body language. They keep glaring, completely blocking out the rest of the station, and Haren starts to feel kind of like a third wheel.
After a full minute and a half of staring (Haren watches the clock on his computer) Mulder’s shoulders slump. Pujols looks triumphant. “I wait wit’ the cruiser,” he says, already turning on his heel, his boots perfectly polished.
Mulder gets up, still not looking at Haren, and heads towards the back of the station. Haren looks around, because it seems impossible to him that whatever the hell just happened could have happened without the entire station watching, but nobody’s paying any attention to them at all, and since Schumaker left there’s no evidence that anyone in the station even particularly noticed that they were there.
Haren shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair in a vague attempt to corral it for... well, he doesn’t quite know what for, but he does it anyways. He takes a deep breath and follows Mulder.
----
“So.”
“So.”
“What’s this about, uh, pining?”
“There’s no pining. Pujols is just. God.” Mulder hisses out a breath through his teeth, thumps a hand against the brick wall. They’re both leaning with their backs against it, looking at the shooting range that takes up most of the area immediately behind the station. “That fucker.”
Haren nods, but doesn’t say anything. He’s starting to feel like he’s walking on shaky ground here, like in some of the older, crappier warehouses and slum tenements, where every step could send his foot plunging through the floorboards.
Mulder is tall, with wide shoulders and a slim waist and short, spiked-up college boy hair. The gun holster looks uncomfortable on a lot of cops, but not on Mulder, where the weight of the gun holds it against his hip as snugly as if it was made to be there. Mulder wears his watch with the face on the inside of his wrist, his big hand held open and the inside of his forearm slightly paler than the other side whenever he checks the time. Mulder has that long straight nose and a narrow smile and a jawline that’s just this side of sharp.
Haren hasn’t even dared to think about Mulder. He may be one of the best drug task force officers in the western half of the US, but there are some things that are clearly out of his league.
“There’s no fucking pining,” Mulder repeats. “It’s just.” He closes his eyes and tips his chin up, letting the back of his head thunk lightly against the brick wall.
Haren wavers nervously next to him. The bricks are cold through his uniform shirt, making his shoulders stiffen up a little. He lets a couple of minutes pass before saying, “It’s just...?”
Mulder hisses through his teeth again. “Just. Fuck. You remember that kid we pulled in the night of the Canseco sting? The one... the one with the greenies?”
“Yeah.” Of course. Like Haren could forget that, forget the way Mulder has barely been able to look at him since.
“Pujols wasn’t kidding. About the kid asking if I, you know. Wanted to give him some work.” Haren is nodding, he hadn’t assumed Pujols was making that up, when Mulder suddenly turns and gets in Haren’s space. He puts his hands on either side of Haren’s shoulders, fingers clenching futilely at the brick, his face maybe half a foot away. Haren’s eyes fly open and he knows he looks startled, knows he looks funny and stupid when he looks startled, but Mulder doesn’t seem to notice, only watching his eyes.
“I almost took him up on it,” Mulder hisses. “I almost took him up on it, Haren, I’m a cop, I was out on the beat, in uniform, with the cruiser, radio lines open, my partner right there, and I almost took him up on it. What the fuck, Haren?”
Mulder is the clean-cut, all-American kind of cop that Chief La Russa loves. Haren’s only been with the Cardnalis PD a little over 8 months and already he’s seen how Chief La Russa tries to direct their publicity, the way he’ll try to get Mulder photographed for the newspapers and websites whenever he has the chance. Pujols always rolls his eyes and Mulder grumbles, and Haren had always assumed Mulder’s good-boy image was just that-- mostly image.
The look on Mulder’s face now is a mix of confusion and indecision and, somewhere under it all, a tantalizing hint of maybe lust that Haren realizes he would do just about anything to bring to the front. Not all image, then, Haren thinks, a little inanely, and then, oh, what the hell.
He grabs Mulder’s face with both hands-- well, it’s right there-- and presses their lips together, dry and hard. He moves Mulder’s head away but doesn’t lower his hands, rubbing the tops of Mulder’s cheekbones with his thumbs.
“I would guess,” he says, “that’s why.” He hopes like hell that he’s right, because if he’s not... well, he just hopes he’s right, that’s all.
Mulder stares, breathing wildly hard and not showing it anywhere except for the flare of his nostrils. He’s silent for so long that Haren starts to feel like his entire body is draining down into a small, cold pit at the bottom of his stomach. He lifts his hands away from Mulder’s face. He has no idea how he’s going to play this one off.
Mulder grabs his wrists. “Wait. I. Wait.” He doesn’t look any less confused, but the indecision has gone, and that’s either a very good thing or a very bad thing.
“Maybe,” he admits. “Maybe that, OK.”
“OK,” Haren says, stupidly. They stare at one another for a bit before Mulder seems to suddenly remember that he’s holding Haren’s wrists and lets go like he’s been burned.
“I gotta. We’re on the beat tonight,” Mulder says. He swallows hard, and Haren watches the bob of his Adam’s apple with a kind of deranged concentration. He’s never really been much of a neck or throat guy, but wow, apparently he’s an everything guy when it comes to Mulder.
“Should go,” Mulder says, still staring. “Definitely. Should get going.”
“Yeah. And I should... there’s still paperwork... uh, from the sting...”
“Yeah...”
Mulder hooks his thumbs into his belt. Takes them out again. Looks at Haren, then quickly away, then back again, almost shy. “OK. So, uh. Are we. I mean, we’re... we’re OK, right, this isn’t gonna, I mean...” He licks his lips nervously, tongue flashing out, and Haren really, really can't be expected to behave after that.
Haren grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him back, kissing him hard. This time Mulder’s hands fly up and curl into his hair, pushing his head into a different angle so that Mulder can, god, shove his tongue into Haren’s mouth. They’re OK, they have to be OK. Mulder tugs on Haren’s hair to tilt his head again, sucks on his lower lip, teeth just barely scraping, and Haren can’t think of any kind of world in which this is not OK.
----
“All night long,” Mulder grouses, unnecessarily loud. He throws the cruiser keys down on the front desk and stomps over to Haren. “I had to listen to him crow about how right he was for the entire fucking shift.” Sergeant Wellemeyer looks up at his desk, eyebrow raised. Haren smiles innocently and shrugs.
“You lookin’ at a genius,” Pujols beams, right on Mulder’s heels. Wellemeyer rolls his eyes and goes back to his paperwork. “Should promote me to Detective.”
Mulder massages his temples. His always carefully gelled hair is still mussed from earlier, and it gives Haren a delicious little shock of warmth at his core to see it.
“Def’nitely genius. Smartes’ man in the district, prob’ly.” Pujols grins hugely at Haren. Haren can feel his face turning a little red, but he grins back, because, yeah. Oh yeah.
Mulder closes his eyes, as though in pain. “I hate you so much.”
“T’ank you Off’cer Pujols,” Pujols says, slinging an arm over Mulder’s shoulders and squeezing companionably. “’Welcome, Off’cer Mulder.”
Mulder tries to punch Pujols, but can’t quite manage it with Pujols plastering him to his side. Pujols laughs at him again, and Mulder starts shouting about what an irredeemable asshole he is. Wellemeyer, halfway across the station, yells at them to shut up. Haren fills out another warrant request form and doesn’t even try to pretend that his smile has anything to do with drug busts.