DISCLAIMER: The characters featured in this fan-fic, as well as the anime itself, are not the property of this author. That is, Count D, Detective Leon, Jill, The Chief, etc., and the entirety of “Pet Shop of Horrors” does not belong to me in any way! Please do not sue my ass; I am but a humble college student who has no money to give! This fic is classified as YAOI LEMON, meaning 2 shonen (men) are involved in a sensual and or sexual relationship. If you find this offensive, please do not read this fic. Flames of any sort will not be tolerated, and be warned, I have been known to post the especially vicious ones and their authors’ e-mail addresses on my website for the amusement of all. Also, as the plot of this fan-fic is exclusively mine, plagiarism will NOT be tolerated! If you want to use this fic on your site, please ask for permission by e-mailing me, Seiya Kou at this address: K_Seiya@hotmail.com. Now, enough with the ubiquitous banter! Enjoy!!
By
Chapter 1: Petites-fours
Leon stretched back in his standard-issue swivel chair and extinguished the remnants of his cigarette on a manila folder. He groaned and directed his line of vision to his desk lamp’s shade to focus on the glossy color photograph he’d taped there. Silky soft black hair cut evenly at the chin-length, the sparkle of the unobstructed violet iris. The skin: deathly pale, but elegantly so. Leon closed his eyes and fantasized about tracing his fingertips down over one of the man’s high cheekbones, not to mention feel his pants tighten at the sound the man on the receiving end would obviously make. “A purr,” the detective often thought. “Or at least a very soft, elegant moan.” Of course, this was not the full extent of his fantasies. How could he not fantasize about fucking the Manchurian’s brains out?
“Electric sex,” muttered Leon as he hunched back over his computer’s keyboard. His fingers danced over the alphanumeric array, calling up the man’s police file. So many murders had been linked to his pet shop in Chinatown, but nothing could be proven, and besides, Count D was smart enough to have his clientele sign indemnity waivers. His blonde eyebrows knotted themselves together, and his fist loudly banged down on his desk. Everyone looked up from their work to stare at the disgruntled detective. “Damn you, D! You’re guilty as hell, you’ve got it written all over you face!”
“Easy, Leon.” The delicate contour of a female’s hand caught the corner of his eye when it rested upon his left shoulder. “You know you shouldn’t be playing with ‘My Favorite Manchurian’ if it gets you this frustrated,” chided Jill as she mussed up his hair. “Besides, if you buy that man any more sweets, then your wallet is going to be as dry as the trail of evidence.”
“Heh, no kidding, Jill.” He surprised himself with a chuckle. “Fifty bucks and three hours of waiting in line at the Hotel de Marseille for their damned sweets! What kind of stupid bakery only makes thirty pieces a day?! Can you tell me that much?!” The detective slapped his mouse, causing the image of the Count currently displayed on his screen to moiré, then vanish completely.
“What can I say? The Count’s sweet tooth has impeccable tastes, and his pockets obviously have the money to procure them.”
“He didn’t even offer me one!” Leon’s bright blue eyes suddenly were inundated with waves of tears. The pent-up pressure of frustration screamed loudly as more steam packed itself into his cranial crucible. “You have no idea what it was like, Jill, sitting there right in front of him as he stuffed his face with those things! I never thought he’d eat the whole box in one go,” he sobbed. “And the information I got out of him was so damn cryptic and I waited hours in the rain to get him his stupid truffles and everything!”
“There, there, Leon.” She bent down to cheer her fellow officer up with an affectionate pat on the back. “C’mon. I’ll buy you dinner.”
~*~
Half an hour later, both detectives found themselves sitting at a rather small table in the back of an obscure Italian restaurant. Despite the flaky stucco of the walls, the place was well known for its service and its cuisine, which also explained why it was in the uptown district. Leon blinked a few times as the steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs was set down in front of him, then looked up at Jill as if to gain her approval. “You sure it’s cool for me to order this, Jill? I mean, this place is really expensive and all…”
“Nonsense, Leon! You’re my best friend, so, I’m entitled to treat you to something nice every so often!” She grinned at him, then sipped from a glass of red wine. The taste was somewhat sour and sticky, it not being the best vintage in the house. “Blech…you know, I hate when restaurants serve wine-in-a-box!”
Leon took a tentative sip of his and quickly agreed. “The worst. It almost tastes as bad as that cheap stuff the chief gives us for Christmas vacation”
“At least it’s not fruit cake,” Jill giggled as she gleefully stabbed her fork into a plate of baked ziti and brought it to her mouth. The simple pasta tubule passed through her lips, was chewed slowly, then swallowed. “Mmm…much better than the kind that I get at the supermarket.”
Leon looked up, a big shit-eating grin plastered on his boyish face. His innocent blue eyes sparkled brightly, and the corners of his mouth were upturned in a jester-like smile. “Jill! You’re brilliant!”
She only stared at him through a mouthful of the ziti. “Mmmph! What is it, Leon?” The young, attractive female detective tried to chew thoroughly, but couldn’t help it when small streaks of creamy tomato vodka sauce dripped over her lips. “What? Tell me!”
“Oh, nothing…,” Leon shot her a wink and reached across the table to dab her face clean of the succulent red sauce. “Just a little revenge I’ve got in store for our kind friend, Count D. Will you help me bake it, though, Jill?”
“You’re not going to make Count D a…a….no!….” Her intelligent brown eyes shot open and her pupils dilated as if a bright light had caught her unawares. It was at that precise moment she felt like a deer staring straight into the headlights of an oncoming Volvo. “Oh no! No, no, no, no! I couldn’t! Count D is such a nice young man! And besides, he sold me a kitten just a week ago!” She raised her hands as if to protest, but by then, she knew it was too late. Besides, Leon had whipped out his slim black wallet and was waving frantically for the nearby waiter. It was then that Jill full understood that she was tied and bound to the unspoken agreement; after all, Leon was going to pay for dinner.
“If you don’t help me out, Jill, I’ll tell the chief that you’ve been neglecting assignments to help me with the pet shop cases.” He gleefully rubbed his hands together and called the waiter, a fat, olive-skinned man with a receding hairline, for the dinner check. Five minutes later found the both of the detectives roaring down 5th Avenue in Leon’s black Viper; the blonde at the wheel cackled madly as he opened the sunroof, while the brunette could only stare at him, aghast at the transformation she’d just witnessed. “We’re going to nail the Count this time, Jilly! Yeeehaww!!!!” He popped the clutch and careened around the corner of the intersection, narrowly missing the fire hydrant, the public waste basket, and the hot dog vendor.
“Okay! Okay!! I’ll help you, Leon! But can you please slow down!! Aieeee!!!” Jill closed her eyes tightly and let a long, shrill scream out as the Viper raced down Madison Avenue toward Leon’s apartment and culinary disaster.
~*~
“Ah geez, I forgot what a pervert you are, Leon,” said Jill, grimacing as she removed the magnetized picture of the topless, boobed-over blonde stuck to her best friend’s refrigerator. “You’d think that ‘Behind the Green Door’ and ‘Deep Throat’ would be enough for some guys, but nooo, not you, Detective Orcot!” Reaching inside the refrigerator, she retrieved some eggs, baking powder, and flour while on the other side of the room, her blonde accomplice was pre-heating the oven.
“I assume you know how to make one of these things, right, Jill?” He turned to face her, the huge grin never leaving his fine features as he crammed a pastry chef’s hat atop her head. She shook her head and scowled at up at him; yet another one of the disadvantages in their relationship. At six-foot-three, Leon towered over her 5’ 7” frame. “No wonder he’s so adept at bullying my into these things. Sheesh! And I thought I did enough for him already!” Affecting the greatest act of insubordination she could muster (which consisted of sticking her tongue out, crossing her eyes, and beeping his nose), Jill shook her head plaintively. “I haven’t the foggiest idea!”
“But I thought all women knew how to cook! At least, all my old girlfriends could!”
“Well, excuse me if I don’t have a boyfriend to cook for! And speaking of which, how do you manage to eat around here. There’s no way you could order pizza every night and not pack on the pounds!” Her long index finger, decorated only by the small silver band her mother had given her, jabbed itself into her partner’s muscular torso. He groaned and hunched over.
“Hey…that hurt! And hey, if it comes from a box, I can cook it.” Leon grinned and opened the nearby recipe file. His hand, hardened only by working out and firing off his standard-issue Glock 9mm, suddenly took on the air of modern domesticity as it flipped through card after card, searching for the one dessert he wanted to cook so badly for a Count waiting in Chinatown. “Which is why I should’ve bought the ready-made variety…shit…where is that thing?” Impatiently, he upset the recipe file and threw index cards left and right, not caring for how many paper cuts he would inflict upon himself. One after the other, each card was given a either a fresh, bloody fingerprint or a new four-letter name, or sometimes both. “Fucking Martha Stewart ‘Box of Favorites’! That’s the last time I ever shop at K-Mart!”
“No way….you watch ‘Martha Stewart’, Leon? Jill covered her mouth and desperately tried to stifle a giggle, but to no avail. “Did Martha teach you how to put up those posters of yours with only a putty knife and mayonnaise?” As if to protest this insolence, the top of a nearby live-sized poster of Marilyn Chambers peeled down so that her face folded neatly over her breasts, leaving only a pair of fishnet-encased legs to poke out from below. Leon stared at the young, female detective in horror.
“No, but she did show me how to spackle your mouth shut with a handful of dried leaves and some chunky peanut butter! Now help me find this damn thing, willya?” At that, she dropped to her knees and neatly began to sort through the mess of index cards, organizing them alphabetically and by category. Leon only stared in horror at her slow, methodical approach.
“Found it!” Triumphantly, she waved the immaculate white card over her head. She brought it mere inches away from her intelligent-looking glasses and scanned over the ingredients. Suddenly, Jill’s eyes widened in horror and disbelief. “No way! No way! I am not going to help you bake a fruitcake for that sweet young man!” The young female detective threw the recipe card down on the counter and defiantly crossed her arms. “Absolutely not! I know you, Leon, and I know what you’ll do! You’ll do something funny to the batter that will make the poor Count sick, as if giving him the insult of a fruitcake wasn’t enough!”
“Need I remind you, Jill, that your ‘poor Count’ is a murderer. I’m just baking him this little morsel of love as a means to pump him for some information,” Leon grinned maniacally as he mixed the baking ingredients together in a big red plastic bowl. “After all, Count D does have a sweet tooth, right?!”
~*~
BOOM! One entire pane of glass rocketed out of the window frame; propelled forth by a jet blast of red-orange flame and a fine plume of black smoke. This was immediately followed by the perfect harmony of a woman’s shrill scream and a man’s cry of pain. The whole apartment building seemed to rock in protest, and several neighbor’s lights clicked on to find out what had happened. Somewhere, in a distant alley, a cat screeched as a police car raced after a suspect.
Meanwhile, Jill and Leon lay on the floor in a heap, coughing as the blonde cop’s poor oven spewed out gaseous clouds of black smoke. “Leon, you IDIOT!! I told you not to put yeast in it!!” She somehow managed to grasp a wooden spoon from the scorched countertop and bat him over the head with it. He yelped and crawled away from his irate friend.
“But I thought all bread products needed yeast to rise!” Leon coughed some more, then managed to get to his knees in order to shut the fuming oven door.
“NOT CAKE!!!” Holding the spoon with four of her fingers, she worked the ladle portion backwards with her thumb until the utensil snapped in half. “Why did you want to bake tonight, anyway?!”
“Because Martha said it would be easy!!!”