FAKE Quadruple Drabble: Integrity
Nov. 28th, 2023 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Integrity
Fandom: FAKE
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Dee, Jess, Mother.
Rating: PG
Setting: After the manga, referencing Vol. 6, Act 18.
Summary: Dee is a good cop, and an honorable man.
Written Using: The dw100 prompt ‘Honourable’.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Quadruple drabble.
Dee knew he was far from perfect. He could be lazy, quick tempered, careless, and he’d become a master at avoiding doing things he detested, like paperwork, and ironing. He was also a hornball, although being a young man in his prime, he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Sex was not only fun, it was good exercise, and keeping fit was important.
Like most reasonably decent people, he had his share of good points to balance out the not so good, top of the list being honesty, something he could thank both Mother and Jess for drumming into him throughout his childhood. It had taken a while for those lessons to stick, and he’d gotten into plenty of trouble though lying and stealing, but that was true of most kids.
Even now, Dee remained perfectly capable of lying if he had to, especially if it was to spare someone’s feelings, because there was such a thing as being TOO honest. But as he’d grown up, he’d learned the value of being tactful. It was simply a matter of striking the right balance.
One thing he never compromised on, however, was his integrity as a police officer; it was a point of honor to him never to accept even so much as a free cup of coffee. He paid for everything, because once a cop started accepting freebies it became easier and easier to overlook things in return, and that was a slippery slope to start down. Before a guy knew it, he might find himself taking bribes to look the other way, and from there it was a short step to supplying information to criminals.
Once you were in that far, there was no way out; that had been the last lesson Dee had ever learned from Jess, as the man who’d been like a father to him lay dying, killed by the people he’d been feeding information to because he’d outlived his usefulness.
Jess had been a good man, and a good cop at one time, but he’d made bad choices and Dee was determined not to fall into the same trap. He’d chosen to become a cop in part because he’d wanted to make amends for Jess’s failures. It was too late for Jess to redeem himself, so Dee saw it as his duty to take his mentor’s place. Behaving honorably was more important than being perfect.
The End
Like most reasonably decent people, he had his share of good points to balance out the not so good, top of the list being honesty, something he could thank both Mother and Jess for drumming into him throughout his childhood. It had taken a while for those lessons to stick, and he’d gotten into plenty of trouble though lying and stealing, but that was true of most kids.
Even now, Dee remained perfectly capable of lying if he had to, especially if it was to spare someone’s feelings, because there was such a thing as being TOO honest. But as he’d grown up, he’d learned the value of being tactful. It was simply a matter of striking the right balance.
One thing he never compromised on, however, was his integrity as a police officer; it was a point of honor to him never to accept even so much as a free cup of coffee. He paid for everything, because once a cop started accepting freebies it became easier and easier to overlook things in return, and that was a slippery slope to start down. Before a guy knew it, he might find himself taking bribes to look the other way, and from there it was a short step to supplying information to criminals.
Once you were in that far, there was no way out; that had been the last lesson Dee had ever learned from Jess, as the man who’d been like a father to him lay dying, killed by the people he’d been feeding information to because he’d outlived his usefulness.
Jess had been a good man, and a good cop at one time, but he’d made bad choices and Dee was determined not to fall into the same trap. He’d chosen to become a cop in part because he’d wanted to make amends for Jess’s failures. It was too late for Jess to redeem himself, so Dee saw it as his duty to take his mentor’s place. Behaving honorably was more important than being perfect.
The End
