Bayside Queens (BoyxMan)

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CJ

The circles under his eyes were as dark as the coal burning at the bottom of my fireplace. Maybe that's what made me feel paralyzed, or maybe it was the fact the boy hadn't taken his deep hooded stare off me since the moment his beat up Nikes touched the creaky wooden floor of the Bayside Police Department. Either way, my heart was pounding. And my heart never pounded.

"Boss, I don't have a key for the interrogation room and I gotta talk to some kid. He's waiting in my office with Boggs, but I need a key. You got one?"

I wasn't even looking at the deputy who had just barged through my clearly closed office door. I was still trying to adjust my eyes to see behind the blinds attached to one of the windows to get a better look at the boy who had just walked into the station. My station.

"Boss?" The deputy asked again, just as I was pushing myself out of my chair and heading for the door, seemingly on my body's own accord. The deputy starred at me in awe, closely following behind my beeline for the office where the boy with the dark eyes was located. As soon as I entered the room, everyone was silent, even the deputy who was following behind me, who had been asking "Where are you headed, boss?" in his thick Brooklyn accent that, quite frankly, I had a hard time understanding.

I cleared my throat. "I can handle it from here, Boggs," I said, nodding at the officer who had just undone the boy's handcuffs. Rubbing his sore wrists, the boy grumbled something unintelligible, then leaned against the front of the young deputy's desk.

Boggs, my second-in-command, left the room hesitantly, his dark salt-and-peppered eyebrows drawn in as he eyed me suspiciously. I swallowed. He was right to be suspicious. By nature, I was quiet and observant. I only took control when I needed to and I followed orders down to the finest detail. My body was in a whirlwind and I had no control. What was I even doing? Swallowing hard, I licked my lips as the door finally latched shut.

At the sound of the boy grumbling again, I blinked myself out of a temporary trance, the actuality of the situation setting in, and looked down at him.  The hooded eyes were looking everywhere but at the officer in front of them.  His fingers at his sides were fidgeting with the dirty t-shirt he was wearing as he toed the ground anxiously. He looked around 18.

I knew his type, and they didn't belong here. This kid was beyond scared, and would never do anything again like what he had done to get those cuffs around his wrists. Stupidly, I had forgotten to ask why the hell the kid was here in the first place. But ultimately I didn't have to ask anyone, because sitting on the edge of deputy Webster's desk was an old tin can labeled TIPS, and it definitely did not belong to Webster himself.

I reached over the boy and carefully grabbed the can before leaning back on the wall across from him.  Quickly, I glanced inside and counted seven dollars. Without even looking through the windows, I knew that all of my officers were looking in with interest. I pulled the blinds down.

The kid gulped.

"Seven dollars," I told him, tossing the can back on the desk next to the boy. His bloodshot eyes followed the movements of my body, making my skin itch just a little. "You just potentially risked your future for seven dollars," I said, chuckling, something I never did. "Guess you didn't think to count the money before you stole it, did you?"

The smiling and light-hearted demeanor so unlike my own probably would have made my fellow officers shut me in a psychiatric ward. But they weren't here, only the boy was. And he smiled.

"Yeah... I guess you're right," the boy said, looking up from his shoes and finally meeting me in the eyes. His voice was scratchy and definitely not fully matured, but strangely it matched the red rims and dark circles under his eyes. He looked tortuously sleep-deprived, maybe even slightly high. His skin was pale and he looked thin and weak. He didn't look like he belonged in Bayside at all.