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After All (Part 1/?)

Pairing: Riff x OC Jet Girl

Warnings: Explicit Language, Really Mild Angst

Summary: It was not Riff’s first time in a holding cell at the local precinct, and it was not likely to be his last. However, it was the first time he was even remotely concerned about the potential outcomes of said situation. No matter what happened, after all was said and done, at least they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t done a single decent thing for her.

Word Count: 3200 ish.

DISCLAIMER

Please note that this is a reimagining of the film West Side Story (2021) and as a result is slightly AU.

Masterlist /// Part 1 /// Part 2

A/N: Full disclosure, when I was in high school, my school performed West Side Story. At that time, I really didn’t care much for Riff as a character. But, I saw West Side Story a few weeks ago, and damn, Mike Faist’s and Stephen Spielberg’s Riff made me double-take- the character can have some depth. This is my attempt at that. I found several inspiring Riff x Reader fics on here, so hopefully there’s an audience for this, and hopefully the OC instead of x Reader or Y/N doesn’t deter too many people. I plan on seeing this story through for myself, but if you enjoy, please consider giving it a like- if it gets some traction, I’ll be extra motivated to update quickly. (I definitely don’t have 9 pages of notes/plot already planned out for this.) I’ll stop babbling now.

Part One: A Single Decent Thing

It was not Riff’s first time in a holding cell at the local precinct. And if he had to guess, it certainly wouldn’t be his last. However, it was the first time he felt even remotely concerned about the potential outcomes of said situation.

Sergeant Schrank had already taken his “accomplice” to the interrogation room, leaving him alone in the holding cell. He sat on the steel bench, trying not to think too much about the conversation that was going down just a few rooms over.

The squad room was sparse, given the lateness of the hour. He’d even been left unattended for a few moments, with the Sergeant’s partner having mumbled something about finding some coffee a few minutes ago, before promptly leaving the room.

Had he been brought in the station that night by himself, he probably would’ve thought to try and fashion something crafty to get himself out of the cell, and take advantage of the officers’ negligence. But, as much as he wished he was anywhere else at that moment, he knew the collateral damages of making a run for it now wouldn't be pretty.

The door to the squad room opened suddenly, and a woman entered the room in a rush, her heels clicking on the wooden floors in a flourish. She looked a bit disheveled, which was to have been expected.

Her eyes scanned the room, noting the lack of personnel. Finally, her eyes landed on him. Her brows furrowed in anger. She stalked over to him, like a predator stalking its prey.

Fortunately for Riff, he was seldom scared of anyone, and even less so anyone he would openly admit to. He remained seated on the bench, only sparing her a passing glance.

The woman approached the holding cell, but still kept some distance from the bars. “What trouble have you gotten yourselves in now?” She asked him then, her voice low.

“I ain’t got any idea what you’re talking about,” Riff replied boredly, looking anywhere but at her.

“Don’t try that bullshit with me, Riff,” the woman snapped, her patience- which was usually thin- long forgotten. “Only people who are up to no good get arrested at two o’clock in the morning.”

“Aw, come on now, haven’t you ever heard of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

She scowled, and opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off when the Sergeant’s partner returned to the squad room.

“Ma’am!” the officer- whose name Riff had already forgotten- called to her as he approached the pair. “Please, step away from the cell,” he advised. He was visibly nervous. Goodness, this guy could use a backbone. Where was Krupke this evening?

She hesitated, sparing Riff another glance, before finally retreating towards the middle of the room. The officer gestured to one of the two benches, smiling at her apologetically. “I’m sorry to shout ma’am, but it’s for your safety, of course.”

The woman said nothing as she took a seat.

At this point, Riff began to realize he could be here for quite a while. The adrenaline high he’d been running on was starting to fade fast, and the clock across the squad room indicated that it was well past 3 AM. He leaned back against the cool bars of the cell, tucked his head down, and closed his eyes for a few moments.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the next thing he knew the doors to the squad room opened once more, and Sergeant Schrank barreled in. Riff opened his eyes to watch him approach the woman seated on the bench, but otherwise did not move from his spot.

“You are here for Ms. Thomas, I assume?” Sergeant Schrank asked the woman. It was a redundant question. Nobody had ever shown up for him.

“Yes, I’m her aunt,” the woman answered, standing up as Schrank came to a halt before her. “And who are you?” she demanded, eyeing them both up and down.

“Sergeant Schrank, ma’am. This is my partner, Detective Davis.”

“What exactly is my niece supposed to have done?”

Riff closed his eyes again, desperately wishing he could block out some of the woman’s comments about him that were sure to follow.

“Ma’am, please, this is an active investigation, perhaps we should go somewhere more private to discuss this further?” Detective Davis proposed, audibly uncomfortable.

“Active investigation? She’s just a girl!” the woman argued. Riff wasn’t watching the trio, but he could practically see the frown that must have been on her face in his mind. After all, she’d given him that same frown countless times before.

“I understand this may come as a bit of a shock,” Sergeant Schrank began, and Riff couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the man’s condescending tone. “But, we caught your niece and this Riff-raff near an active crime scene investigation.”

“First of all, don’t pretend to understand where I’m coming from!” the woman snapped at him. The sudden aggressive turn in an already tense conversation almost made Riff break his sleepy trance and watch the situation unfold. Almost.

“Secondly, I got a call in the middle of the night informing me that my niece, whom I believed to be in bed, was picked up by your officers and taken here. Why wasn’t she the one to call me and inform me about such? You still offer detainees their one call, correct?”

Sergeant Schrank sighed, and it was apparent that he was starting to figure out exactly the type of woman he was dealing with. Riff wasn’t a fan of her by any means, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he was taken some enjoyment in the berating Schrank and his oaf of a partner were being dealt.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Detective Davis explained sheepishly. “They’ve only been here for about an hour-”

“Unacceptable,” the woman interjected. “I demand answers, now. Where is she? Why isn’t she here? Have you been interrogating her for that long?”

Yes.

“Interrogating is a strong word, ma’am, we were merely asking her about her whereabouts this evening,” Sergeant Schrank corrected her tiredly, frustrated with how the conversation was unfolding. “And, in fact, we’re almost done with her. If you calm down, we’ll let you speak with her after we talk to you first.”

There was a beat of silence.

The woman sighed softly. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

That was shocking. Riff wasn’t sure he had ever heard her apologize to anyone before for as long as he’d known her.

“It’s just… she’s my brother’s daughter, and she’s been with me since her mother died some years ago. I’ve tried my best with raising her, but she’s made these friends-”

Here we go. Riff had heard her aunt’s spiel before… most of the time when he was hiding somewhere nearby and the woman had no idea of his presence, but still… he could probably recite it word for word, if he had or cared to.

“-that have been nothing but trouble.”

She’s nothing like them.

“Roxanne’s a good girl-”

This almost made Riff laugh. Hell, if the woman knew why exactly they had been out that night, her opinion of her “darling niece” would sour quickly.

“She’s smart, too.”

This, Riff wouldn’t deny. He was in classes with her when they were younger, on the days he made it to school. He actually thought she’d been a bit of a know-it-all back then… Nowadays, he enjoyed her quick thinking. The sass, too, but he wouldn’t ever tell her that.

He still remembers the angry look on her face when she found out he dropped out of school. She had been trying- trying being the keyword- to tutor him to prevent exactly that, but it was to no avail. His mind was already made up at that point, but it had given them something to do in order to kill time between gigs.

“In fact, we just got the letter today, she got accepted to that new university downtown, with a scholarship and all-”

Now this… this was news to Riff.

He opened his eyes again, and sat up straight, finally looking over towards the group. Sure, she had mentioned it to him, briefly… but why hadn’t she let him in on how serious of a chance she had?

“-and if the university gets even one whiff of this, they’ll revoke it, for sure,” her aunt finished, decently distraught at this point. “She's worked so hard. Please, there must have been a misunderstanding. She knows how much is at stake- she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her future…”

Riff tore his eyes away from the group once again, focusing on the opposite end of the holding cell instead. While his own thoughts began to race, Detective Davis sighed.

“Understandable, ma’am,” Detective Davis sympathized after a moment, his tone surprisingly genuine given the circumstances.

“But, the fact of the matter is, someone has to take the heat for this. If we don’t get any information at all, they’re both looking at time,” Sergeant Schrank, not one for any sort of bullshit, informed her bluntly.

Time? Things were starting to move a bit too fast, and Riff, who was almost always quick on his feet, felt like the ground beneath his sneakers was starting to slip.

The implication had silenced her aunt, which was another state he never recalled seeing her aunt in before.

“Look, why don’t we go into my office, so we can take care of some administrative formalities,” Schank suggested, gently guiding her by the arm to the adjacent room. “I’ll have Davis here go get Ms. Thomas so you can speak with her afterwards.”

The door to Schrank’s office shut with a soft thud, and Riff could faintly hear their muffled voices behind the warped glass.

Detective Davis pointed a finger at him as he passed the cell. “Stay put,” he ordered, heading down the hallway leading to the interrogation rooms. Despite the circumstances, Riff found himself rolling his eyes, glancing down at the handcuffs that had been firmly secured around his rest for the better part of the last two hours.

The echoing of Detective Davis’ footsteps faded, and Riff was met with an eerie silence. The ticking of the squad room clock echoed throughout the room.

Surely, there was a way out of this? It wasn’t his first time being picked up before, and there had almost always been a loophole- nobody had actually seen him, or there was no concrete evidence, or, his favorite, Schrank was bluffing the entire time just to try and get some information out of him. When there hadn’t been a saving-grace loophole, and he wasn’t able to get out of the jam, the consequences had always been a slap on the wrist and a modest fine.

She had always offered to help him with those. Tony, too. Sometimes, he took them up on the offer, but he didn’t feel great about it.

This time, this time it didn’t seem like there would be any loopholes. Time seemed like the only outcome. It was a bit ironic- the one time that he had been brought in for a crime that neither of them had any actual connection to, would be the time that the boys in blue actually had enough material to pin something on them.

Riff was so distracted, he barely registered Detective Davis' return to the squad room, guiding his “accomplice” along with him.

Without a word, the man withdrew the key to the cell from his belt, unlocked the door, opened it, and lightly shoved her inside it. The door slammed shut with a thud, causing her to flinch. Riff remained still.

Detective Davis retreated to Sergeant Scrank’s office quickly, but not before grumbling something to them about keeping quiet.

Then, it was quiet again, save from the rattling of her handcuffs as she fidgeted, finally turning to face him.

His eyes met hers, and he noted the absence of her usual calm demeanor.

Her worried eyes glanced at the closed door to Schrank’s office, before looking to him once again.

“I said nothing.”

Of course not. He found himself smiling, even if it was small. She noticed anyway, frowning slightly at his reaction.

Despite her confusion, she insisted, “They don’t have any evidence, it’s entirely circumstantial.”

Riff shook his head lightly, still smiling slightly. “‘That’s not what it sounds like, Roxie,” he disagreed, quietly, but firmly, encouraging her to accept their reality.

He watched her as she looked away from him, and out towards the squad room. He wondered what she was thinking. She wasn’t satisfied with his response, that much he could tell.

Eventually, she looked towards him once again, though his gaze was still fixated on the floor.

“I’m scared, Riff.”

At that moment, Riff knew what he had to do. Schrank was determined that someone was going to take the heat for this, and she would never tell them the truth of what they had been up to tonight, despite the fact that failing to do so would ruin the life she didn’t even know she was about to have.

“Listen,” he told her, meeting her eyes once again, and finally standing from the steel bench. Despite his youth, his tiredness made it feel like his knees protested at the sudden movement. He took a step towards her, leaving just a few inches between them. Their hands were even closer, but he restrained himself from reaching out to grasp hers.

“I’m going to do something that you probably aren’t going to like,” he confessed to her, his voice low. His eyes once again wandered across the squad room to Schrank’s closed office door. He could feel her eyes on him, but he pressed on, determined.

“When I can, I’ll come find you, and we can talk about everything,” he promised.

“...What? Riff, wait-”

Riff took a step back from her, separating them. “Sergeant!” he shouted across the room.

In a flash, Schrank’s office door opened, and he filed out, frowning at him. “Shut it, Riff! We’re not done with you yet,” he hollered back. “And unless you’ve got something you wanna share with the class-”

“I wanna talk,” Riff insisted, wrapping his hands around the bars of the cell.

Schrank was visibly surprised by this, as Riff thought he would be.

“Riff, don’t,” she pleaded in a harsh whisper beside him, watching as Schrank crossed the room to them. He gave her a knowing look, and she fell quiet immediately.

“I’ll find you,” he repeated, quietly enough so that she would hear, but that the Sergeant could not, as he was escorted out of the cell and down the hallway.

About half an hour later, Riff had struck a deal with Schrank, providing him with some of the details of how they had seen the deputy mayor early that evening in a rather compromising position. Of course, he couldn’t tell him everything, not if he wanted to save their hides in the process, but Schrank ate it up regardless.

“Now, there’s still the matter of what brought you in here tonight,” Schrank informed him. He had taken very detailed notes on the crumbs Riff had provided him, and had already sent off Detective Davis to start working on the lead, leaving the two alone in the interrogation room.

Riff fidgeted with the cuffs around his wrists, eyeing the older man tiredly. “Is there?”

“Someone’s got to take the heat,” Schrank said blankly. “If that lead you gave us doesn’t go anywhere, I won’t have anything to show for it. My boss would become suspicious if we ain’t got a perp for this situation, and I’d have nothing to show for it.”

Riff smirked in slight disbelief. He should’ve known Schrank wasn’t above this. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do,” Riff told him vaguely, pointedly avoiding any words that would suggest guilt.

“Now, something like this…” Schrank trailed off, and placed a hand under his chin, as if contemplating his next words.

Riff knew damn sure he wasn’t. “How ‘bout you just hit me with a fine and send me on my way, huh? It’s late, Sergeant, wouldn’t want your wife up and about worrying about ya.”

“No can do, Riff. You’re eighteen now, an adult.”

“Am I?”

“Don’t get smart with me now, boy.”

“I thought you just said I was a man-”

“Shove it!” Schrank roared, fed up with antics. “I thank you for the information you’ve provided, and I’ve taken that into consideration. It’ll be up to the DA and judge, but I’m going to recommend a few weeks in the county detention center.”

Riff started the other man down, determined to not let him see him sweat.

“... Unless, of course, you want to tell me what you and Ms. Thomas were really up to tonight,” Schrank offered, raising an eyebrow to Riff, as if goading him.

“No,” Riff answered shortly, eyes still locked with the Sergeant. “I already told ya once, she was on her way home from work. I met up with her just before your boys apprehended us.”

“Well, Riff, if that’s your story, then it’s one you’ll take with you all the way to jail,” Schrank announced, standing up from his seat with a huff. He walked over to the door, and banged on it harshly, notifying his partner that their conversation was over. Detective Davis entered the room immediately, crossing the room to uncuff Riff from the table. “I’m sure I’ll see your sorry ass in a month or so,” Schrank quipped.

“Count on it, Sergeant Schrank,” Riff replied pointedly.

His one phone call was to Tony. It was short, just long enough to tell him he’d be gone for a few weeks, and to make sure the guys were taken care of while he was gone. He knew he was lucky that Tony had even answered at all considering the hour, but Tony knew the two of them were going out that night, and was probably on edge about it anyways.

Tony sounded surprised, to say the least, and perhaps a little disappointed, but Riff knew he’d get over it. They were brothers. Besides, neither of them could really do anything about it- they wouldn’t be able to scrape up bail money, let alone the funds for a lawyer to fight the charges. Riff had to go. Tony would look after the Jets while he was gone, and hopefully keep the Egyptian Kings at bay until he got back.

Riff was internally reconciling and coming to terms with his fate for the next few weeks as Detective Davis escorted him back through the squad room to take him down to booking.

He caught one last glance at her. She was with her aunt, looking upset and like she had been chastised to hell and back. Her eyes were glued to the floor, and she didn’t seem to notice him.

However, her aunt had clocked him the moment he had been escorted back into the room. The look she gave him was an odd one- one she hadn’t given him before. It was one of understanding.

If he had had any doubt about his decision, it was gone now.

“Off we go now,” Detective Davis urged him patiently when he realized Riff was hesitating. “You’ll have plenty of time to get reacquainted when you get out of the slammer.”

Riff looked on ahead, forcing one foot in front of the other.

No matter what happened, after all was said and done, at least they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t done a single decent thing for her.

A/N: If you liked it, and feel so inclined, please feel free to interact/offer feedback. :)

Part 2

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