I don't own anything in relation to CSI NY or its characters...I'm only borrowing them for fun.
Nor do I own the song in which this was inspired, Daddy's Hands by Holly Dun. Its a beautiful song and a favorite of mine.
Lochlyn Monroe yawns and pulls the down the covers enough for one eye to pop out, the glaring alarm clock reads 6:15 p.m. "Fine," he yawns widely again throwing the rest of the covers off before sitting up and rubbing his face vigorously to wake himself up.
He pulls on his clothes after his shower, ignoring the unkempt bed before leaving the bedroom looking for the daily paper.
"Whoa Dad, what are you doing up so early?" Luc and Dae Monroe, his eighteen year old sons ask when they bump into him walking down the hallway to the stairs.
"I don't know, it's been harder getting back into graveyard than I thought it would be," Loch stifles another yawn as they walk down the stairs and into the living room. "Where are you two going?"
"I have a date with Maggie, since we are graduating soon I have to ask her something important," Luc waggles his eyes suggestively to Loch's dismay, her father a thorn in his side for the last few decades being Mayor of Hawthorn. Watching his oldest go out the front door leaving Dae and him behind, Loch couldn't help but shout, "Use what I left in the glove box…I'm too young to be a granddad yet!"
"What are you looking at," he grouses at the laughing young man, his blond hair shining like gold in the light of the setting sun through the windows. An exact copy of his big brother who had just left to meet his girl. "Don't you have better things to do than to annoy me?"
"Not really, old man," Dae swings away, mischief gleaming in his yellow eyes, as his father raises his hand to swat him, "besides, I think you want to see what's going on with Mom in the kitchen. The runt upset her big time by ruining one the projects that she was roped into helping Miss Jane with at the elementary school."
"Oh lord," Loch mutters as he leaves the room to Dae who started looking around at the shelves for something to read.
As he enters the kitchen Loch takes a deep breath of appreciation at the smells that are bubbling on the stove. "Look at what she did, Lochlyn! She ruined your hand print."
At his Grace's distress he opened his eyes and looked at the plaster hand print that she made him do this morning when he arrived home after a long shift at the station. "She didn't ruin anything, I can still place my hand in it. See?"
"That's not the point, Loch! We were making a Father's Day card for you with her finger-paints when I had to start dinner, and then I turned back to her…look at it. Its ruined," she crumpled into tears, the stress of the day having gotten to her.
"Thalia, Grace, like I said nothing is ruined," he murmurs into her hair as he gather his wife into his arms and sit down at the large table in the kitchen. Running a hand through her dark brown hair, he soothes her worries away with a kiss to the crown of her head. "I know this isn't just about Lindsay, but worry for your Mom. I don't care if it takes the National Guard, but tomorrow after she arrives to celebrate with us, we're both going to sit down and get her to come and live with us. The cabin is ready and needs her to make it into a home, how is Minnie going to pass up being near you and the kids instead of driving in whenever she wants to see us?"
"You're right," she sniffles wiping the tears from her eyes and then on the apron around her waist. "My emotions have been bouncing off the walls lately with what's been going on and I just needed that little breather. I think Lindsay's in the barn, I'm not sure. Why don't you go and check on her? I was pretty upset when I found what she had done."
"Will do, my grace," he leans down and kisses her on top of her lightly scented hair once more before squeezing her shoulders gently in his big hands. Then turning to leave the house, the screen door to the kitchen banging close behind him.
The warmth of the fading summery day heats his skin as he makes his way from the house to the barn, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. He smiles at the sound and how different it was to how he grew up. Opening the door and closing it behind him, it takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he bypasses the horses in their stalls eating their evening meal to his work bench. The light is turned on and it isn't long before the rawhide is laid out to begin the braiding that Ray Malone and Eddie White Feather taught him so long ago. It was twenty minutes into weaving the bridle before he speaks to the small pile of moving hay in the corner of Mountain's stall. "Your mother's very upset, Frog."
The small pile of hay stops moving, a dark brown head pops out to look at her father. "I know, but I didn't mean to ruin your hand print Daddy! Honest!"
"Come here," the quiet man motions at his youngest, almost a mirror image of his wife and mother-in-law. The five year old slowly moves out of the pile of hay leaving a lot of it sticking in her hair and clothes, to move cautiously around the still munching horse Mountain. She made her way over to her dad, who picked her up and placed her on his knee.
"Your Mom isn't upset about that, well not all of it," he answers the skeptical look on her face. "The wrong thing here is that you ran off without letting anyone know where you were. That can be dangerous Lindsay on a ranch this size. Promise me you won't do it again."
"I promise," she reluctantly agrees, playing with his scarred hands. "When are you going to teach me to do this, Daddy?"
"When you are older, and your hands aren't so tender," he pulls up her small soft hands and kisses them softly before depositing her back on the floor, swatting her bottom affectionately. "Now, go and apologize to your Mother so that I can eat dinner in peace. Maybe Mom made her famous apple pie for dessert."
Enjoying the moment when Lindsay's chocolate eyes widened with hope, he did all that he could to contain his smile when Lindsay raced out of the barn, tripping and picking herself up without a word of complaint. That's his girl.
"Loch?"
"Lochlyn?"
"LOCHLYN MONROE!" Thalia practically screamed in his ear, making him nearly jump out of the computer chair.
"What woman? I hear you! You don't have to turn me deaf," he glares shaking a finger in his ear to clear it, then running his hand over his face feeling the bristles of his unshaven face.
"You're missing the latest video of your granddaughter!" She sniffs, her silver gray hair falling from its makeshift bun, taking the mouse to place the cursor on the video to rewind it back to the beginning.
"Yes. I see I missed the first three seconds. You know it takes Danny at least that long to fiddle with the camera we bought him last year." He scoffs until a well placed elbow to the solar plexus makes him gasp.
"What was that, Loch?" She asks sweetly, pausing in her actions at the computer in their office downstairs.
"Nothing, nothing," he wheezes his breath and color returning to normal, as he pushes a hand through his iron gray hair.
"That's right, now let's watch," she adds gleefully pushing play on the video again.
"Danny, give me the camera," Lindsay's voice could be heard but not seen as the camera is pointed at the floor.
"Just a sec, I think I know how to start recording this time...shi-fudge it's already on. Okay, action!" He swings the camera up to show Lindsay's smiling face before she blows a kiss into the camera, winking.
"Give me the camera, this is your day with Lucy, go on now." She's seen taking the camera away from him, swinging it in Lucy's direction. The little girl dressed in old clothes so that the paint on her hands won't ruin any of the new clothes that her grandparents sent them.
"Daddy come on!" Her little voice piped with excitement, impatient to start crafting. "What's your favorite color? Pink, purple, what?"
"Calm down, ladybug, how we use your favorite color. And what is that?"
"BLUE!" She nearly yells in her enthusiasm, nearly running around the table to get the bottle of paint. Danny looks toward the camera at Lindsay.
"I think I'm going to be deaf by the time this ends," he mutters underneath his breath, to Lindsay, shaking the camera slightly with her silent laughter at his words.
"Here it is," Lucy appears beside him the plastic bottle already open as she aims it at the bowl across the table.
"Whoa, stop! I get to squirt the paint. Remember last time? It went everywhere and while I do love the hand print you loving put on my bike, we need to be careful with this." Lucy nods solemnly and hands over the bottle to Danny, who starts squirting a small amount into the bowl.
Taking Lucy's little hand he places it into the bowl and then places it onto the dry plaster of paris hand print that he pressed his hand into yesterday evening. "There, all done!"
"We did good, right Daddy?" The oceanic blue eyes that she inherited from his side of the family, melting his heart. "Yeah, ladybug, we did good"
The warm and tenderness of the moment touching everyone's heart…until Lucy smiled and placed her hand on her Daddy's face smearing blue paint on his face, a lot of it dripping down onto his green shirt. "Lucy!"
Lindsay's control of the camera broke as it swung wildly from her hilarity at their daughter's antics. Danny rolled his eyes and grabbed Lucy by the back seat of her pants lifting her up and walking out of the room to the bathroom. "Yuk it up, Montana, you know you love this shirt and now it's wreaked!"
"Oh quit complaining, I'll run it through the washer after we're done here," her voice could be heard from behind the camera as she placed it on a steady surface to appear in front of it. "Hi Mom and Daddy, I hope you enjoyed this latest video on The Lucy Files. And Dad, Happy Father's Day!" She impishly looks into the camera and winks, smiling brightly before shutting the camera off.
"Oh that was so sweet, I have to see it again," Thalia moves the mouse over pad to rewind it yet again. "Loch, where are you going? Don't you want to see it again, love?"
"Don't worry, I forgot that I left a light on in the barn…I'll be back shortly," he runs hand over his wife's soft skin, smiling as she leans further in at his touch. "I won't be long."
At the barn he walks past the ghosts in the barn, the unmovable Mountain munching on his alfalfa, the little pile of hay shaking with mischief as it was her favorite hiding place to read or play with the barn cats. Loch sits down and watches the ghosts fade back into his memories, when he leans down and opens up the bottom drawer to pull out something that was made so long ago in accident. His own large hand print pressed in plaster of paris with a tiny one pressed into the center with green finger paint.
Turning it over, he reads Lindsay's childish scrawl. Happy Father's Day, Daddy! Lochlyn placed the plaster on his bench to look at his hands. They were nothing special, scarred, old, and wrinkled now, but it wasn't too long ago that they held that tiny little hand with the love and trust that was so easy back then. Yeah, in his hands he held his whole world.
Loch wipes the water from his eyes, and places the round plaster disc back into the bottom drawer and closed it tight, flicking off the light he walked to the door of the barn and looked around one more time. Maybe Lucy would love to come and visit with him when they visited for the state fair. Yeah, Lucy would enjoy learning to ride on Boulder, Mountain's son. Loch closed the door to the barn and took his time walking to the house as he watched the stars twinkle and wink at him from the midnight sky above.
Lucy's going to love it here, just like her mother does.
Daddy's hands were soft and kind when I was cryin´
Daddy's hands, were hard as steel when I'd done wrong.
Daddy's hands, weren't always gentle
But I've come to understand.
There was always love ...
In Daddy's hands.
I found something interesting as I was looking up information on Father's Day, there have been many claims to have started Father's Day. This one intrigued me because its was from a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, in Spokane Washington, who started campaigning for this in honor because of her Civil War Vet of a father who helped raise her and her five siblings in 1910. Though it took 62 years later for President Nixon to make it into a permanent national holiday, how cool is that? :)
I know a lot of you want to burn me at the stake for ruining the green shirt, but I'm sure that with a little Spray 'n Wash and a run through the washer it'll be fine. Or if anyone is interested in writing a fic about how Danny takes his saucy revenge on Lindsay with Love On The Spin Cycle, please feel free! I'd read and review that in a heartbeat, LOL!
Thank you for reading, it's been a long week, and I'm glad to be back!