Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction for the twin happy purposes of light entertainment and artistic romp. This piece of art is generating no income for anybody. The characters of Hardcastle and McCormick and their fictional relatives belong to those who thought them up long before I said my piece.

Author's Note: All right, so it's my first foray into this unbelievably talented fandom, and I'm going to just ease myself in real careful. I dearly love McCormick, and I have a deep and abiding respect for Hardcastle (whom I am convinced is several shades smarter than me), so forgive me if the two of them (ahem) don't exactly take center stage here. But hear me out…For maximum dramatic impact, I strongly recommend setting aside about an hour fifteen, prepare your favorite hot beverage, read this little tale of mine, and immediately view the episode entitled "Ties My Father Sold Me." Then, please, stop by and tell me what you think.

Better Than That

"We need to talk."

Four words, softly spoken in his direction in the humidity-laden darkness of one of the last nights of summer. The four words he hated most. Well, no. In all honesty he'd have to assert that 'you are under arrest' were the most hateful and dread-inspiring words known to him. But from a woman, these four would certainly suffice. Therefore, his first inclination was to lay stock still with his eyes shut, snoring softly, and pretend he hadn't heard the words at all.

She knew him too well. He could feel her hand on his bare shoulder, shaking it lightly, as she sat up propped on her elbow with her ginger tresses pooling onto his chest and tickling the hairs there. A flicker of a smile surfaced involuntarily on his lips, and he knew, even in the dimness of the room, she wouldn't fail to catch it.

"Come on, Mickey," she prodded in tandem with shoulder shakings. "Come on. You're awake. Get up and talk to me before I think up something mean to make you sing soprano."

There was jest in her tone, but he knew it wouldn't hold if he kept up his pretense for long. He moaned gutturally and rolled to his back. He cocked open one eye to settle on her cautiously, checking the furrow of her brow to gauge the seriousness of this talk. "You don't wanna talk now."

"Yes, I do."

"No. Later." It was a drawn-out, near-whine. "Tomorrow." Yeah, he'd definitely crossed over to full-blown whine. He rolled toward her and pressed her down, doing his darnedest to convince her that there were better options at this hour than heavy conversation.

She pulled back and pushed him away with a laugh. "Give it a rest, babe. Tomorrow's Saturday. We can't talk tomorrow." She gave that information a pointed beat before adding, "No school on Saturday." She flicked a glance toward the bedroom door, acknowledging the object of her thoughts beyond it.

He sighed, blinked a couple of times, and resigned himself to the inevitable as he lay flat on his back again and contemplated the relentlessness of this woman when it came to unloading her troubles in the dead of the night. Six years of cohabiting had not produced a way to circumscribe it, not if he cared about getting any amount of shut eye before sunup. If she was bothered, she'd ensure his participation until she wasn't. No doubt about it.

So he turned back toward her with no further amorous intent and propped up his weight on his elbow and treated her to his most winsome smile. "You sold me. I'm all ears, baby. Well, unless it's about us." The smile wavered some. "I don't do talks about us in bed. It sets a precedent—bad karma and all that. Don't mix your business and your pleasure. You know—"

"Mick." His name, spoken firmly but not unkindly. Her eyes were soft, with a ghost of a smile playing on her lips, ruining her attempt at somberness. She really was a sweet little thing. He had to rise up just a bit and kiss that mouth before any more unsettling ideas came from it.

"All right," he conceded. "So it's about the kid, then. He's in trouble?"

"No more than usual."

He grinned at her. "So what? He hurt himself? Set something on fire? Flunked out of kindergarten in the first two weeks? What?"

Now she sighed heavily, her graciously endowed chest straining against the confines of a cotton nightshirt with the gesture and once again reminding him of the perks of enduring all this angst in the night. She looked away and her brow furrowed deeply. "You're up to something again, aren't you?" The words came out in a rush, accompanied by a grimace and followed up with a gnawing of her lower lip that suggested she was sorry for asking the question even while she was asking it.

His smile was gone, and the tension in the room ramped up considerably. He dropped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. "You know I'm leaving for that gig in Passaic Thursday."

"This Thursday?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I told you that, didn't I?"

"Maybe you did." She frowned and gave that a pensive thought. "Well, I'm having a little party for Mark on Sunday. Just a few friends, neighbors. You'll be there for that, won't you? He's five. He's old enough to care now."

Mickey shrugged helplessly and tried a reassuring smile. "I can try, babe, but I can't promise. Maybe I can catch a bus home after the matinee and be back by dinner."

A mixture of disappointment and resignation played across her face. Resignation won. "I don't ask for promises," she said quietly. Then, suddenly mindful of her earlier question, she added, "But you haven't gone and booked some other gig, too, have you?" The doubt contained in the word 'gig' was unusually dense, for her. "Maybe one of those that gets cooked up when Ronnie's boys come around."

Tension gave way to a flash of alarm and he was sitting upright, a flush rising from his neck. "What are you talking about?" he demanded, a low hiss.

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that, Donna." He turned to her and caught her by both arms before she could turn away from him. "Where is this coming from? Who's been here? T.J.? Tony? Who?"

He stopped himself abruptly and took a couple calming breaths, deliberately loosening his hold on her arms, which had grown a little tighter than he had intended. Her posture was rigid, arms folded up and pressed tightly to her chest, until he finally released her altogether. He knew, with a stab of self-loathing, he had scared her. "Sorry," he muttered. It occurred to him that this conversation was one that definitely didn't belong in bed.

Donna's eyes were downcast. She shook her head, though whether it was in response to his question or to his paltry apology, he wasn't sure. Tentatively, he reached out and gently lifted her chin. He tried a smile; he aimed again for reassuring. It was so hard sometimes to be convincing.

"I'm sorry. I'm not mad, baby. Really. I'm sorry, I just…" He stopped, pondered that a moment. "I do have a gig—a nightclub gig—in Passaic. It's no lie. And I told you, Ronnie's boys won't be coming around no more. I set them straight on that after last time. I did. But if they do come back, you gotta tell me. They've got no business here, not with you and the kid around, I can tell you that."

She was looking at him again, deep blue eyes set in stark contrast against her fair skin in the darkness. She wasn't pulling away. She didn't look put out. He pulled her into an embrace, and noted with some relief she offered no resistance. Things were okay. He relaxed inwardly. Just one thing needed to be cleared up. "So, was someone here?"

A stout shake of her head was her only answer.

He pulled back a little, gave her a crooked grin. "Then what's with the interrogation, huh? Where'd you get the idea?"

The cleft between her eyes was back. "Mark's teacher. You know, Mrs. Gilberto."

He frowned, bemused.

"She stopped me today when I came to bring him home from school," she continued. "She wanted to know if you had a new line of work now." Before Mickey could utter a startled reply, she pressed on quickly. "They were talking about dads and what they did for a living, and Mark said—" She broke off suddenly, pulled away a bit further and wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees. Then she cocked her head to the side and pinned her son's father with a penetrating stare that would brook no evasion. "He said his dad has a job at the bank."

Mickey's mouth went dry, and it took him a moment to realize that Donna had stopped speaking and was waiting expectantly for his answer. When enough time passed that she understood he had none, she saved him the trouble.

"So when we got home, I asked him what made him think that. You know what he said?" Her tone was even and very calm, with only the finest quiver in her voice betraying her. "He said he heard Daddy on the phone. Daddy's going out of town for a bank job with his friends." And then she was silent.

They sat side by side in silence, broken only by the occasional motor of a passing car on the street below their two flat and the muffled drone of a party of neighbors caught up in semi-raucous conversation in the unit next door.

He glanced sidelong at the woman, now resting her chin on her knees and not saying another damn thing. And he couldn't even work up enough righteous indignation at the implicit accusation to rescue himself.

Too much time had passed for that anyway by the time he pulled out of his paralysis and re-entered the moment at hand. He had plenty of thoughts on the matter. But none that were any business of hers. He had a policy, long-standing and faithfully kept, of never, ever mixing business and pleasure. And Donna McCormick was not business.

She'd known when she'd hooked up with him at the beginning that there were parts of him, parts of his world, that could never include her. His past. His connections. His damn name, for pity's sake.

They came together based on the shared experience of breaking free of a sorry home life and running together in the same direction. For six years now, they'd stayed the course, taking consolation in the companionship while maintaining certain unavoidable boundaries. And it had worked, as long as they shared a common goal. And a kid. He couldn't even try to deny the kid had kept him tethered to his present situation longer than a simple female, no matter how desirable, could have accomplished by herself.

Nor could he deny that another part of what kept him around was the sheer adrenaline thrill of leading a double life. Here on the block he was Mickey Thompson, not-quite ordinary family man, often seen picking up a gallon of milk with his box of smokes at the corner store, and lately seen holding the hand of a curly-headed firecracker of a boy as they wended their way to Mrs. Gilberto's kindergarten room.

But elsewhere, on the anonymous streets of Jersey City, he had racked up a fair amount of credibility as a regular stand-up guy, the kind who got in, scored, and got out without incident. A great team player. The kind who may not work for a song, but always, always gave his benefactor his money's worth.

So the kid had his old man pegged as a banker? He could only shake his head at the absurdity—hell the sheer irony—of it. Security specialist would be more in line with the truth. But how does that figure in the eyes of a guileless five-year-old?

Donna was talking again; he almost missed his turn. "Huh?"

"I said, we can't keep going on this way. It's not right. Something's gotta change."

A wholly inappropriate laugh escaped him before he could censor himself. Donna lifted an eyebrow, although she looked otherwise unperturbed. Just another reason they'd been together longer than a night or a season.

He risked a frank grin. "So whadda you think? You wanna break up?"

A smile slowly curved the corners of her mouth and she rolled her eyes. "No," she huffed, as though the answer were so obvious there was no point in asking the question. "I don't want to break up. I just want…"

Again her gaze drifted over to the closed door to their bedroom. "I want something better for him. Better than either of us had. I want to do better than that."

A knowing look passed between them, briefly, before he broke eye contact and fidgeted. "Yeah," he muttered. He never dwelled on such things. Bygone indignities lost their sting only when you didn't go dragging them along with you like so much baggage.

"I want you to give up the racket."

"Yeah?" he quipped, knowing the smart-ass words rolling off his tongue were going to cost him. "And I want a villa on the French Riviera, sweetheart. We all got our problems."

"It's not just your problem, Mickey. It hasn't been for a long time now."

A humorless smile flashed across his face and faded. "A long time? You mean, just shy of five years? That about sum it up?" He raked a hand through his disheveled mass of dark curls. "I owe these people, babe. I can't just wake up one day and decide it's time to quit them. I never promised you that."

"I don't expect promises," she said patiently. He hated it when she got patient like that. He hated how it made him feel, like hell personified. But now she was on a roll, leaning forward, the spark of inspiration buoying her. "You could just get lost. Change your name." Over his impending protest she pressed on with a smirk, "Not like you haven't done it before."

No, he stood corrected. Donna at her most idealistic was, for him, hell personified. "That won't fly."

"Why not?"

"It won't. It's complicated. It's like you said, not just my problem. See?"

She let out a short, determined breath. "Then go alone."

"Are we back to breaking up?"

"Shut up about that!"

He did, and she did as well. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, he reached to the nightstand for his pack of cigarettes. He handled it slowly. There was something comforting in the familiar ritual of tapping out a smoke from the box and rolling it for a moment between his fingers, lifting it to his lips and lighting the tip. Fully in tune with the sensation of smoke and heat, drawing it deep into his chest and watching it rise in hazy tendrils before his eyes, he savored and preserved that silent moment. And then he exhaled. And then she expected an answer.

He rose from the bed, hiking up his shorts, and padded to the window. He splayed apart the blinds and stared out into the relative darkness of the city street. He heard Donna behind him, shifting around so she was perched on the side of the bed, undoubtedly watching him with those expectant eyes. Even this one, in all her patience and good humor, seemed to think Mickey Thompson had more to offer than he had ever given good reason to expect.

She began to speak again softly, very softly, while he continued to watch the dark street. "He's a good boy, Mickey. And he looks up to you, you know." She paused. No answer, so she continued. "He's starting to talk about how he wants to be like you."

He twitched at this, but held out hope it wasn't visible. She continued with hardly a hesitation. "And you know what's funny? I want him to be like you. I really do. I want him to sing like you and tell silly jokes and act crazy and get away with it." She halted, waiting. No reply, so she started up once more, and this time she seemed to speak more to herself than the man who gave no indication she was being heard.

"But I don't want him to hook up with any Ronnie's or T.J.'s. I don't want him ever sneaking off to do jobs over in Newark and Queens. No bank jobs."

He turned abruptly from the window and faced her. "I am not going to—" He bit off the rest of it. She knew a lie when she heard one.

"Because," she forged on, a little louder and heedless of his interruption, "if you keep going on like this, someday he's gonna follow you all the way to prison."

Damn it to hell if there weren't tears in her eyes when she said it. He crushed the remains of his cigarette into the window sill and muttered between clenched teeth, "He won't, and I won't. And thanks for the vote of confidence."

She lowered her eyes and chewed her lip again, although it seemed more out of a desire to preserve any remaining peace rather than contrition for anything already said. She pulled her legs back under the covers and scooched back into her place in the bed. But she couldn't seem to let it go without getting one last hit in. "I don't ever want that to happen to him, Mickey," she murmured while she settled herself supine. "I don't want that for either of you." A flick of a glance and a wry smile fell on him. "Good night," she said, and she rolled on her side, away from him.

Now he was the one left awake and troubled. And wasn't that always the way?