Disclaimer: Numb3rs isn't mine.

A/N: A result of the song title meme over at LJ – your friends would hit shuffle on their music player, whichever song came up, you had to write a story with that title about the character they chose. The lovely shaolingrrl gave me Tori Amos's "Precious Things" and Don (of course). I didn't stick the word count and this is about a month and a half after the meme but oh well. Better late than never, right?

Enjoy, Shaolingrrl :-).

Precious Things

Don's eyes shot open. He'd been deeply asleep and though he didn't know the reason behind the sudden awakening, instinct told him to be patient and stay that way.

It only took a few seconds for his instinct to have reason in disturbing his rest as a muffled thud sounded from downstairs. Of course, Don reasoned, it could have been any of his three housemates in an attempt to get a late night snack. But Mike was in Arizona visiting his sister; Paul was in Miami with his girlfriend and as for John – the guy was drugged up to his gills on anti-allergy medicine. He wouldn't be moving an inch until noon the next morning at least, leaving Don to be the only mobile person in the small house the four friends had rented in their third year of college.

Besides, they had all learned by now to avoid the coffee table which greeted every newcomer to the house with a blow to the knee, be they friend or foe. Tonight, it seemed to be the latter.

Slowly sliding out of bed, Don tried not to make any undue noise to alert the intruder that one occupant of the house was more than awake, he was alert. He reached for the baseball bat leaning against the closet, removed the university logo stamped cover, tossed it to the side and crept towards his door.

Fervently hoping that this was all in his imagination, Don gripped the bat tighter and swung it over his shoulder as he inched out into the hallway. To his right, he could hear the deep, somewhat congested breathing of his house-mate as he slept on unawares in his room and this only cemented Don's fears of an intruder.

Damn, he hoped the robber wasn't armed with a gun but fact was, Don's cell-phone was downstairs and he doubted the police responded to smoke signals emanating from a first floor bedroom window.

He was near the stairs now, fervently hoping that the wooden floorboards wouldn't creak…

x-x-x-x-x

… under his feet and give the game away. Not that this was a game, no way. He was about to confront a criminal, and the weight of the gun he clasped in his hands was testament to the fact that there was danger involved.

Sure, he had backup in the form of his partner, Coop – but it didn't take a genius to realize that there was a chance that either he, the fugitive they were hunting, or his partner might not walk away from this unscathed, maybe even all three if Loxley really didn't want to go back to prison and put up a hell of a fight.

The house was mostly dark with only slivers of light from the streetlamps outside, perhaps a beam of moonlight here and there, making it through the windows. Don had only been to this house once and was relying mostly on his eyes having adjusted to the dark well enough to spot any obstacles in his path. A stakeout had revealed that their guy had broken into this house silently and would be headed upstairs to the main bedroom in an attempt to kill the husband and wife whose testimony had placed him in prison.

And Don was going to make sure it was only an attempt. Coop had used a hidden ladder to climb in through the master bedroom window and right now would probably be making the petrified civilians stay silent even as he kept a gun pointed at the door, ready to shoot anyone who entered who didn't look like his partner.

Don, meanwhile, had followed Loxley's path. He had just made it to the landing of the first floor without managing to make any significant noise when he felt all two hundreds pounds of their fugitive ram into him, pressing him hard against the wall. Before he could recover, he felt two hands grab him by the front of his shirt and shove him hard onto the floor.

As he fell, Don tightened his fingers' grip around…

x-x-x-x-x

… the cell-phone he clutched in his right hand, all the while groaning as pain attacked his body.

Teeth pressing down hard on his bottom lip, he rolled onto his stomach and used his elbows as he wiggled his way forward before struggling to sit up, back against the brick wall, his legs stretched out in front of him.

Tilting his head up slightly, Don relished the feel of the raindrops that managed to squeeze between two tall buildings to fall on his face in the dark and empty alley even though the rest of him was drenched and shivering in protest to the cold.

Lifting his left arm, he draped the heavy limb across his middle, wincing in pain as he put pressure on his wet-but-not-from-rain abdomen. From where he was, he could glean the sound of passing traffic amidst the sound of the pitter-patter of water. The road couldn't be that far away but the distance was relative – at this moment, Don couldn't make himself move anymore than he already had. Besides, it would just be his luck if he managed to stumble to the road in an attempt to get help by flagging a passing car only to faint and fall in its path; or to have the occupants of the car be the people responsible for putting him in such a weakened condition in the first place.

No, his rescue depended on what his right hand held. So tight was his grip that he had a feeling that the logo of the cell-phone's maker would be permanently pressed into the skin of his palm.

Mustering up what little energy he had, trying to ignore the oh-so-tempting thought of just letting himself sleep for a little bit, he pressed his thumbnail under the flap and flipped it open before fumbling for the power button. The welcoming tone which sounded told him he'd been successful in achieving at least that.

Since in his line of work he used his cell-phone almost as much as his gun – speaking of which, where was it? – Don didn't need to open his eyes and look down to guide his fingers as they felt around on the keypad and pressed on a single one. He wasn't sure if the phone had started ringing, reminding him that if the small device was to be of any use to him, it needed to be closer to his ear.

It wasn't a big decision to make – taking a deep breath, Don let himself slump sideways down the wall, groaning as the pain in his stomach increased but at least his head landed somewhere near the cell-phone.

Don wasn't much aware of passing time, it being the reason why he was surprised that when his hearing finally kicked in, there was already a voice emitting from his cell-phone.

"Don? Don, are you there?"

Just hearing his voice unconsciously brought a smile to Don's lips.

"Charlie." Don frowned to himself as he noticed how hoarse his voice sounded, licking his raindrop-splattered lips in an attempt to moisten his dry mouth and throat.

"Oh God, Don. Is that really you?"

"It's me." There. That sounded a little better. Don couldn't be certain but he thought he heard other voices, not as clear as Charlie's but there nonetheless - and coming from the phone, he hoped. He wasn't sure how far he'd stumbled and whether he'd left a trail, but they couldn't have found him yet…

"How are you? We need to come get you – where are you? Don?"

"Here." He was here, wherever here was. "Trace… the signal."

"Already being done, bro. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Chuck, just fine."

Yeah. All things considered, thought Don as he tightened his hold around the cell-phone with a hand steadily turning numb from the cold, letting his brother's voice from the other end of the line carry him off to sleep, or was it unconsciousness?, he was doing just fine.

Khatum (The End)