Disclaimer(s): All recognizable people, places, and events in the CSI:NYverse are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
A/N: More crack. Contains spoilers for S1 and S2. Written just before COTP, but I think it fits the continuity.
He sat at the table and traced the outline of the picture in the manila file folder in front of him. He'd gotten it eight hours before, and he still couldn't quite believe it. He'd been hoping, of course, but experience and his father had taught him that hope was a dangerous, double-edged blade, and so when reality had for once obliged him, he had spent the majority of the afternoon searching for evidence of a dirty trick, turning the memory of the picture over and over in the back of his mind as he ran license plates and arrest records from his desk in the precinct bullpen.
The tech made a mistake, the pernicious voice of self-doubt had whispered as his fingers tapped the keys to the staccato rhythm of This Is Your Miserable Life, Thumpy G. What the OB/GYN saw was a shadow on the film or a stray bit of umbilical cord. He might have twenty-five years' experience waving his magical electronic wand over women's distended bellies and divining the truth, but he's also got sixty years on his eyes. Maybe what he circled with his silver Sharpie was just wishful thinking and an educated guess.
He'd tried to ignore the voice and concentrate on the job at hand, which was running down slimebags and returning them to their rightful place in the sewers, but it had been relentless, gnawing at the pit of his stomach with voracious glee until he'd left his desk under the pretense of going to take a leak and called the doctor's office on his cellphone. He'd felt like a stupid pussy idiot for bothering the doctor when he probably had medical emergencies to deal with, but the doctor hadn't seemed to mind. In fact, he'd been laughing as he reassured him that yes, there really was a stem on the apple, a hearty, booming chuckle that had reminded him of his grandfather's.
Doctor Vincenzo Fiorello, his name was, and Flack liked him. He was New York through and through, born in Red Hook and Roman Catholic as the Pope. He had leathery, burnt-umber skin and startlingly white teeth that clicked when he spoke, and though his hands were lined and broad, they were always excruciatingly gentle with his Rebecca. He talked to her while he examined her, not over her head to him, and he always told her what he was going to do and gave her the choice to accept or refuse it.
He looked at you like you belonged there in his office with the other mothers and expectant fathers, like there was nothing at all amiss with either of you for wanting a child. He took in her tiny body and fragile, perpetually swollen feet, asked her the precise nature of her disability, and that was that. No biting comments swallowed by an indecipherable harrumph, no disapproving scowls over the rims of his glasses while he scribbled notes on his forms, and no taking you aside and out of Rebecca's earshot to ask if you intended to keep the pregnancy. As if that were your choice, and your choice alone, to make.
He just sat you both down in his office and asked you if the pregnancy had been planned, and when you admitted that it had been a happy accident, he asked if you intended to keep the pregnancy. You answered yes in unison, and he simply smiled. He asked questions about Rebecca's symptoms and medical history and listened attentively to her answers. She admitted she was afraid of her traitorous body, and he did not laugh at her fears. He let her speak, let her tell it all, and when she was finished and panting with the effort of trying not to cry, he steepled his fingers in front of his face, gathered his thoughts, and told her the truth.
He told her that her disability could very well make things more difficult, probably would, as a matter of fact. Her back and pelvis would suffer more, and because of the misaligned bones, there was a greater risk of pelvic separation. She would fatigue more easily because of the exorbitant energy demands placed on her already taxed system by the growing fetus, and it was very likely that by the last trimester, she would be placed on bedrest to conserve her strength in preparation for the rigors of childbirth.
That, too, would come at higher cost. The pain of childbirth would trigger her vicious spastic reflex, and her body would fight the uterine contractions designed to push the baby down and out of the birth canal. The tug-of-war between one involuntary response and another would be long and agonizing, and if it went on long enough, a C-section would be his only recourse. He delivered the news with a straight face, but his tone was gentle.
For your part, you sat in your chair and tried to breathe air that had suddenly turned to mud, thick and gummy in your mouth and throat. The guilt was leviathan, swallowing every ounce of joy you had mustered at the prospect of fatherhood. You knew it was going to be hard-your aunt Lola was fond of recounting her childbirth horror stories over Christmas turkey, and before the silence fell after Diana's death, your mother told you that you'd had a hard go of it when you came into the world-but you never imagined it would be a form of medical torture. Sometimes, you'd watched those stupid baby shows on TLC, and it didn't look so bad. The room was airy and clean, and the woman was too doped to care that some nurse was jamming her gloved fingers into parts unknown every twenty minutes. There was pain, but it was held in check by the miracle of modern medicine, and at the end, they had a bag of screaming wrinkles with their DNA to show for it.
But Dr. Fiorello was telling you that it was not going to be a peaceful, picturesque affair. No documentary film crew would want to come with their cameras and film this miracle of birth. There would be agony and a war of attrition between the laws of nature and your wife's indomitable will. She would writhe and twist and scream, and you could only watch. She would pay the price for your fleeting, furtive pleasure at the realization that your cock had functioned according to the manufacturer's specifications, and if push came to naught, the doctor would gut her and rip the baby from her womb on the tip on a surgical blade.
You resolved on the spot to make sure it never happened again. Once Rebecca had the baby, boy or girl, you'd get yourself clipped. If you timed it right, she'd never have to know until it was done. You'd just take your family and count yourself lucky with what you had, and if you ever found yourself wishing for a boy or a girl or another of what God gave you, you'd remind yourself of what Rebecca went through to give you that much.
It must have shown on your face because Rebecca's grip tightened around your fingers, and she drew the ball of her thumb over the back of your palm in soothing, circular strokes. Then Dr. Fiorello switched tacks and started outlining all the options. He discussed breathing techniques and massage therapies and drugs to help with the pain and spasticity when the time came. He told you about epidurals and water births and TENS devices. His voice was low and soothing and full of rational hope. This could be done, his voice said, and you blessed him for it.
And then he turned to you and asked if you had any questions or concerns, if there was anything he could do for you, and it was so unexpected that you could think of nothing to say. None of the other doctors you had consulted before Dr. Fiorello had viewed you as anything more than a sperm donor and conduit for your wife, and truth be told, they condemned you for the former, as though you were a cunning deviant who had managed to mate with a mangled Realdoll. It was sit down, shut up, and stay out of the way until we need you to speak for her. He was the first one to make you feel like you had a say in any of this and deserved to be heard.
He took a pull from the beer he'd ordered upon entering the bar and studied the picture again. Doctor Fiorello had been the third obstetrician they'd consulted, referred to them by Sheldon Hawkes, the ME cum CSI who had once been a trauma surgeon in a Harlem E.R., and who cherished his medical connections like a dragon's hoard. He hadn't wanted to accept the referral at first, had dragged his feet and blustered excuses against it, but in the end, he couldn't bear to see Rebecca cowering uncomfortably beneath the stern, disapproving gaze of the doctor and the snide, condescending looks of the other women. So he'd quashed his wounded pride and baseless, nettled pique and taken her to his offices in tight-lipped desperation.
It wasn't that he didn't like Hawkes or appreciate his expertise; he was a hell of a guy and a fucking genius in his field and several others besides. It was just that, well…
You wanted to take care of her. She was your wife, and you made that baby inside her, and she was your responsibility. You wanted to show her that she hadn't married a fencepost with a cock, that you could cover the bases when she needed you. And then Hawkes had come along with his Princeton degrees and his medical knowledge and the shared language of staggering intellect and shown you for a fool. His intuitive, almost prescient grasp of her disability and unspoken needs inspires ugly jealousy and reduces you to a ten-year-old in detective's clothing. It isn't fair. You busted your balls to know her better than anyone else, and then he waltzes in with all the answers, sweet as you please. You wind up with egg on your face, and Rebecca thinks he's God in a cashmere sweater.
It was petty and childish and unbecoming, and he didn't care. Every word of it was true. He took another swig of beer, the glass bottle cool and oddly intimate against his teeth, and rolled the liquid on his tongue. He still tasted of Rebecca's cunt, tart in contrast to the yeasty sweetness of the beer, and he smiled. That was one thing Hawkes would never know, no matter how many books he read or hanks of lambskin he hung on his wall. It was a language meant only for him, and he counted himself a connoisseur.
Her taste had changed over the course of her pregnancy, deepened and sweetened at once. It was rich and heady as wine, and over the months, he had delighted in documenting each change with the soft, wet point of his tongue and watching her jerk and shudder and fist her fingers in the bedsheets so she wouldn't tug on his hair when she came. He reveled in watching her over the steadily rounding white hump of her belly as his tongue traced his name into her trembling folds. Her hips sometimes refused to rise under the increased weight of the baby, but that didn't bother him in the slightest. It simply meant that he could control her pleasure as he pleased, make her mewl and sob and plead by turns, and when her hips finally did buck and twist and writhe beneath his mouth, it was all the sweeter.
She was on his fingers, too, now that he thought about it, embedded beneath his nails and in the pads of his fingers like trace. He curled his fingers around the neck of the bottle and tipped it back for a sip. Yes, she was there, subtle but unmistakable to his sensitive nose, salty and sharp, lust and shameless, serpentine need. She had ridden his fingers less than an hour before, legs and mouth parted in slick abandon, fingers clawed in his back and leaving stinging weals in their wake.
Oh, jesus oh fuck shit oh my god shit baby please please fuck harder god god can't don't goddamn bastard love you jesus christ. An endless, breathless litany gasped as she jerked spasmodically against his thrusting fingers. More don please please please god yes ah ah ah.
He couldn't give her what she really wanted. The doctor hadn't forbidden it, and none of the books or articles he'd read had said it was dangerous, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd hurt her if he did. Touching her made his blood run hot and strangled reason in an iron-fisted hand, and he couldn't trust himself not to lose control and bury himself too deeply. He was haunted by images of blood seeping from between her legs while he called the paramedics and explained that he'd only been trying to love her when it had all gone wrong. So he couldn't give her that, but he could give her anything else, and so he had.
She was on his thighs and his contentedly slumbering prick, too. Whatever she may have thought of his irrational refusal to slip between her thighs, she held no grudges, and she had avidly returned the favors of his fingers and mouth with her own, beginning her enthusiastic ministrations while her thighs still trembled and thrummed with the memory of climax. She was on his lips and throat and sticky and damp on the coarse hairs of his chest. She was on his nipples and dusted over the flat hollow of his belly, which tightened at the delicious recollection of her tongue slithering into the shallow well of his navel. His cockhead was still damp with her, and if he closed his eyes, he could picture her glassy eyes and the fall of her soft, golden hair as she worked him with her lips and tongue and the careful graze of her teeth.
She'd been on knees and elbows, back bowed with the weight of his baby as she worked, eyelids fluttering and hands opening and closing in the rumpled bedsheets as her head bobbed. Sometimes, she'd looked at him and smiled. She'd been gorgeous, wild and dazed with lust, and it hadn't taken much to push him over the edge, just her dancing eyes and arched back and wicked, coaxing tongue.
He'd left her boneless and sated and sleepy, the cell phone within easy reach should she need him. When he'd kissed her goodbye, he'd been bitter on her lips, and he smiled against her mouth. In all likelihood, she'd be asleep when he came home, curled onto her side with a pillow wedged underneath her hip, but if she wasn't, he'd help her to the bathroom and feed her some of the minestrone soup he'd made the night before.
That's somethin' that Hawkes'll never know, said a fierce voice inside his head. He'll never see her the way you do, naked and wanton and tousled in his bed. He'll never taste himself on her lips or her on his nimble fingers. He'll never, ever slip his hand over the mound of her belly and feel the soft flutter of his Junior there. That's yours, and his degree won't ever change that. That's the dowry she was talkin' about on the night you proposed, and she ain't never takin' it back.
He took another swallow of beer and began to idly peel the label from the bottle. He'd felt his Junior move for the first time last week. Rebecca said it had happened before, had in fact called him at work three weeks ago to tell him that it had, but he'd been busy taking a witness statement and couldn't afford the emotional fanfare the revelation deserved, not while there was a dead guy stiffening on the kitchen floor and a bereaved widow sitting on the couch with blood on her bunny slippers. By the time he'd gotten home, both Rebecca and the baby had been quiet, and there hadn't been much time since then to enjoy his private miracle. Four drive-bys, two assaults with a deadly weapon, and three attempted murders had seen to that.
But even the whackos needed a day off, and he'd actually made it home on time last Tuesday. He'd found Rebecca parked in the kitchen beside the stove, where she was slowly stirring a pot of simmering stew and pan-frying sliced sirloin.
"Hey, babe," she'd said when he walked through the door. "The crazies knock off early today?"
"Naw. They're havin' a plannin' meetin', I guess. They'll be back tomorrow." He'd bent to kiss her. "What's alla this?" He'd gestured to the stove.
"Oh. I decided to make a stew for me, but I thought you might want something more manly, so I'm making philly cheese steak, too."
He'd snorted and raised an eyebrow. "There's manly and pussy food now?"
She'd laughed and stirred the stew. "Well, no, I guess not. But my grandpa used to say that a man needed a meal that sticks to his ribs." She'd tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pot and set it on a paper towel on the counter.
"Wise man, your gramps." He'd dipped his pinkie into the stew to test it. "Anyways, why can't your stew fit the bill?" He sucked his finger. "Pretty damn thick."
"If you want it, go ahead. I just thought-," She'd shrugged and rubbed her stomach.
"It's fine, 's good." He'd eyed her stomach. "You okay there?"
"Yeah. Junior is just restless today, is all."
"He's movin' in there?" Soft and incredulous.
She'd offered him a wistful smile. "Of course. He's been at it for weeks. I called you the first time it happened, remember?" She'd picked up a fork and prodded the sizzling meat in the pan, but the steam and her half-lidded eyes weren't enough to conceal the brief flicker of hurt.
"'Course I remember," he'd answered quickly, stunned and stung by her hurt. "It was all I could do not to do a fuckin' jig in the middle in the livin' room. I just didn't think it'd be respectful to do the Cabbage Patch with a stiff on the floor and a widow in bloody bunny slippers on the couch, you know?"
She'd looked at him in silence for a long moment while meat sizzled on the stove, her mouth working. Then she'd started to laugh, a weary shudder of her knobby, thin shoulders.
"Oh, God," she'd said softly, and run her fingers through her hair. "Oh, shit. No, I guess it wouldn't. Shit." She'd scrubbed her face with her hands. "You'd think that after five years, I'd get it." She'd held out her arms. "C'mere?"
"I should take off my guns first," he'd said, but he'd never been able to resist that simple entreaty, and he'd moved to enfold her, pressing the side of her face to his gurgling stomach.
"Mmm." A contented sigh.
He'd dropped his other hand to her belly and slowly stirred his broad fingers. Another sigh, and then he had felt it, a subtle, rippling shift beneath her skin, little more than a quicksilver flutter.
"He's movin' again," he said, and forgot all about his guns. He'd stood there with her head on his stomach and his palm pressed to hers for ten minutes, marveling at the persistent flutter so like a pulse beneath his hand.
Mine, he'd thought, and his fingers had tightened momentarily on her belly. It was the same thought he'd had as he sat in the uncomfortable, plastic chair in the doctor's office and seen the first grainy ultrasound. Mine. It had been enormous and primitive and overwhelming, and he'd blinked to clear his stinging eyes and laughed so he would not weep.
Rebecca had let him stand there until the sliced sirloin threatened immolation, and then she'd extricated herself with a playful swat of his ass and a cheeky, "I don't suppose you'd still do that dance for me?" He'd snorted and swaggered into the bedroom to divest himself of guns, badge, tie and dress shoes, but later that night, he had danced for her, a hairy-kneed jig performed in a bath towel that had bespoken his woefully arrhythmic Irish heritage with gusto.
'Course you did. Gavin now, warm and gruffly paternal. You'd jump into the East River in February if you thought it would make her happy. You've busted your balls for most'a the things you got in your life-your high school diploma and your worthless juco degree, your shield, a place in the department that had nothin' to do with your old man-but you never busted your hump harder than you did to win her.
It didn't take you long to figure out what you had underneath all those dents and funny angles. You were always a smart kid, even when you were a snot-nosed rookie with more dick than sense. Sometimes, you'd sit across from her in that grotty café you took her to and just watch her, secretly marvelin' at the fall of her hair or the way she cocked her head and jutted her chin when presented a particularly pressin' problem, a terrier contemplatin' a smartass Chihuahua just before jaws clamped onto twisting, screaming hindquarters. You used to sit and wonder what could make somebody so damn tiny and delicate so fierce, and you used to wonder why it made you so damn hard to think about it.
But mostly, you just wondered how a dumbass cop like you wound up with a brilliant woman like her, and you were determined not to let her slip away. You were sure she was gonna, that one day, she was gonna turn to you with a shrug and a smile and say that it was over. She'd had her fun slummin' with the idiots, and it had been fun ridin' your balls in your cluttered apartment, but she had better things to do, so sorry. But she didn't. And every day she didn't, you got braver and stupider and more hopelessly in love.
One day, you got up the balls to buy her a ring. You stood in front of the jewelry case in that stuffy jeweler's and sidled from foot to foot while some pasty tightass looked down his nose at your off-the-rack suit and cheap tie. He knew you weren't a member of the Clan Gotrocks, and his thin, fishy lips puckered in a moue of distaste every time you bent to look at a ring.
The bitch of it was, he was right. You did all right; you had your apartment and a few decent suits, and your bills were never late, but there wasn't a lot left over at the end of the month. Scrubbin' the filthy, festerin' asshole of New York didn't pay for shit, and sometimes on nights when you were takin' Rebecca out to a ballgame, you had to scrounge in your sock drawer to make sure you had enough to buy her an extra dog with 'slaw if she wanted. So there you were, standin' in front of that pussy bastard's display case, wiltin' with the realization that most of his rings were wishful thinkin'.
There were some nice gemstone rings that were more easily within your reach, and some silver ones, but you felt like such a cheap bastard for even lookin' at 'em, and besides, hadn't you heard all your life that you brought your girl a diamond when you came askin' for her hand? Even your father managed a diamond for your Ma, and from what you saw of it, he was a sorry excuse for a husband in all other respects. If he could afford a diamond, then so could you.
There were a few diamonds in your range, small and sad in a case tucked out of sight and clearly meant for losers and starry-eyed derelicts. They were tiny, prehistoric mouse turds mounted in 14-carat gold, and you felt the jeweler's condescending smirk as you inspected 'em, rough as sandpaper on your flushed nape. You coulda bought a nicer diamond on credit, maybe, but a diamond was supposed to be forever, and if somethin' happened to you in the line, you didn't want some creditor rippin' off her finger because it wasn't paid for yet. Besides, the thought of fillin' out the credit application with that asshole breathin' down your neck was more than you could stand. So you bought a small, princess-cut diamond and slipped the black velvet box into your pocket with sweaty fingers.
You carried it around with you for two weeks before you took her to Delmonico's, and damned if that didn't nearly break the bank. But you wanted to get it right, wanted her to have the candlelight and champagne and fancy linen tablecloths. She deserved it-hell, she deserved filet mignon on crystal platters-and you were desperate to show her that you could make it as good for her as she did for you. It wouldn't always be sports bars and buffalo wings and Budweiser from a bottle, not if she didn't want it that way.
You'd practiced this eloquent speech in the bathroom mirror before you picked her up, but when the moment came, your tongue was a dead vole on the floor of your mouth, and all you could do was push the box across the table and make like Rocky Balboa in a post-bout press conference. You revealed your unassailable stupidity with the opening of your mouth, and she should have rolled, screaming, in the opposite direction, but she didn't. She took the box and called you wonderful, and when you found your legs and slipped that pathetic diamond onto her finger, she treated it like it was priceless. It never left her finger until that afternoon in St. Patrick's a year later, when it made the short journey from her left hand to her right, and it rests there still, despite the more expensive wedding band that took its place.
You asked her once why she refused to consign the engagement ring to the jewelry box now that she had stronger proof of your love. She was gradin' undergraduate homework assignments on the couch in the livin' room, curled in the bright pool of light cast by the lamp on the small side table. She paused in her grim contemplation of a junior's pot-addled effort and set down her marking pen. Then she held her hand up to the light and turned it so that the diamond caught the light and reflected it in a thousand miniscule rainbows over the walls and ceiling.
She smiled and turned her hand to watch the rainbows spin and dance at the whim of light and motion. The wedding ring was your pride and vanity, she'd said at length, but this little engagement ring was your heart. She'd slowly lowered her hand and curled it into a protective fist on her thigh. You couldn't say a word against it because it was true. She'd been gradin' papers again five minutes later, and you sat on the couch and rubbed her feet and watched A Fistful of Dollars on TV.
So, yeah, you danced for her, and you'd do it again anytime she asked. She's the only one you would do it for, because she's safe, and when she throws back her head and laughs, she's laughing with you, not at you. She'd never rat you out to the boys and ruin your tough-cop swagger. It's a sweet, shared secret, and you hold it close to your heart every time you snap on the holster and walk out the front door, a touchstone of sanity when there ain't no sanity left.
His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Hawkes, who slipped into the crowded, dimly-lit bar and scanned the uneven sea of shoulders and profiles. He made no move to signal him right away. Instead, he sipped his beer and watched Hawkes' inquisitive face as he searched the patrons.
He hadn't needed to invite Hawkes tonight. He already knew about Rebecca's pregnancy, had since the first month, when Rebecca had approached him and asked if he would supplement her prenatal care. She had sworn him to secrecy, and Hawkes, ever the doctor beneath the CSI labcoat, had agreed. Sometimes, he came home from shift and found Hawkes perched on the couch, hands on Rebecca's belly as he listened thoughtfully to her as she spoke. It was Rockwellian and Dalian all at once to see Hawkes' dark, slender hands on Rebecca's pale stomach, and it never failed to inspire an ugly pang of jealousy.
You playin' doctor with my wife, Hawkes? he'd think as he hung his jacket haphazardly in the coatrack just inside the door, and then the shame would come, smothering and bitter as hot ash, and he would duck into the kitchen to collect himself and pull a beer from the refrigerator. He'd stand by the sink and press the cool glass of the bottle to his burning tongue and remind himself that Hawkes was a standup guy, and that even if he weren't, Rebecca was never faithless.
He raised his hand. "Over here, Hawkes. You need fuckin' glasses?" he called, and Hawkes' head swiveled in the direction of his voice.
Hawkes made his way through the press of bodies, absent-mindedly adjusting the band of his watch as he approached.
"Hey, Flack. Been here long?"
"Naw." He had, in fact, been here for nearly an hour, but that was all right by him. It had given him time to study the picture and trace the outline of his son's miniscule toes with the memory of his mother in his mouth. "The others comin'?"
Hawkes nodded. "Yeah. I'm not sure Mac's going make it, though. Been holed up in his office with paperwork for most of the day. Stella and Danny were right behind me when I left the lab. Let me grab a drink, and I'll be right back."
"Yeah, yeah," Flack grumbled, but there was no rancor in it. "Bring me some peanuts while you're at it."
Hawkes disappeared and returned five minutes later with a mojito in one hand and a bowl of peanuts in the other.
"Christ, Hawkes. I was just jerkin' your chain about the peanuts."
Hawkes set the glass bowl on the table and slid into the seat across from him. "So," he said, "how did it go this morning?"
He shrugged and rolled the denuded and mostly empty bottle between his palms. "It was all right," he said nonchalantly. "Rebecca was pissed about havin' to drink all that water with her bladder bein' the size of a grape and all, but she likes Dr. Fiorello." It was as close to gracious thanks as he could come.
Hawkes smiled and stroked his finger over the vibrant green curve of the lime slice that decorated his glass. "It'll be the size of a pea by the end. The ultrasound come back?"
"'Course it did. You think I asked you here to socialize?"
Hawkes chuckled and sipped his mojito. "The thought never crossed my mind," he said mildly. He pointed at the open folder on the table. "Mind if I take a look?"
He pushed it across the table, and Hawkes plucked the film from the folder with graceful precision and held it up to the dim light.
"Mmm." Hawkes tilted his head to one side, and his mouth twitched with a suppressed grin.
"What?" It emerged more sharply than he had intended, but he was afraid that Hawkes was about to confirm the sneaking suspicion that Dr. Fiorello had made a mistake.
"It's a boy, then?"
"Is it? I mean, yeah, that's what the doc said, but you know, wouldn't hurt to get a second opinion."
Hawkes nodded. "There is, indeed, a stem on the apple."
He hid his relief in a sip of beer.
"How's Rebecca holding up?" Hawkes asked, and reached for the bowl of peanuts.
"I wouldn't-," he began, but it was too late. The handful of peanuts disappeared into Hawkes' mouth.
Hawkes froze in mid-chew and grimaced in disgust. "Stale," he said thickly,
"I found a short an' curly in a bowl once," he confided cheerfully, and tipped the neck of the bottle at him in jaunty salute. Hawkes made a grab for the bowl, and Flack yanked it out of reach. "I don't think so. I'm gonna be starin' at drool and spit-up for the next three fuckin' years, and I don't wanna see yours."
Hawkes scowled at him, but he rose from the table and made a beeline for the bathroom. Flack watched him in laconic amusement until he disappeared through the swinging door grimy with the imprint of ten thousand hands, most of them belonging to the cops who came here every night after shifts, hunkered on the stools or slouched in the cheap metal and vinyl chairs with their city-stained hands curled around steins of beer and guinness or jiggers of Jack. It occurred to him that his father's hands had likely touched that door and probably still did upon occasion, and he grimaced at the sour tang of bile that rose in his throat at the thought.
His father was the reason he'd waited until now to tell anyone. Memories around the station house were long and lips were often loose, and though most of his old man's contemporaries and cronies had been retired for years, there were still a few who had been green-eared rookies in his twilight years. They'd be only too glad to let it slip that Don, Jr. had a bun in the oven, and what got back to his father would eventually find its way to his mother.
His mother had never had time for Rebecca, not during their courtship, and certainly not after, when she had taken him aside on his wedding day to tell him that since Rebecca was an invalid, it was perfectly acceptable to find "alternative companionship." He'd been too stunned to be angry, and he'd simply laughed, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and gone to wait at the altar for his bride. Her opinion of his wife had not improved in the years since, and once a year-usually at Christmas or after a particularly lively spate of christening invitations-she would bemoan the lack of grandchildren and lament the end of the Flack family line.
He had no doubt that her tune would change as soon as she got wind of the pregnancy. Then it would be all smiles and grandmotherly glee, and she would hover and fret and drop in on their apartment at all hours in the name of checking upon things. She'd go through the contents of the refrigerator and cabinets and criticize her nutrition. She'd fuss over her clothes or how long she slept, and she'd insist on shopping for clothes and cribs and diapers for the baby. She'd probably try to insinuate herself into the delivery room when the time came, and he was damned if he'd stand for that. He loved his mother, and he was sure she'd be a doting grandma, but Rebecca needed privacy and security in these last months, and his mother would provide neither.
They were doing fine without his mother's interference, please and thank you. Rebecca's joints were swollen with fluid retention, and she was often sleepy, but Dr. Fiorello had assured him that she was thriving under his care, and he suspected that beneath the grumbling misery of nausea and backaches and midnight trips to the bathroom, she was happy. Listening to her hum as she rubbed her steadily expanding belly at night filled him with proud contentment, and it was almost enough to ease the sting of shuffling down to the corner store at four in the morning in gummy-eyed stupefaction for a gallon of mocha chocolate chip ice cream and a jar of olives-black, not green, babe; the green ones taste like fossilized pickle spunk. If he had his way, his parents would find out about Junior when they received the christening invitation.
The return of Hawkes from the bathroom coincided with the arrival of Messer and Monroe, and he closed the folder and slipped it onto his lap. He didn't want to go through the same song and dance five times.
"'Bout time you got your ass here, Messer," he said. "Monroe." He nodded at Lindsay, who was behind Danny, smiling uncertainly and brushing a stray lock of hair behind one ear.
"Hey, Flack," she replied, and sidled to the bar.
"Go fuck yourself, Flack," Danny answered amiably. "Sometimes not even sirens'll get you through Midtown gridlock." He spared a glance at Hawkes, who had resumed his seat and was now scrubbing his teeth with his tongue in a bid to erase the green piquancy of stale peanut. "What's with you, Hawkes?"
"He just ate some nuts that didn't agree with 'im," Flack answered blandly, and Danny dipped his head and sniggered.
"I never woulda guessed there, Hawkes," Danny muttered.
"That's 'cause you're generally fuckin' clueless," Flack pointed out.
Danny plopped into the nearest available chair and leaned forward, elbows propped on the table and index finger pointing emphatically at Flack's nose as he spoke. "Hey, don't be breakin' my balls here, Flack. I spent ten hours goin' over an old mohair coat for trace, and I'd swear on my mother that I got every fiber and speck dirt offa it."
"Yeah, but would it hold up in court? 'Sides, I ain't talkin' 'bout your geek credentials. When it comes to readin' people, though, you're hopeless." He drained the last dregs of his beer and pushed the empty bottle away from him.
"That's bullshit," Danny countered, and rapped his knuckles on the table for emphasis. "I don't miss nothin'. Name one thing I missed."
The way Monroe looks at you, for one, he thought, and interlaced his fingers, elbows propped on the tabletop. She's been makin' eyes at you since the day she got here, little Miss Eager Beaver, tryin' to impress the boy by showin' him up with the teacher. She's always askin' about you, talkin' about who you were or mighta been before she showed up on the scene. She's got it bad for you, Messer, and the only one here who don't know that is you.
He studied his friend across the table. Danny looked older now than Flack remembered. There were grooves in the corners of his mouth that hadn't caught his notice before, and deeper creases around his eyes, but mostly, it was the eyes themselves that had aged. They had always been guarded and seeded with suspicion, but now they were sad and perpetually weary, devoid of the cynical mischief that he had long ago come to associate with Danny Messer.
The hospital probably leached it out of 'im, said his father. They always do. They trade one sickness for another, is all. You go in with a gunshot wound and come out with a dyin' spirit. You live, and you walk around and go back to the job, but you're never quite the same because you left a part of yourself back there with the dressin's and the disease. You know what it's like to be sick, and you can never not know again.
It's even worse for those who gotta watch it. They gotta sit in there with all the dyin' and sufferin', and they don't even get the consolation of a sponge bath from some big-titted nurse. They sit in the chairs beside the bed and watch love rot from the inside out or fade into irreversible forgetfulness, and all they can do is clutch magazines ten years out of date and wonder if the hospital gift shop has any rosaries left.
He hasn't talked about Louie since that night you spent with him in the hospital, but you know he goes to see him in the rehab hospital because you've made a few off-the-record phone calls. You know when he goes, too, because he's always quieter on those days, remote and preoccupied and probably seein' visions of his brother suckin' soup through a straw or strugglin' to put blocks into shaped holes.
"Naw, forget it, Messer," Flack said, and shook his head.
"That's what I thought." Danny crowed triumphantly and sat back in his chair in a contented slouch.
Lindsay came back with a beer and a Long Island iced tea, and Flack raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I'm impressed, Monroe. I had you figured for the Virgin Mary type."
Lindsay rolled her eyes and passed the beer to Messer. "What's the matter, Flack? Didn't think a hayseed knew about fancy mixed drinks?" She plopped into a seat next to Danny and took a sip of her drink through the dainty, red straw.
"Aw, Monroe, you lost me there. A real woman wouldn't need the straw."
Danny grinned and pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. "Uh, oh, Montana. I think those might be fightin' words." He folded his arms across his chest and looked from Flack to Lindsay and back again.
Lindsay removed the straw from her drink and set it on the table with an authoritative slap of her palm. Then she lifted the drink to her lips and took a prodigious gulp, and her eyes flashed defiantly over the narrow rim of the glass.
"That woman enough for you?" she demanded when she finally lowered her glass.
"Oh, absolutely, Monroe," he replied mildly. "But I'm taken. Why don't you take it up with Messer?"
Lindsay blinked and spluttered, and he thought he detected the beginnings of a blush on her cheeks. She lapsed into a mutinous silence for a moment, and then she picked up her straw, stabbed it into her drink and began to stir.
"So, Flack," she said, "mind telling us why you invited us all down here?"
"Yeah, Don, spill," Danny agreed.
"Not until Mac and Stella get here."
"Oh, Mac probably won't come." Lindsay flapped her hand dismissively. "He was buried in paperwork when I left."
But Mac did come, flanking Stella as she threaded through the crowd with a light overcoat draped over one arm. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his thin, navy windbreaker, and even in the dim light of the bar, he looked exhausted.
"Hey, Flack," he said as he approached the table.
"Heya, Mac."
Then Stella was coming around the table, her arm curling briefly around his neck. "Hey there, Flack. I gotta admit I was surprised to get your invite. You've been scarce lately."
"Yeah, well, I been busy cleanin' up the garbage, you know." He returned her brief hug with one of his own and a pat on the shoulder.
Too thin, he thought. She's never been a big girl, but she was always hardy and tough as nails. Now she's fragile and loose inside her skin, and I'd bet my weddin' band that she ain't eatin' for shit or sleepin', either.
"Bullshit." Danny grinned and took a pull of beer. "You've just been too busy stickin' it to the wife."
Flack laughed. "Fuck you, Messer. What do you know about my sex life?"
"I know Mrs. Petrinski called the Fourteenth three times this week with a noise complaint."
"Shit," he said, and began to laugh in earnest, forehead propped on his folded hands.
Mrs. Petrinski was his elderly adjacent neighbor, and she had lived in the apartment beside his since before he had moved in. They had coexisted peacefully until Rebecca moved in with him, and then the harmony had been shattered on the creak of a bedspring. He had brought other lovers home for a tryst in the early morning hours after a shift, but none had been as vociferous as Rebecca.
Vociferous ain't the word, Don, Gavin pointed out diplomatically. She scared the shit outta you the first time she cut loose. She'd been quiet the first few times, focused on ignorin' the discomfort of havin' her cherry picked. She'd mewled and panted, and sometimes, she'd groaned at a particularly deep thrust. But buddy, the fourth time was apparently the charm, because she stiffened under you like a sprung wire and came her brains out singin' the Hallelujah goddamned Chorus. You had to hold her down a little so she wouldn't hurt herself with the spastic flailin'. You thought she'd had a seizure, but then she was laughin' and pantin' and urgin' you to keep goin'. You did, and brought her off a second time without much effort, all buckin' hips and rakin' nails and beggin' for harder and faster and deeper, and about the time your balls were drawin' up, Mrs. Petrinski's broom struck up the straw and maple symphony.
"She's called up the Fourteenth fifteen times in twenty-six days," Danny added gleefully.
"You keepin' track there, Messer?" He sniggered and wiped his streaming eyes.
"I think the bigger question here is, 'Are you really getting laid fifteen days outta twenty-six?'"
"Those are just the ones Mrs. Petrinski knows about," he said slyly.
Stella held up her hands. "All right, guys. Reassuring though it is to know that there is a Sexual Horn of Plenty in Don's pants, it's more than I bargained for, and I'm tired. So, what's the big secret, Flack? Why'd you corner us and make us swear we'd show up?"
"All right, all right, Stella. Take it easy." He reached underneath the table, lifted the manila folder from his lap, and tossed it into the center of the table.
Danny blinked in surprise. "You brought us here for a case?" He reached for the folder, but Stella was faster, and she plucked the folder from his fingers.
She opened the folder and stared at the contents. "I…don't…," she began, and stopped. "It's a sonogram of a baby," she announced. "Flack, I-,"
"'S my baby. My Junior. Rebecca's pregnant."
"What?" Danny seized the folder from Stella's slack grip and peered at the picture, nose pressed almost to the film.
He wanted to laugh and cry all at once. It was too much, too sweet. It was his baby, and he was right there in his soon-to-be godfather's hands, and it was really happening. His chest tightened, and his eyes burned, and he was pathetically grateful for the din of the bar and the dim light. He drummed a nonsense staccato on the table with his palms and looked anywhere but at the faces gathered around the table.
"How long?" Stella asked, and her fingernails brushed his knuckles on the tabletop.
"She's five and a half-months now."
"Why the hell did you wait so long to tell us?" Danny passed the folder to Lindsay.
Because you wanted to be sure. You had to know it was safe. You still remember your father's sister, who suffered four miscarriages before one took. She announced each pregnancy the day she got the news, glowing and giddy and already chirping about booties and cribs. The family flocked to the stores for blankets and diapers and rattles, and to her house to cook and clean. You usually wound up raking the lawn and taking out the trash.
Then the inevitable came, the phone call that brought everything to a screeching halt. There was no more cooking and cleaning and no more raking. The gifts that had been bought in joyful anticipation were quietly tucked into linen closets or donated to women's shelters and never mentioned again. You endured four awkward visits to her house, sitting in the kitchen with an aunt or younger cousin and listening to the grave conversation of the adults in the living room. It was like a funeral, only without a body, and you could never understand why it should feel that way. How could they mourn the loss of something that had never been there in the first place? Now you know that it was the loss of dreams and potential they mourned, the hope that had slipped through thighs and fingers, but back then, it was as strange and unsettling as wandering through the land of Nod with your eyes wide open.
The worst was the sense of disappointment and subtle condemnation that hung in the air like mold, sickly and cloying and foul on the tongue. It was as though your aunt had done something wrong and was being punished. The women shook their heads and tutted to themselves, and the men avoided her and huddled together in the yard, clutching beer cans like fetishes. You and the other children were forbidden to "bother" her, but sometimes you peeked around the corner of the kitchen and watched your mother tend the weeping leper.
You never wanted that for Rebecca. You wanted her to be safe and protected so that if the worst happened and her body betrayed her, she would not have to endure the indignity of the unspoken I told you sos. She would not be a leper because no one would know that she had lost, and you wouldn't have to shamble through the precinct under the scrutiny of sympathetic eyes, forever marked as the guy who'd lost a kid. It was an act of self-preservation.
But Dr. Fiorello said the magic word today. He pronounced your Junior viable. Even if God turns His face from you now, there is still a chance. He might be crippled, and he might be eating crayons rather than coloring with them, but he would still be yours, and that's good enough.
Besides, he wouldn't be crippled. Dr. Fiorello had proclaimed both mother and baby healthy as horses this morning. Junior was developing like he should and gaining weight, and his mother was eating right and taking her vitamins and doing the stretching and pelvic-toning exercises the doctor had prescribed, and they were going to be fine. In a couple of years, they'd be tossing the ball around on the front stoop, and he'd take him to his first Yanks game, and then if Rebecca was up to it, maybe they'd have another one so Junior wouldn't have to grow up playing with nothing but the shadows and dust bunnies and his father's cast-off clothes.
He shrugged. "I just wanted Rebecca to have some privacy, not have to feel like she had to entertain well-wishers and alla that."
Mac had the picture now and was gazing at it intently. His face was still drawn, but his eyes were alight, and his lips curved in a gentle smile. "Congratulations, Flack," he said. "I think this calls for a toast. Let me grab a beer."
"Damn straight, it does," Danny proclaimed. "You need another round, Don?"
"Yeah, okay."
It was merry bedlam after that. Danny brought him a beer, and Mac raised a toast to the next generation of Flacks, and then they were all clapping him on the back and hugging him and smiling. He hadn't realized how long it had been since the rest of the team had smiled until they did. Stella flashed him the first genuine smile he'd seen on her face since he and Mac had found her facedown in her apartment with one dead son of a bitch. Lindsay was happy, too, finally a part of something that hadn't had its beginnings in the time before she joined the lab. Even Mac was happy, or at least he wasn't quietly counting his sins in the corner.
They peppered him with questions and bought him too many drinks, and by the time he listed out of the bar at last call and began his unsteady trek toward home, he had exacted a promise from both Stella and Lindsay to take Rebecca shopping for baby clothes. Lindsay probably wouldn't, but Stella probably would, and that was good, because he didn't want his Junior dressed in biballs. Stella might even take her shopping for La Perla underwear to wear after the baby was born, which would be a nightmare for his credit card. But if she did, he'd bite the bullet and pay it because Rebecca deserved to celebrate, too. Fuck, they'd both deserved this for a long damn time.
He opened Junior's folder as he wobbled down the street. His eyes no longer wanted to focus, but he could see enough. He blinked owlishly at the picture and said, "Don't you worry about nothin', Junior. I got you, and I guarantee I'm gonna do it better than my old man did. I promise. You hear me?"
He closed the folder and hugged it to his chest. "I got you, I got you," he murmured, and started to hum.