Lucas wasn't normally a betting kind of guy, preferring to keep his assumptions to himself unless personally called upon to guess on something for a case or a game or a TV show scandal.

However, when he did bother to make bets, he prided himself on almost always putting his money on the more unlikely side of the argument, the seemingly impossible, on the underdog, because ever since he ran into a certain doctor, the impossible near always proved to be true.

Like right now, for instance.

There he stood, outside the latest criminal's dastardly hide-out (an apartment in downtown Manhattan), languidly watching as the demure old lady who'd happily poisoned seven innocent people was loaded into the back of a police car, trying not to smirk; it would be inappropriate to do so at a crime scene, but he was sorely tempted.

It got even harder to resist when a dazed Mike Hanson trailed over to him, shaking his head. "Told you so," he couldn't resist boasting to the flabbergasted man.

"I don't get it. I do not get it. How could he possibly know it was her from the type of sock she was wearing?!" Hanson demanded, throwing his hands up to the sky.

This time, Lucas couldn't control the smile lighting up his face as he clapped a sympathetic hand on the taller man's shoulder; the detective wasn't the only one getting shown up at his own job. "You know, by this point, you just sort of learn to roll with it. He's figured some pretty crazy stuff out with even less than that," he pointed out.

His eyes trailed toward the person they were discussing; Henry Morgan, modern day Sherlock Holmes of New York, in all his classy British scarf-wearing glory, was standing some distance away from the flashing police lights, his back to the admiring duo, seemingly in deep discussion with Hanson's partner Jo Martinez.

He was probably explaining how exactly an old wrinkled sock had led him to the killer's identity, and while Lucas was curious about how the good doctor had reached such a conclusion, he stayed back; he hadn't been kidding about the rolling with it part.

Lucas had been Henry's assistant for a few years, and by now he'd learned he was probably better off not knowing how Henry Morgan knew half the strange things he knew.

Even if it made him insanely curious and kept him up at night when he thought he'd finally let the whole matter go.

With a hum of resignation and only a little displeasure, Lucas turned away from the sight and swung his portable medical kit over his shoulder, intent on catching a cab; the party was over, the criminal caught and headed for jail. Luckily, there were no more bodies to handle. There was no reason to stick around now that the NYPD was here and the murderer had been taken away.

It took him a second to find Hanson hadn't disappeared from his side as he'd expected; the detective was following him absent-mindedly, as if he didn't even realize he was doing it.

"How do you think he does it, Luke? The guys at the office were debating the possibility that he himself was a serial killer in a past life, but I'm pretty sure he's already disproven that on several levels already. My guess was a strict parent making him learn a bunch of random useful stuff about everything, jack-of-all trades kind of thing, but even game shows wouldn't ask the amount of cyanide it takes to kill a cow. Seriously, how would anyone know that unless they've actually tried to kill a cow with cyanide before?"

Lucas' shoulders were shaking with badly restrained laughter when he finally came to a stop at the edge of the police tape surrounding the scene, Mike pausing beside him with an expectant but clearly frustrated look on his face.

"First of all, the only one who calls me Luke is my grandmother," Lucas coughed, unable to hide his grin when Hanson's eyebrow rose dubiously, not expecting the conversation to start that way.

"Second of all, as far as I know, Henry is not the infamous Cow Poisoner, so I can't tell you how he busted that Beckham guy from last week. Heck, I can't tell you how he busted basically all of the people we've busted together so far, because I don't know. I've worked with him for four years and this is the most we've actually spoken to each other about anything besides work, and believe me when I say I tried to get him to talk about stuff before now. I've run through the theories, everything from crazy relatives to black magic to vampires without weakness to sunlight, but nothing matches up or pans out or anything. It really doesn't help that the only people he ever tells anything is that Abe guy and Jo, because they never say anything either. They're like the Fort Knox of Henry Morgan facts and secrets. I never get anything from them aside from a bunch of stuff I already know, even when I ask nicely."

By the end he was kind of rambling and kind-of sort-of pouting like a two-year-old, but Lucas didn't care; he was frustrated beyond words, but at the same time he couldn't actually complain; everyone was allowed to have secrets, no matter how damn curious those secrets made him.

He blinked back to himself when Hanson glanced over his shoulder back to where aforementioned Morgan and Martinez were standing, talking about whatever it was super-secret best friends with a million secrets to share talked about at a crime scene just after they helped take down a villainous poisoner of people or cows.

"… You've really thought about this a lot, haven't you?" Hanson asked. It sounded rhetorical but Lucas nodded anyway.

"I've got nothing. Jo knows him best, and I worked with him for ages. It's not fair; I'm a dependable sort of guy! I can keep a secret for a friend!" He narrowed his eyes at Mike's skeptical look. "I can! Like my cousin Edgar having this thing for-!" He caught himself just in time, clamping his mouth shit before he could reveal the thing he'd been told in strictest confidence.

Mike smirked, and Lucas flushed red. "Yeah, you're definitely trustworthy," he said sarcastically.

Lucas heartily punched him in the arm, which Mike had the good sense to pretend actually hurt him, and they both laughed about it for a long while.

The rest of the night they spent in the really nice bar Hanson's precinct had basically claimed as their eternal hang-out spot always and forever, and they forgot all about their speculations. For now.

"Do you think it's aliens?"

Hanson slowly raised his head from where he'd been concentrating on the paperwork in front of him, staring dubiously at the bored assistant M.E. currently pushing his spinning chair back and forth with his foot. Technically it was Jo's chair, but seeing as she was downstairs with Henry, it seemed the man's actual partner had decided to come hang out with Jo's.

"What?" Mike asked, incredulous.

Lucas stopped his chair from spinning, sitting up and leaning forward conspiratorially. "You know, aliens! Like, maybe he got abducted when he was really young and they did weird experiments on his brain and now he can remember the most random facts nobody thinks about ever, and that's why he knows everything about anything even though no normal person would think of such things in the first place!"

Hanson glanced over his shoulder, half-hoping no one was listening to them, and was relieved to find nobody was around to eavesdrop; unless they were exceptionally stealthy, but that was another issue for another day.

"Sooo, you think Henry was abducted by aliens as a kid, blasted in the head with a brain enhancer, and placed back on Earth to do… what, exactly?"

Lucas' eyes were positively ecstatic now; he was on a roll. "No, see, it makes perfect sense! There's, like, a little transmitter in his brain that sends all these facts about humans back to the mothership and they reward him with odd things about science and stuff! That's why he's a doctor; the aliens need to know our weaknesses, so they have him cut dead people up and see what makes them die! It's the perfect plan for an invasion!"

Mike blinked slowly, and silently despaired that he was the one that would have to stop this train-wreck before it actually went anywhere important.

"You know what it could also be?" he asked, and Lucas bounced in his seat excitedly, and Mike felt kinda bad dashing his dreams like this, but if it kept the kid from spouting out Klingon at Henry to try and communicate with his alien overlords, he'd take it. "It could be an eidetic memory."

Lucas blinked, floored, as if he'd never even considered such a thing, and Mike gave himself a mental pat on the back from remembering what it was called so easily.

The younger man slumped over half way, face forlorn. "But it makes sense-!" he whined, face like a thundercloud, and Mike recognized that look from his kids' Terrible Twos.

With a roll of the eyes and a prayer nobody was looking, Hanson leaned forward to reach across and awkwardly pat Lucas' head, try to keep him from brooding the rest of the day. "If it helps, I still don't have a clue either," he offered, which only got a grunt out of the kid.

And there was the man of the hour himself, followed by Hanson's own partner. They both looked rather pleased with themselves, and Mike resisted the urge to glare at them as he jumped to his feet, looking anywhere but at the odd spectacle Lucas made slumped over like a ragdoll at his partner's desk.

"Problem?" he asked.

Henry's eyes practically gleamed with delight. "A man just got stabbed in the throat by a shard of glass from at least seventeen feet away with no blood on the weapon and three witnesses who all have different stories," he said, rubbing his hands together.

Hanson glanced at Jo, but her fondly exasperated smile was directed all at the doctor, so he pointedly looked away.

Henry began to stride away, spinning his scarf around his neck like a ribbon dancer as he went. "Lucas, come on! We have a murder to reenact!"

Just months ago, those words would've spread at least some alarm through the entire office, but as it was now not a head turned as Lucas popped up from his seat, grin eager and already chasing after his partner with a harried "Wait for me!"

Hanson sighed heavily, grabbed his coat and his badge, and wondered when he became the only sane one on this team as he followed after the crazies.

"Maybe… he has a lot of hobbies?"

Lucas had to do a double take when he walked out of the morgue to find Hanson leaning against the wall, pensively watching as Henry practically danced around the latest victim, listing off the cause of death and impossible things and theories of insane magnitude to a very focused, very concerned Jo, who hadn't missed a beat in his entire spiel since he started. Lucas had split off from them just to catch a break, and it looked like Mike had followed his example.

Even with innumerable amount of guesses Lucas had made in the past as to Dr. Morgan's secret origins, he couldn't help a bemused smile as Hanson flushed a bit in embarrassment. "Like, maybe he spends a lot of free time looking up weird stuff on the internet, watches a lot of those game shows nobody likes to admit they watch, that kind of thing."

"Well now you're just being silly!" Lucas scoffed with pompously, lightly patting Hanson on the shoulder as he passed. "He doesn't even own a cell phone! What makes you think he has a TV or knows how to use the internet?"

"No sillier than your alien idea!" Hanson retorted, flushing an even darker red, and Lucas had to run to avoid his wrath after he laughed.

It was not often that they gathered at Abe's Antiques to discuss case notes and patterns and murders, but it was hard to say no to a handsomely cooked meal and free range to discuss any sorts of odd theories as to what the latest baddie had done to commit the killing.

To be honest, the place made Lucas just want to lie down on a couch and never move again; Henry and his housemate Abe lived in an older part of town, in a building that must've been built the year the city of New York had been founded, in an apartment above their neat little knickknack shop with a great view of a couple of impressive skyscrapers.

It was a great place, and Lucas felt a tad bit jealous whenever he was reminded this place was not in fact where he lived all the time.

Still, the chicken marsala was great; Abe apparently learned to cook from his father, who'd been a fantastic chef who traveled the world learning from the best, so it was only natural that everyone asked for seconds until there were no leftovers for the fridge.

After dinner, the conversation moved from the terrace to the living room, where Jo and Hanson spread out the casefile they'd been working on and off all night.

"… if he died in the river, how did he reach the shore so quickly after falling in? His body would've floated a lot longer before coming onto a beach," Jo murmured. She had her game face on, which meant no interruptions unless you had something useful to add.

"Perhaps the killer fell in with him, dragged him to the shore, tried to save him?" asked Lucas. He didn't usually get this deeply involved with stuff, but he was here, full of chicken and doing his best not to end up in a food coma, so he may as well add his two cents.

"A good idea, but why save a man from drowning after you shoved him off a bridge?" added Hanson thoughtfully.

"There is still the possibility that whoever fell in with him didn't push him," pointed out Henry, and then things started getting very technical and speculation-y, and he wasn't afraid to admit he zoned out a little. Lucas was pretty tired – that chicken seriously hit the spot, he'd have to ask Abe for the recipe for his Ma later – so he didn't realize he'd fallen asleep sitting up until what felt like only moments later when he felt a warm blanket drape across him, smelling of fresh laundry detergent and entrapping him in the warm cocoon that he liked.

"Oh, look at him! Like a little bunny; adorable!" chuckled a soft voice off to the side.

Lucas was just a bit too out of it to recognize the speaker, but he knew it was a woman from her tone. He might've taken some offense to being called a bunny if he were more awake, but as it was he just snuggled a bit with his blanket.

"I imagine so, though I can't say I've seen a rabbit sleeping before," said another voice, this one closer, warmer, male, and probably affectionate. The blanket was tucked in a little closer to his body, and Lucas shifted, unconsciously settling into a position that would give his neck a terrible crick but felt heavenly in the bliss of half-sleep.

"You're good at that," the female voice commented, and Lucas wondered when his mom had gotten here.

The male voice held a smile, a hint of sadness. "It comes with the territory of fatherhood, I suppose."

A soft sigh. "Oh, please don't do that whole reminiscing thing. I know you can't help it, but looking so young and old at the same time is-"

"Odd?" finished the male voice, amused, and Lucas slipped back into unawareness to the sound of his parents bickering and not realizing how terribly young both voices actually were.

Mike felt kinda bad to be doing this, like some sort of creep without a life, but Jo and Henry were doing the lovey-dovey thing in the living room with an oblivious Lucas as their audience, and so he was left alone in the shop downstairs and he had the time – and the curiosity – to go snooping.

Poking your nose into places they often didn't belong was a part of being a detective, but doing it to a friend who invited you into their home was a bit stepping over the line – way over – so Mike limited himself to just the storefront and the pictures on the walls of the staircase, trying to find at least some sort of clue to the mystery that was Dr. Morgan.

There was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary in the store, just a bunch of old stuff his wife would probably kill to fill the house with and the register, which he pointedly avoided messing with.

The pictures in the staircase, however, were a different story; while most of them were of a younger Abe with a woman who apparently was his ex-wife and a couple of him as a child, only one was, in fact, of Henry Morgan; it was a lovely old-timey piece, black and white with Morgan standing side by side with a beautiful woman with a blonde hair and a wide smile. They held hands in the picture, grinning at the camera with some degree of surprise as if they hadn't expected it to be taken, the woman's head leaning just a little bit onto Henry's shoulder and his head leaning toward hers.

It was beautiful, and even in black and white, Mike could tell the tux and dress were for a wedding.

It surprised him, to see the good doctor who was often so manic and strange and so very, very different from everyone else; to see him so human, so genuine, so happy – the happiest he'd ever seen him, really – was like reality slapping him in the face, and he had to blink several times to recover.

At some point, Abe had appeared like a ghost, seeing what he was looking at so intensely and pausing, staring at the picture with the same melancholy he'd expect from a father on his daughter's wedding day.

"Who's this?" Mike asked. Later he'd berate himself for being so rude, but for now he just watched Abe shake his head.

"Henry's wife, Abigail," he admitted, and that floored Hanson for a second – because, what – but his hurricane of furious questions all died in his throat when the man continued, "They were married some time ago, but… she died a few years ago. He… didn't take it well."

"It's a beautiful piece," Mike blurted awkwardly, because depressing subjects were not his forte he couldn't deal with hidden emotional baggage being laid out in front of him, thank you. "Really well done. Looks like it came directly from one of those ancient cameras where the guy had to hide under a curtain to get it right."

Abe turned away from the picture with a bit of a wide-eyed look, flatly staring at the detective just long enough to make him fidget fretfully.

Then he burst out laughing so hard Hanson has to help him sit down on the stairs.

Lucas had imagined many scenarios in which the unflappable Henry Morgan finally slipped up, finally let out the Big Bad Secret of his past and his life before New York, finally trusted Lucas enough to explain who he actually was beneath all the dry humor and sass and fancy scarves that the rest of the world saw.

He'd envisioned it before; being called into Henry's office to have a nice nonsuspicious chat, overhearing some shocking tidbit of information in the lab, have one of his most outlandish theories be made into irrefutable fact that he'd later rub into Hanson's face with extreme prejudice.

The imagined revelations always ended in a good laugh, some bro-hugs, maybe a couple of beers or a cup of tea depending on the time, and everything put to rest and settled, the truth finally uncovered but nothing too drastic happening to their dynamic or ability to work together.

An easy, satisfying end to this chapter of the story.

Except, of course, this was real life, where nothing was like a shiny fairytale even when you asked nicely, and so instead of nursing a nice cup of chamomile and discussing things like rational human beings in an office always smelling faintly of antiseptic, they were out in the middle of a dirty alleyway littered with soggy fast food wrappers and reeking of rotting food and urine and blood, warm red liquid gleefully gushing out in between Lucas' fingers as he pressed down hard on one of the nastiest stab wounds he'd ever seen.

Jo had warned them.

She constantly complained about them heading out into the field on their own, with no backup to look after them and keep them safe. Lucas had never paid much attention to her rambling before, seeing as Henry could more often than not talk them out of dangerous situations as well as into them, and they were both capable young men who could keep things under control until the police arrived (not really).

He was really regretting his inability to listen now as he floundered one handed with his phone, the blood on his hand making his fingers slippery and useless. He pressed down hard on the wound determinedly gushing away, doing his best to ignore the pained sounds his partner – his friend – was making in the back of his throat as the pressure was registered and not entirely appreciated.

"Don't move," he instructed, far more shakily than he'd intended, silently cursing when his trembling fingers once again fumbled dialing the number. "You know that, right? You're not supposed to move, Henry. Lie still."

"Easy for you to say," came a groan, and Lucas wasn't afraid to admit he teared up a little at the sound of his friend's voice, raspy and in pain as it might be, "You've never been stabbed."

"Au contraire," Lucas scoffed, and mentally cheered when he finally managed to complete dialing correctly. "My cousin Marcy stabbed me in the leg with a pen once. It really hurt, but I got out of setting the table for Easter dinner because she had to do all my chores, so that was a plus."

He willed the phone to be picked up on the other side of the line as he pressed it in between his cheek and shoulder, listening to the dial tone absentmindedly as he pressed down hard with both hands. "I'm gonna get you an ambulance, buddy, you'll be fine-"

"No!"

Lucas blinked. He must have heard wrong.

"No? Henry, you're bleeding out! I can't-"

"No ambulance!"

"Henry-"

"Call Jo, Lucas!"

"Henry, this is no time to be making dramatic death speeches-!"

"Just call her, Lucas!"

Lucas dawdled for a long moment, indecisive about who he should listen to, his gut or his partner who may or may not be woozy from blood loss. Ambulances in New York City took their time getting places unless it was a major emergency, and they were pretty far from a hospital to boot…

Dammit.

Lucas called Jo.

She picked up on the third ring.

"Henry?"

"Nope, uh, this is Lucas. Hi Jo. We kinda have a code red situation going on here."

"What, Lucas? What's wrong? Where are-"

"Corner of Barley and 5th Street, the alleyway behind Jackson's pub," Henry somehow managed to gargle coherently and loudly enough for the phone to pick up clearly.

Lucas inhaled sharply through his nose, rapidly blinking back tears. "Jo, Henry got stabbed and it's really bad and ambulances can't get through traffic quickly enough and he said to call you and I don't know what to do right now."

A harsh gasp echoed through the phone, and Lucas' vision became blurry as he pressed Henry's once lovely cream colored scarf onto the wound, staining it red but staunching the blood flow nicely.

"A-ah, okay, Lucas, I'm on my way to get you. Henry will be fine, I promise, but I need you to promise me one thing."

"What's that?" he sniffled.

"Don't freak out, okay?"

Poof.

Henry was gone.

Lucas freaked out.

Mike enjoyed his lunch hour in the park a couple blocks from the precinct, sitting on the river front eating one of the greasiest chili dogs New York's street vendors had to offer, for once not stressing over a case or questioning the sanity of any of his coworkers.

It was a nice, peaceful moment.

Until one of the aforementioned insane coworkers popped out of the river.

Mike nearly choked on a bit of chili dog when the soggy head of one Doctor Henry Morgan bobbed to the surface of the freezing water, gasping and coughing and spitting out water.

Mike, after pounding his own chest and managing to swallow his mouthful of chili dog, jumped to his feet and ran to the water's edge, spreading his arms wide and demanding "WHAT THE HELL, DOC?! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH THE SKINNY DIPPING THING!"

"I was!" protested a very shaky Henry as he began drifting closer to the shore.

Mike cursed his own luck and shed his long coat off, preparing to help the eccentric maniac he occasionally called friend when it suited him.

Once the naked man had stumbled out of the water, Mike bundled him up like a baby and began rubbing his arms and head, trying to warm him up.

"Jesus, doc," he muttered, trying not to wince as Henry shivered so hard it looked painful. "Why do you do this to yourself? And how the hell did you get all the way out there where I couldn't see you?"

Henry's only offered a shaky grin.

"It's kind of a long story."

A/N: This. I don't even know what to do with this. I wanted it to be so much longer. And funnier. And better. But I ran out of steam, I have no time, and this was the best I could do. They don't technically find out here, but you can bet your butt they had one hell of a conversation after all this was over. I'm sorry if the shoddiness of this fic disappointed anyone.
~Persephone