Taken
Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: broken bone, and hc_bingo prompt: captivity. First Forgotten fic (possibly first slash fic at all for the fandom? Dunno.) Recognizable characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.
Tyler wakes to the cool, darkness of his loft, just as he does every morning. He yawns, stretches out, and brings a hand up to rub the sleep from his eyes. He doesn't want to get up. Not yet. It'll be snowing again, he knows, because it's supposed to snow on and off all week, just like it did last week because that's winter in Chicago. The loft itself is chilly enough - the effect of a lack of functional heating in his building - which is in direct contrast to the deliciously comfortable warmth that's seeped into the blankets he's buried under, and that makes the idea of getting out of bed even less appealing than it already is. As does the added warmth provided by his bedmate, pressed up along his side. There's an arm tossed lazily over his bare chest and the body attached to it rolls in closer in response to all of his movement.
"Alex," Tyler says, voice quiet and still rough with sleep. "I have to get up, I'm gonna be late."
"Mm," comes the muted response mumbled into his shoulder, which suggests understanding, but Alex makes no move to let him go, and actually tightens his grip.
"You're the one who told Russell to call me if she needed a sketch-artist," Tyler reminds him, "which, thanks, because the department pays way better than most of my freelance stuff."
The arm that's keeping him in place slowly slides away, enabling him to reluctantly climb out of bed. He regrets it the second his bed-warm bare skin hits the cold air. Alex sits up, too, though, and watches him gather up last night's discarded clothing, tossing his own clothes toward the pile of laundry in the corner and sending Alex's onto the foot of the bed. "You'll be back for the meeting, though, right?"
"Yeah," Tyler promises. "Hoping I can get a case file out of Detective Russell while I'm at the police department. Unless we have one already?"
"I've got nothing, but Walter might be onto something."
He shrugs, sadly, "I think we're all onto something. I've got a few I'm looking into. Not like there's a shortage of options."
"No, I guess not," Alex answers.
Tyler disappears into the small bathroom long enough to take a quick shower. He reappears a few moments later, fully dressed and with damp hair, and sets about shoving his sketching supplies into a messenger bag.
"I'm gonna grab a shower before I head back to my place," Alex says.
Tyler nods, as he slides his leather jacket on over a grey long-sleeved t-shirt, "you know where everything is," he answers, since this is not the first time Alex has stayed the night. "Just lock up when you leave."
"Will do," Alex promises. "See you soon."
Tyler grins at him as he makes for the door, his bag tossed over his shoulder.
Walter is tacking photos up on the corkboard in Alex's apartment. Their Doe is a teenage boy, maybe fifteen, blond-haired and blue-eyed. "Buncha kids found him in the woods behind a school back in 2004, but no one recognized him, so the police were pretty sure he wasn't a student there," he explains, offering up copies of reports that he pulled off the network. "Granted, those reports might be a little off, since it looks like Cujo clawed the kids face off sometime before he was found. Cause of death was an asthma attack, but he had bruises that the medical examiner said might have contributed to it. But, foul play or not, he needs a name, right?"
"Right," Candace agrees. "The report says he was found with an inhaler - no name on it, because then it wouldn't have ended up with us - but maybe there's something we can get from it."
"Clothes look pretty generic," Maxine puts in, looking over the standard blue jeans and the red and white striped polo shirt. "And no jewelry. But the shoes look expensive. Ironically, I think they're running shoes."
"You can wear running shoes and not be a runner," Walter argues, which is true. "The medical examiners report also found several different samples of dog and cat hair on his clothes, so maybe he worked with animals? In a shelter or something? "
"Or he could have had a lot of pets?" Candace suggests.
"Wouldn't hurt to show his picture around some of the shelters, though, once our DaVinci whips us up a less gruesome one," Walter says. "But I'm allergic, so someone else gets that lead. I'll keep checking the network."
Candace sighs, "If I go, I'll come home with at least one new pet and I don't need any new mouths to feed right now. I'll take the inhaler."
"I've got some contacts who can look into the shoes," Maxine offers. She turns to look at Alex, who hasn't said a word through the whole presentation of the case. He's leaning against the window, watching the snow fall on the street below, his arms crossed over his chest. "You want to hit up the shelters?"
"Huh?"
"Animal shelters, we think the kid might've volunteered in one," she explains. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just..." he shakes his head and steps forward, grabbing up one of the reports from the table."A little distracted, is all."
Maxine looks hardly convinced, but moves on, "Where is Tyler, anyway?" she asks. "We'll need him."
"Said he'd be here," Alex replies, trying to hide his concern. Tyler isn't usually one to be late, to not show up. "I can't do anything until he sketches, so I'll call Grace, see if I can get the whole file. Maybe there's something else in there," he says, but he has other reasons for wanting to call the Detective, too.
Maxine nods and turns back to the picture of the shoes, jotting down notes and pulling out her phone to pick through her vast array of contacts.
Alex sighs, tries to relax, but he's felt tense and off all day. He steps into his kitchen and pulls out his cell to call the station. He gets Grace on the third ring and she does not sound happy when she answers.
"What?"
He has a moment of hope where he thinks that maybe whatever witness Grace had for Tyler hasn't been cooperating and maybe that's why he's not here yet. "Is Tyler still there?"
"Still?" She scoffs. "Still would imply that he showed up at all. I had a very nervous witness to a gang murder ready for him, and he never came in. My witness flaked out while we were waiting for one of the department's regular artists."
That vague, tense feeling coils into a hard knot that settles in his stomach. "He told me he was coming in."
"Well, he didn't," she snaps. "That the only reason you called?"
"No, there's a case," he says, but he's starting to feel like something might really be wrong, so he amends that with, "but it can wait. I'll call you later," he promises and ends the conversation. He wanders back to the others, already grabbing his coat. "I'm gonna head over to Tyler's with the pictures," he says, leaving out the real reason because he doesn't want to worry them if nothing is wrong.
Walter passes him a folder full of copies and he's off.
The drive to Tyler's place is one he's made numerous times, at this point. Last night's stay was the most recent, but this thing between them has been going on for months, since just before he finally got Lucy back. But the drive has never felt longer than it does right now.
"C'mon," he glowers at another in a long line of red lights that insist on delaying his progress. His fingers drum anxiously on the steering wheel and his eyes dart around, tracking all of the cars and pedestrians around him with the vain hope of spotting Tyler somewhere. The falling snow stalls him, too, as the icy, slick roads prevent him (and everyone else) from going normal speeds.
Finally, finally, he makes it there.
Tyler's car is still parked in its usual space in the lot, but Alex has no way of knowing if it ever left - he hadn't noticed this morning - or if he left and came back, since they're assigned spots. It's covered in a layer of snow, but it's snowed hard enough to have had that effect since this morning. He parks his own car out on the street and jogs toward the main entrance. The elevator in the building (much like the heat) hasn't worked at any point in time since Tyler moved in, and if it did he wouldn't trust it to not kill him, so he races up the stairs to the eighth floor as quickly as possible. Tyler's loft is one of the two on the floor, but the other is vacant. The door is locked, just like he made sure it was when he took his leave this morning, and no answer comes when he pounds on the door.
"Tyler!" He calls. "Tyler, if you're in there, open up!"
He stops pounding, listens. He hears no sign of movement inside, and the loft echoes like crazy.
Alex wishes he had a key. Everyone has a key to his place, because they hold meetings there so often, but Tyler's place is usually lower on the list of meeting places, so no one does. He bangs on the door one more time and then he's forced to walk away.
He goes back downstairs and checks out Tyler's car. There are no readily apparently signs of foul play, but upon closer inspection, he finds something that's rather worrisome. Tyler's messenger bag, the one he'd left with this morning. It's been kicked just under the car and when he pulls it out, things get even worse.
Blood. There's blood on the bag. And there's blood on the pavement, under the snow that his feet brush away. It's not a lot, but it's more than nothing.
"Grace," he says, into a cell phone he doesn't actually remember dialing. "Something's wrong."
She shows up within ten minutes, accompanied by two uniformed officers and a CSI tech.
"I'm thinking this is why Tyler didn't show up," he says, reluctantly handing over the bag. "There's blood on it."
"How do you know it's his bag?"
"Well, I found it under his car, for one," he says, but that's not all. "And I saw him leave with it this morning," he admits, but only because he trusts her with the secret.
"This morning?"
"Yeah, I, ugh, might've stayed the night. He left around eight to go meet you, but if he never showed up..."
Grace stares at him, clearly surprised. But then she shakes her head and sighs. He's not getting out of this that easily, he knows. There will be questions later. "Don't suppose you have a key to his place?"
"I don't," he answers. "But his keys are still hooked to his bag. He's not up there, though - I left after him this morning, and there was no sign anyone tried to break in."
She calls the tech with the bag over and snaps the keys off of it. "Get that processed as soon as possible," she tells him, and then starts toward the door. She hears footsteps follow after her and she turns to find Alex just a few paces behind. "You can't be on this one, Alex."
"No," he counters. "There's no way you're keeping me off of it. I'm not waiting to find him." Waiting to find Lucy - waiting for the good or the bad, all of the endless maybes and what ifs that came with every case that could have been her - had nearly killed him. He can't do that again. And this? This might actually be a little bit worse, or at least it's a different kind of torture. Because he already knows that Tyler's been hurt. "Not again."
"You can come upstairs," she caves, but she manages to justify it with, "You'll know if anything is out of place."
He leads the way back up to the loft and waits while she fights with the lock - it's tricky, has to be turned just the right way, he knows - and even though he wants to rush into the room and make sure that Tyler's not here, he stays with Grace. And ultimately, it doesn't matter because Tyler isn't there, everything looks just like it did when he left the place this morning, and he still doesn't know what could've happened.
"There's nothing," he says, frustrated. He hates feeling like this, like he can't do anything. He hasn't had to feel that since he got Lucy back, and he'd hoped he'd never have to feel it again, but here it is. "Damn it."
"I'll go talk to the building manager, see if there are any security cameras that can tell us something," Grace says, when nothing pops out at her, either.
"Good luck with that, nothing in this place works," Alex sighs, thinking of the heat and the elevator and the locks. Why would the cameras work when none of that does?
She ignores him, and leaves him standing in the loft when she ducks out to hunt down the building manager. Alex should go after her, see what, if anything, the manager knows (certainly not how to fix anything) that could help them, but instead he finds himself thinking that he should never have let Tyler out of bed this morning. He'd felt weird even then, like he should just stay where he was and not move. It was why he stayed there after Tyler left, he'd been hoping that the feeling would go away. But it hadn't, only built and built as the day went on and now it's this heavy weight that he knows won't go away until he has Tyler back.
He must stand there, staring at the bed he reluctantly climbed out of just a little less than five hours ago, for longer than he realizes, because he's started back to awareness when his phone rings. It's Grace, and she's calling him downstairs to the manager's office. Shockingly, there are working cameras - two out of seven of them, at least - and one of them has caught a view of Tyler.
Tyler wakes to cold, dark surroundings, but this time it isn't in his loft. Everything hurts, but nothing quite so much as the pounding, pulsing pain that's split between his head and his wrist. He can taste the sharp, iron tang of blood in his mouth and when he does finally manage to force his eyes open, one of them is unhelpfully swollen shut. He doesn't dare try to move anything else, but he can feel the pull of something on his wrists (especially on the sore one) that suggests they're tied together, and he suspects his feet are bound, too.
It's hard to tell because the room is so dark, but he thinks he's in a basement, judging by the concrete floor he's been left on, and the beamed ceiling he can barely make out overhead.
Slowly, it all starts to come back to him.
He's surprised to see, when he exits his building, that his car is not totally covered in snow. It's only just starting to flurry, so he counts that as a win because it means he doesn't have to waste time clearing off layers of snow and ice. He moves into the space between his car and the one parked beside it and grabs for his keys, where they're still hooked to his bag, but that's when the weight hits him, slamming him into the side of his car with considerable force. The impact results in an audible crack in his arm that sends white hot pain flashing through him.
Despite the pain, because it clearly is not his biggest problem at the moment, he spins around, but all that gets him is the cold press of a knife to his throat, and a growled threat of "Be quiet," before he can do anything in his own defense.
The man, with most of his face covered with a perfectly innocuous hat and scarf, glares at him with icy blue eyes. He grabs for Tyler's bag, pulling it off of his shoulder and jarring the arm that's still throbbing with pain.
"Man, if you're robbing me, you picked the wrong guy. Starving artist, really," he says, eyes darting to his building in an attempt to draw the stranger's attention away from him (and also hoping that maybe Alex changed his mind about the shower and might instead appear in time to help).
But the man only tosses his bag aside. Which is... not good, Tyler thinks. He also broke the 'be quiet' rule, so the knife bites lightly into the skin at his neck.
He wants to fight back, everything inside of him is screaming to fight back because there are people around him - hell, Alex isn't that far away from him - and he should be able to get out of this. But then there's his arm, mostly useless as he holds it close to his chest, and the meager amount of space to work with, trapped as he is between his own car and the one that - he realizes, too late - shouldn't be next to it because the spot next to it is for the vacant loft across from his own. Nonetheless, he tries, bringing up his good arm to swing at the blade, to shove it away from where it can hurt him. Amazingly, he gets a firm hold on his attacker's wrist and manages to pull it away, but then the man's other arm comes up and hits him, hard, in the head with something and after that, there's only a hazy sort of darkness.
And, well, it's still dark.
He wonders why the guy took him. There has to be a reason. If you're going to kill someone, you just kill them. You don't take them, you don't risk being caught with them, unless you have a reason. He doesn't really want to think about the reasons. None of them are good.
Just like he doesn't want to think about how this ends for him. With Russell showing up to a crime scene and finding his body? Or worse, some stranger finding him and no one knowing who he is? He doesn't want to end up like one of the nameless Doe's the network tries so hard to help.
But then comes the sound of echoing feet on wooden stairs, and then a light flicks on overhead, blinding him after so much time spent in darkness.
The shadow of a man comes into view. He wears no scarf or hat now, and if he could see properly, Tyler knows he'd be able to make out his face - which is not a good sign - but right now it's all just blurry lines.
"You're awake," comes the same voice from earlier, observing Tyler's attempts to squint and shy away from the light.
A booted foot nudges him, pushing him from his side to his back, and then hands reach down to pull at him until he's sitting mostly upright.
"Why'd you take me?" Tyler manages, even though his mouth is all cottony dry and the taste of blood is still strong. He feels blood caked into his hair now, and all down his face as it thaws from the cold of the concrete. A look back down at where he'd been laying reveals a sizable puddle of coagulating blood. That is also not good.
The man ignores his question, but maybe that's good because Tyler's not so sure he would've heard the answer. Seeing all the blood - not that blood usually bothers him, but that's all his blood and there's a lot of it and everything hurts - makes his head spin and his ears ring. His mostly adjusted vision blurs out again and then it's back to the shadowy darkness.
Alex watches the tape. He rewinds it and watches it again. And again. And the whole time he's watching? All he can think is that he was so close and he didn't even know this was happening. That he could've stopped it if he'd just left with Tyler.
"Notice anything?" Grace asks him, hovering at his side.
"Ugh," he sighs, and plays it again even though watching someone hurt Tyler makes him feel sick. Sees the stranger's approach, the glint of a knife. Sees Tyler favoring his arm, shooting glances back at the building. Sees Tyler collapse and the stranger drag him out of frame. He lets it keep playing this time, and turns to face Grace. "Nothing helpful, couldn't see the guys face or any identifying marks."
She sighs, and drags a hand through her hair. "Alright, we'll send the tape to the crime lab, see if they can get anything. In the meantime, you get the others, see if you can think of anything to help, anyone that might've gone after him."
That's not what Alex had been hoping to hear. What he'd really been hoping for was a solid lead from the tape, but that didn't seem to be likely. He glances at it again and is surprised to see that the sliver of screen next to Tyler's abandoned car is vacant now, when before he'd been sure that another car was parked there.
"Hold on," he says, rewinding it again. The other car pulled away about ten minutes after Tyler's abductor had dragged him away. He glances out the window of the manager's office, which just so happens to overlook the parking lot, and notes that the spot is empty, which isn't strange because it's supposed to be. "The place next to Tyler's is still vacant, right?" He asks, this question directed at the manager who's still loitering nearby. He gets a nod, and then Alex turns back to the video, where he's frozen the image on a blurry shot of a license plate that was visible as a blue four-door sedan pulled away. "It might not be whoever took him, but maybe they saw something."
Grace takes down the plate and calls it in, adds on an "as soon as possible" with a tone that is not to be ignored, and takes the tape as evidence. "Go to the others. I'll call you when I get something back."
But she must notice that Alex is about half a second away from protesting that idea, because she cuts him off before he can say anything at all.
"At least go tell them he's missing. I'll meet you at the station, after. Maybe by then we'll have something to work with."
"Fine," he answers, and reluctantly returns to his car.
And even though all he wants to do is drive and drive and drive until he stumbles upon whatever asshole took Tyler away from him, he goes back to his place. He's not sure that the other's will still be there, but, it turns out that they are (after a drive that goes much quicker than the one that took him to Tyler's).
"DaVinci's done already?" Walter asks, when he reappears in his own doorway.
"No," he says, has no idea how he should say what he has to say next because it's not something he ever thought he'd have to say, not ever again. What should he tell them? That Tyler's missing? That Tyler's hurt? That he was a hundred feet over and eight floors up when someone put a knife to Tyler's throat and bashed him over the head?
Apparently, not saying anything is suitably alarming, though he suspects that that might have more to do with whatever terrifiedbrokenlost look has crossed his face, because the others all drop what they're doing and turn to face him.
"Alex," Maxine starts, a hand landing on his shoulder as she guides him to a table covered in pizza boxes and sits him down. "What's going on?"
He stands back up - can't sit, can't do nothing when there has to be something to do. Paces, anxious and frustrated. "Someone... someone took Tyler," he manages.
That alarms them the rest of the way, until they're all talking, all asking questions, at once. Alex doesn't know the answers to 'why?' and if he knew 'who?' then he certainly wouldn't be here. "This morning," he says, and "at his apartment," in answer to 'when, where?' Luckily, no one asks him how this happened, because he's already kind of blaming himself and he doesn't want them to join in. "Grace knows, she's running some things."
"Anything we can do?" Candace asks.
Alex shrugs. There's not much they can do here, with no information, no leads. "Any possible suspects come to mind?"
"I know he doesn't talk much with his family," Candace puts in. "But they're loaded. Badly planned ransom, maybe?"
He knows about Tyler's family, too. They cut him off when he dropped out of med school in favor of his artistic motivations. He supposes that could be a reason, but he has a feeling that that's not it just like he had a feeling that today was going to go wrong, even if he didn't know quite how wrong. "Anything else?"
"Maybe a case?" Walter's on his laptop, on the network site. "I get alerts when any of us post. He's sent a few messages, even posted a few sketches for some of the Doe cases."
Huh, Alex thinks. That could be it. "Let me see," he says, leaning over Walter's shoulder as he scrolls through recent posts. He's sent a few inquiries about case files, asked a few questions, but it's the sketches that stick out. All of the other things have other comments, too, other people offering to help. As far as Alex knows, none of them have been kidnapped. So that leaves the sketches. That's something that could cause a criminal some concern, if the victim they didn't want identified suddenly got a face. There's motive there. "How many has he drawn?"
"Four or five, looks like," Walter answers, picking out the posts.
This is good, he thinks. Leads are good. He ignores the part of his brain that points out that no one followed these same leads successfully before because all of those cases are still Doe cases and all of those potential killers have not been brought to justice. he won't let that stop him.
"Bring them up."
Walter does. The first is a girl in her mid-thirties, found last month in a car on the freeway, cause of death unknown. The second, an older man who'd been left in an alleyway several years ago, shot in the head execution style. Another, this one more than a decade old, was found in suit and tie in a fancy hotel room had been apparently been poisoned. Then there's a fourteen year old girl whose body was dredged out of the river a scant half a year ago. Last is a man in his mid-twenties, found rotting in a dumpster with numerous stab wounds, that one dated two and half years prior.
"The guy who took him had a knife," he offers, the image flashing in his head. "Look into that one, I've gotta go meet Grace."
Tyler is startled awake when a foot slams into his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs with a 'whoosh' of breath that leaves him gasping and winded. He eyes blearily come to focus on his captor, who's leering down at him impatiently.
"You know," he says, when he can finally breathe again, "if you wanted me awake, maybe you shouldn't have bashed me over the head."
"Maybe you shouldn't have poked your nose where it didn't belong."
It's one of the first things the man has said to him, other than the demand for silence made with a blade to his throat, and the scathing 'you're awake' comment from earlier. The man's serious, don't-mess-with-me tone does not relieve him any.
Sounding exponentially braver than he feels, he counters, "well, maybe if you hadn't done something you felt the need to hide, I wouldn't have had to do that."
A hand curls tight around his bad arm and that hurts enough on its own, but his irate kidnapper isn't done. He twists his hand and Tyler can feel bone crunching under the solid grip. He bites down on his lip to keep from screaming, but it doesn't work.
Somehow he stays conscious through the pain, which at least keeps him from getting kicked in the ribs again.
"You done with your smartass comments?"
Tyler nods, unable to speak when he can feel pain, in time with his rapidly beating heart, pulsing all through his body.
"Good."
He lets the pain wash over him until it sort of turns him numb. His arm is still useless - even more useless now - at his side, and that's not going to change, but he doesn't feel like his heart is somewhere in his throat now and he can almost think clearly again, and his senses seem temporarily sharpened by the adrenaline rush that came with the torture, in contrast to how they'd seemed dulled ever since the man knocked him out.
Like, Alex has to know he's missing by now, he realizes, when he catches sight of his abductor's watch. It's been hours since the meeting he missed and he's sure Alex will have come to look for him when he didn't show up. Maybe Russell will have gotten him there even faster, since Alex knew he was going to the station. He has to know, they have to be looking for him. Alex has to be looking for him.
He just has to hold out until Alex can find him.
"What do you want?" He asks, voice raw from the pain.
Grace has made a lot of progress since they split up. She's got the information on the license plate back, and got a match to one Julia Hale. Upon further investigation, Grace discovers that her boyfriend lives on the third floor of Tyler's building, and so she's probably not a viable suspect, but she is still worth interviewing if she left around the same time as the abduction. Alex and Grace head out to her apartment on the other side of town and find her and the boyfriend, Michael Alvarez, there.
"Oh!" Julia says, when she sees Alex standing in her doorway. "You're the one who always comes home with the guy who lives on eight. Ugh, what's his name... Tyler?"
"Yeah," he says slowly, surprised at being recognized. "That'd be me." He most definitely does not miss the look that Grace shoots him that suggests they're going to be talking about that. Soon.
"You're a cop?"
"Ex-cop," he clarifies, "but I still consult with the department. Tyler does, too. I'm Alex Donovan. This is Detective Grace Russell." Grace nods in polite greeting and lets Alex do the talking. "That's why we're here, actually, because of Tyler."
She catches on quickly, and asks, "did something happen?"
"Someone kidnapped him this morning, from the parking lot of his building," he tells her. "We were wondering if you saw anything?"
"The security footage showed that you were parked right next to his car and that you left not long after he was taken," Grace explains.
"Oh, yeah, I was parked there, wasn't I? I'd only stopped by to drop Mike off and there was someone parked where I normally park, so I grabbed the only open spot. Figured no one would mind, since that spots always empty," Julia says. "And I wasn't planning on being there long, anyway, but I ended up spilling coffee all over myself, so I went upstairs to change and I ended up staying for some breakfast, so I didn't get out of there right away."
"So, you didn't see anything?" Alex asks again because, despite all of those words, she didn't actually answer the question.
"I didn't see Tyler, no," she replies, then adds on a sympathetic "I'm sorry."
Alex sighs and wonders what they're next move will be now. They're running out of leads and out of time.
"Thanks, anyway," Grace says, and grabs Alex's arm to pull him back to the car.
"Yeah," Alex echoes, "thanks."
They're about ten feet down the hall when Julia calls to them. "Hey, wait! There was something," she says, waving them closer, "the car that was parked in my usual spot. It peeled outta there right as I was getting in my car." She closes her eyes, trying to recall more details. "It was red, I think? And one of those hatchbacks. And the first two digits of the license plate were 2 and 8 - I remember cause February 8th is Mike's birthday and seeing that reminded me that I still needed to get his present." She frowns and adds, "I don't know if that helps, but..."
"No, it does," Alex says, even though the chances of finding a car with only a partial license plate are slim, plus the car was probably stolen so even if they find it, it's unlikely to lead them to Tyler.
"I hope you find him."
"Thanks," he says again, and this time they do leave.
Grace calls in the tip, and they settle back into her car.
"Did the others come up with anything?"
Alex explains the running theory to her and suggests they go back to Tyler's. Chances are, whatever information he has on the cases he was looking into - sketches, files, his own notes - are probably there and maybe those can fill in some of the blanks in the investigation.
"So," Grace starts slowly, once she agrees to the plan and pulls away from their witness's apartment. "When did this start?"
And, they're talking about it now, apparently. He sighs, and says, "before we found Lucy."
"How?"
And, well, that's not exactly a happy story, either, but... "He was looking into cases, then, too. Trying to find Lucy - he'd been checking into things ever since Lindsay told him what had happened, apparently - and he found this case on the network, thought it might be her. It wasn't, obviously - thankfully. But, he ended up getting this girl her name back, getting the body back to the parents out in Joliet, and giving the police there some solid leads to work with." Alex's eyes are on the roads again, looking for any sign of Tyler or of the car, as he continues on. "Anyway, I found out about it, went to tell him not to pull himself into what I was going through - the unending cases that seem like they might be the right one - but he was pretty close to drunk already when I showed up. We started talking, about his case and then about Lucy. By then I was drunk, and I asked him if he wanted to stop volunteering with the network. He said no, that he couldn't not help now that he knew he could try to. And then there was more alcohol and well," he shrugs, "I guess it started there."
"And here I thought I knew almost everything about you," she responded, staring suspiciously at her ex-partner. "You've been holding out."
"Things change."
"I'll say. Greta to Tyler's about as polar opposite as you can go." She shoots him another inquisitive look, "does Greta know about you two? Does Lucy?"
"Greta knows, I told her right after we got Lucy back. Lucy only knows that I spend a lot of time with him. She likes him - the three of us went to the aquarium last weekend. There was an art show, a few weeks ago, too. We went to that. And he's been helping her with some art stuff."
They arrive at Tyler's building, but she's not done interrogating him yet. "And have you told them about this, that he's missing?" She asks, as they climb out of the car and head in.
"No, not yet. If... if we don't have anything by the morning, I'll call and tell them." Privately, he's kind of glad that this wasn't his weekend with Lucy because he wouldn't want her caught up in all of this, too. Not after everything she's already been through. "Come on," he says, moving ahead of her on the stairs to end the conversation. "We'll find something, I know it."
Tyler is staring blearily at the laptop computer that's sitting in front of him.
"You're going to delete that."
It takes him a minute to figure out what it is, but only because he feels like he's going to be sick and his vision is swimming too badly to make sense of anything - not helped at all when the man cut the zip tie keeping his wrists pinned together, as his busted arm had not appreciated the freedom of movement. When he can finally focus, he realizes it's the forgotten network's page, and that he's looking at one of his own sketches posted there.
"Why?"
"Because I said so," his captor demands, and the sharp knife is again pressed to his throat. "And the guy with the knife gets to make the calls. Delete it. Nothing else, or I kill you now."
His fingers are clumsy on the keyboard, and typing one handed is slow and awkward, as he keys in his username and password. Tyler briefly considers doing something to draw attention to himself - he's pretty sure that someone would notice, be they one of his group or the police - but the eyes peering over his shoulder at the screen and the increase of pressure on the knife keep him on task. He deletes the post with the picture of the blue-eyed, brown-haired, twenty-something stabbing victim he'd drawn just last week. "There," he says, the word slurred and quiet, "it's gone."
The laptop slams shut on the old, wobbly desk he's sitting at, nearly catching his hand in the process, and then the man takes it away.
"Who else knows?" The man demands, once he's stowed the laptop someplace Tyler won't get it.
"Ugh," he starts, because he's not sure how to answer. If he says 'no one' which is the truth, because it hadn't been a case he'd brought to the group, then his kidnapper has no reason to keep him alive. If he says that he told someone, told the group or the police or both, then he could be putting them in danger and that's not acceptable, either.
Tyler must not come up with an answer fast enough because the fist that slams into the side of his face is not the move of a patient man. "Does anyone else know about that case?" He asks again, this time louder, loud enough to make Tyler's splitting headache seem even worse.
He spits a mouthful of blood and glowers up at the man through his less swollen eye. "Yes." He decides. "I told my friends. We're a group of volunteers with the forgotten network, we look at Doe cases when the police have run out of leads. We try to give them names. They know."
This news, rather unsurprisingly, does not go over well. His abductor mutters some colorful curses and grabs a handful of Tyler's bloody, matter hair, pulling and twisting until his captive is writhing in pain.
Tyler steels himself, and continues on, "The hard copy of the picture is in my loft, the file's on my computer. It's been up for a week - plenty of people have seen it, could have sent it out themselves. You can't get it back now." This is not helping the man's temper at all, Tyler can see veins throbbing in the guys neck and he looks about ready to explode in a fit of rage. "They'll find me," he says, because he has to believe that, "They will, they'll never stop looking. Whatever you did to that kid, whatever you do to me," he says, "you won't get away with it."
The rickety folding chair he'd been wrangled into is suddenly kicked out from under him, and Tyler goes crashing to the ground in a tangle of sore limbs while his kidnapper paces, clearly flustered.
He lands hard on his bad arm, which makes his vision white out again as pain explode all over. He's going to pass out again, he knows, even though that will leave him entirely vulnerable to attack from his unhinged captor. There's no stopping it, though, not with the ringing in his ears and the way he can feel his heartbeat up in his throat. He's going to pass out and his only hope is for the team, for Alex, to find him before it's too late.
They will, won't they?
"Alex'll find me..." he mumbles again and again until it all goes back to the familiar darkness.
Alex and Grace spend a good ten minutes riffling through the piles of sketchbooks that Tyler has amassed on his workbench. Some are old, labeled 'for school' or with years that pre-date his time with the forgotten network. Others are more recent, from the cases they've closed together. There's one book with drawings he's been doing with Lucy, teaching her to shade or texture different ways. Grace happens upon a well-hidden sketchbook with drawings of Alex - some quick ones, of Alex and Lucy when they were all out together. Other, more detailed ones of a more intimate nature, done when Alex was on the edges of sleep, but only dimly aware of what magic Tyler was working with paper and pencil.
"I'll take that," he says, when he realizes what Grace has found. He tucks that book away and returns to the search, and finally happens upon what they've been looking for.
There are several sketches for cases that Alex doesn't recognize, save for the descriptions he'd seen when Walter had been reading them off. He finds one of a twenty-something, blue-eyed, brown-haired boy. "This one," he says. There are case details scrawled on the back of it in Tyler's rushed, messy handwriting.
Walter calls before they can start reading, and he doesn't even wait to make sure Alex is actually on the line before he asks, "Are you near a computer?" Alex says he is, and boots up Tyler's laptop while Walter continues talking. "You know that post I showed you, the one of Tyler's sketches on the network? One of them disappeared."
Alex is quick to go to the page that Walter directs him to, once he's able to get online, and sees that there are only four sketches now. "So someone deleted one?"
"Not someone," another voice, this one Maxine's, cuts in. "Tyler. It says he was logged in fifteen minutes ago."
"So someone made him delete it? Or got into his account to do it themselves?" Alex asks, urging Grace over to show her the timestamp by Tyler's username. "Can we track where he logged in from?"
"On it," Grace says, already dialing her phone.
"Good job, guys," he says, and means to ask them if they've found out anything else about the Doe case they think is related, but something on the back of the sketch catches his eye. 'Red hatchback seen pulling away from scene around approximate time of death,' one of the notes reads, 'License plate 28AC91D,' that's been scratched out and amended with, 'Police questioned suspect, cleared.' He totally forgets about his phone in his rush to show this new development to Grace, so she can call in the amendment to their partial plate and get them a solid name and address to work with.
She does, quickly, and then it's just more waiting.
"The police had him," he realizes, "and they let him go." It's not like it never happens. Some suspects are excellent manipulators. Others can't lie to save their own lives. Some just get lucky. But why did it have to happen on this case?
"He won't be getting away this time," she assures him.
No, Alex thinks, he won't.
They wait a little more than ten minutes before one of Grace's contacts at the police department gets back to her. The tech guys are still tracing the IP address, she reports, but someone's dug a name, Kevin Sanders, out from the old case file to go with that plate. From there, a quick search of the system revealed a record of several assault charges, both with and without a deadly weapon - often a knife, and a handful of drunk and disorderlies that paint a rather violent picture of their suspect. An address is an easy find after that, and Grace has barely written it down before Alex is bolting out the door.
He can't actually go anywhere, since they took Grace's unmarked car over here and she has the keys, but he's not wasting any time. She reappears just a moment later (having paused long enough to lock the loft back up) and starts the car.
"I suppose asking you to wait in the car would be a waste of my time?"
"You'd have to handcuff me," he replies, knowing that nothing could keep him from doing anything and everythign required to get Tyler out safely, "and I'd still probably find a way in."
She sighs, resigned, "Figured as much. You follow my lead, though, got it?"
"Okay," he agrees, as they wind through the streets of Chicago, slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the address they were given.
"And no gun."
"I don't have it with me," he says. He wishes he did, but he'd bolted out of his apartment too quickly to grab it.
About halfway there, the precinct calls back to inform Grace that the technical unit verified that the IP address does, in fact, match up to Sanders. It's good to know - now they have solid evidence that Tyler, or at least whoever took him, was there within the hour, could still be there - if they're lucky.
Alex is brimming with anxious energy that builds and builds as they get closer to the house. He's drumming his fingers and bouncing his knee and even though it's stopped snowing and Grace is going fast, it's not fast enough. Nothing is fast enough. Every red lights, every slow car, every pedestrian is another minute for the man who has Tyler to get away. And he can't get away again.
"Come on, come on," he finds himself mumbling, much as he did when he was racing to get to Tyler's that first time this afternoon, before he knew for sure that something was wrong. "Come on."
And it really only takes about fifteen minutes to get to the address they were given, but it feels more like an eternity before they pull onto the right street and even then, which is then followed by an additional forever before the car is parked and Grace is letting him in on the plan.
"You'll follow my lead," she says again, leaving no room for argument as they climb out of the car.
He nods, just because it will get him inside that much faster and they've already lost enough time.
She glances at him, clearly suspicious, as they walk up the driveway - past the evidently not stolen red hatchback (which suggests that their suspect is not of the criminal mastermind persuasion, and is, in fact, just stupidly lucky) - and to the front door of the small house. "Mr. Sanders!" She calls out, knocking on the door. They wait a minute, and then two, and no answer comes.
Alex paces on the front porch of the old house, anxious for an answer that doesn't seem to be coming. He can't wait for a search warrant, especially now that they're here. Tyler could be right inside and if the man who kidnapped him knows his time is up, then there's nothing to stop him from killing Tyler. No, no. He can't wait and he's willing to trust the feeling in his gut that tells him that he can find Tyler if he just does this. Those instincts rarely steered him wrong as a cop or with his forgotten network cases, and they haven't been wrong yet today, when it's come to Tyler.
"I'll go around back, see if-" Grace starts, but that's as far as she gets because Alex is not waiting. He's done enough waiting when it comes to rescuing the people he loves. With one swift kick to an old door on an old house, he's in, stumbling forward into a small living room. No one is in sight, nothing seems out of place, but he knows that Tyler is here. He just knows.
"Alex!" Grace is shouting at him, clearly very very very displeased with his unprompted actions that definitely violate her 'follow my lead' rule.
He darts away before she can haul him back outside and handcuff him to the squad car. He ducks down a carpeted hall to a dirty bathroom and a windowless bedroom, and then doubles back into a kitchen that seems to have seen even less use than his own. All are equally void of signs of Tyler's presence. But then he comes to another door off the kitchen that has way too many locks on it to make it anything other than extremely suspicious.
"Grace," he calls, quietly, but she's not in sight and he's not waiting. He draws the door open slowly and finds stairs to a dimly lit basement.
One step, pause. Another and this one creaks. He rushes down two more, and then pauses. By then he can see the pool of drying blood on the floor and that is very alarming. Down the rest, and there's Tyler...
There's Tyler. Bloody and bruised and yeah, that arm is very broken. He's lying unconscious on the concrete floor in front of a man armed with a knife and a frantic look in his eyes. Not a good combination.
"Sanders, right?" Alex asks, coming up short just by a shoddy looking desk and a kicked over chair. He takes a hesitant step forward, into better light. The man that stands, looming over Tyler, is in his early thirties, with blue eyes and messy brown hair that kind of reminds him of the boy in the picture that Tyler drew.
The man looks up, seemingly startled by the presence of someone else in the house (though Alex's entrance was far from stealthily executed). He's got a trapped-animal like look about him, with how jumpy he is, how his eyes dart all over the place before they settle on Alex, narrowing in obvious suspicion. "You a cop?"
"No," Alex says, as calmly as he can manage. "Used to be. Not anymore. My name's Alex."
The knife moves away from Tyler and points in his direction now, as the man turns to face him dead on, his eyes wide with recognition."You're the one he said would come, the one he said would find him."
"And I did," Alex agrees. "And I know why you took him, too," he offers, even though he only has a guess about what happened. "It was your brother, right? That Tyler drew. You didn't want anyone to identify him." There's no way the two of them aren't related, they look way too much alike. "Especially since no one was looking at you. The police had ruled you out, you thought you were free and clear."
Sanders is moving closer to him, but that's okay because that means he's moving away from Tyler.
"But then you check the John Doe page and see the picture and you know your number might be up. You... you had to take him. To keep your secret."
"Right," the man agrees, as though he actually believes that Alex understands his motives. "Right, I had to."
Alex is spinning him around, walking to his side, so that he gets closer and closer to Tyler while the kidnapper moves further away, back toward the stairs. "But why'd you kill him, your brother?"
"I didn't mean to!" The man shouts at him, suddenly defensive. "I needed his help and he wouldn't... wouldn't help me! We fought, and I... the knife... and... I killed him." The man squares his shoulders and stands up straighter. The desperate look in his eyes switches to a sort of icy determination. "I killed him. And no one can know."
And Alex has time to realize that this has just turned into a very bad, very dangerous situation, but there isn't much he can do about it when he's so close to Tyler and all alone. So when Sanders lunges at him with the knife, and it catches him in the side, there's not much he can do but try not to let him do it again. He grabs for the guy's wrists, to keep him from wrenching the blade around, and tries to ignore the pain until he can get the upper hand.
And he has to do that. He has to do that so he can save Tyler.
Tyler is trying very, very hard not to be sick. It's not even the pain anymore, he's kind of numb to it now. But moving, even thinking of moving, makes him feel dizzy and nauseous, so he does neither. He just lays there, eyes closed, pretending to still be passed out because that's pretty much all he can do.
At least until he hears the noises upstairs.
There's a loud bang, and then the muted sound of footsteps moving around overhead. The squeak of a door and the soft echo of shoes on the wooden steps. One squeaks, and Tyler freezes, doesn't even breathe because he's convinced that whoever is coming down will have alerted his captor, who has been standing over him, mumbling incoherently.
A few more steps down and then there's Alex's voice.
And that's such a relief that he almost risks opening his eyes, almost risks moving. But he can't pass out again, not now, not when Alex might need his help with this.
And Alex is talking, trying to get through to the rapidly devolving man who is definitely a kidnapper and probably a killer and Tyler has doubts about how well that will work out. The man moves away when Alex says his name and Tyler figures he's been mumbling his own quiet mantras a little louder than he realized.
There are questions, and explanations and Alex's voice is getting closer while his kidnapper's is moving away. He cracks open the eye that isn't swollen shut and sees Alex, only feet away from him and inching his way over, but something must have changed because the man, Sanders, Alex called him, suddenly goes all tense and determined where before he'd been frantic and out of it.
He sees Alex take a half step backwards when he realizes that this isn't going well, but that's not enough.
He sees Sanders stagger forward, that damnable blade curled in his fist as his forward momentum slams him into Alex.
The two of them stumble closer to Tyler, even though Alex seems to be trying to avoid doing that, but that's when Tyler sees his opportunity to help. He kicks out at Sanders' leg, which is just in range of his own. He makes solid contact with the man's knee, and that's enough to send him to the ground, writing in pain as he clutches at an obviously broken knee.
Alex falls more or less on top of Tyler, thanks to Sanders' sudden drop, but manages to scrabble off to the side a little so he doesn't aggravate any injuries. Tyler reached out with his good arm, a relieved "Alex," on his lips.
But, they're not out of harm's way just yet.
With the hand that is not blindly clutching at his injured limb, Sanders reaches out, the knife, red with blood, still closed in his grasp. In a split second that seems to take forever, Tyler realizes that the hit will probably come down on him, landing hard in his chest, but before he can do anything about that, or try to, Sanders' arm drops, as a loud, resounding 'bang' shatters the relative silence and echoes off of the concrete basement walls. Sanders stops moving, and the knife clatters, harmlessly, away.
He looks up, slowly, and finds Detective Russell is standing at the bottom of the stairs, gun still raised.
The body lies, clearly dead, between he and Alex, red slowly seeping through the man's shirt, where the bullet hit and empty, blue eyes stare up at the beamed ceiling.
"Tyler," Alex breathes his name in one exhausted exhale and it seems like a giant weight has dropped off his shoulders.
"Knew you'd find me," he says in reply, but it's then that he spots the red that's spreading over Alex's shirt, too, and despite the fact that his world spins off its axis when he makes the move, he forces himself to sit up and move closer, pressing his good hand over the bloody wound.
But, despite that, it's Alex who asks, "You okay?" He reaches up to inspect Tyler's head wound, carefully shifting blood-matted hair to reveal the wound itself. "You lost a lot of blood."
"You're not doing much better than me at keeping it where it belongs," Tyler counters, because all of his wounds have mostly stopped bleeding now. There's his arm, sure, and his head is a worrisome issue, but he's a little more preoccupied with Alex's freely bleeding stab wound.
"Ambulance is on the way," Grace tells them. Without either of them noticing, she's crossed the room and knelt down by Sanders' body to check for a pulse. She doesn't find one. "And, when the officers ask, you heard Tyler before you went barging into the house, got it?"
"Got it," Alex agrees. "Where'd you go?"
"I was doing logical things, like calling for back-up? Stupidly, I figured you might wait for me before you went charging unarmed into a hostage situation. Either that, or I figured you'd lied about having your gun with you and could handle yourself. I can't leave you alone for two seconds."
They all hear sirens, then, getting louder and louder as they approach.
"How'd you find me?" Tyler asks, using the questions to keep the both of them from succumbing to the blood loss as the rush of adrenaline starts to wear off.
"He made you take a post down, we tracked his IP. Plus, you had his license plate written down, so that was helpful," Alex explains. "Too bad everyone can't be that well prepared," he jokes, but shakes his head and reverts to seriousness. "Don't ever go missing again, okay?"
"I'll try," Tyler replies. "Trust me, it's not a very enjoyable experience."
Alex manages a half-hearted laugh that ends in a cringe, but he doesn't have time to respond to Tyler's comment, because there are police officers and paramedics clambering down the stairs with impressive speed. One medic double-checks that Sanders is, indeed, dead, but the others move to Tyler and Alex.
From there, it's a slew of questions that Tyler only knows some of the answers to - how long has he been here? how long has he been unconscious? Hell if he knows - and poking and prodding that seems to hurt far more than it helps anything. Alex is getting the same treatment, but things go bad when he just passes out in the middle of a sentence. And, well, admittedly, Tyler kind of flips out, but who could blame him? The medics flip out, too, in all fairness, and thus begins a mad rush to get Alex up the stairs, and out into the ambulance, and within seconds Tyler can hear the sirens as they wail away from the house. Without him.
His medics don't seem to understand that being away from Alex right now is kind of not a good thing for him, so when he starts to fight the hands on and him and makes an unsuccessful attempt to stagger to his feet, Grace steps in to catch him before he falls on his face.
"You," she starts, helping to sit him back down, "are going to stay still and let the EMT's do whatever they need to do."
"But-" he begins to protests, but she cuts him off.
"Alex will not be very happy with either of us if you end up more hurt than you already are. Keep in mind that you didn't have to watch him freak out when you were missing. Also, remember that this is not the first time I've had to watch him frantically search for someone he cares about."
That shuts him up effectively. "You know."
"I do," she says. "So be quiet and let them deal with you. You'll be on your way to the hospital soon enough yourself."
Tyler nods.
Grace sighs in relief at having talked him down and moves to walk away to the other officers who are waiting for her statement. But, she can't resists. "Nice sketches, by the way," she calls back at him. "Maybe find a better hiding place for that book."
Alex wakes up to the bright, warm surroundings of a hospital room. It's got that generically sterilized smell that all of them tend to have and so he knows exactly where is he before he even opens his eyes. If that hadn't been enough of a clue, the steady 'beep beep beep' of a heart monitor would have solidified it for him. What he doesn't know is how he got there because the last thing he remembers, he was sitting in that basement with Tyler, getting looked over by the paramedics.
His throat is dry and his mouth feels sand-paper rough, like he hasn't had a drink in days. Someone presses a plastic cup that's been half-filled with water into his hands and he drinks greedily before he finally does manage to open his eyes.
"Greta," he says, surprised to see his ex-wife, but the explanation for that comes when Lucy appears at her side. "Hey," Alex smiles, glad to see his daughter.
She hugs him, but she's careful of the bandages wrapped around his stomach when she does. He kisses her cheek as she pulls away and she perches on the edge of the bed, holding his hand in both of her smaller ones. "I'm glad you're awake."
"Me, too," Alex answers. "How long have I been out?"
"A little more than a day," Greta tells him.
"Tyler?"
She gestures to the other side of the room, divided by a half-drawn curtain. "He's been in an out of consciousness, the nurse told us," Greta motions to the door and adds, "and speaking of, I'm going to go find a doctor to check you over," and ducks out of the room before Alex can protest.
But, left with Lucy, he finds that he can't argue too much. "I'm glad you're here," he says.
Lucy stares down at the blankets on the bed, "I was so scared when Mom told me what happened," she admits. "But I'm glad you found Tyler like you found me."
He nods, and pulls her in for another hug. "I would never have stopped looking for either of you."
Greta returns then, with a doctor close behind, and sadly that means an end to the visit because the doctors have a couple of tests scheduled now that he's awake to make sure they didn't miss any damage caused by the stab wound. They've already had him in surgery twice for repairs to his spleen, which had been punctured by the blade, the doctor explains. Now that that's under control, they need to make sure there are no other problems.
So, Greta and Lucy take their leave, with a promise to come back once Tyler is awake.
And the doctor sends in a couple of techs, first to draw some blood for testing, and then to take him down to radiology. He goes, and silently hopes that Tyler will be up when he gets back.
Tyler startles himself awake with a warped nightmare of Alex's rescue that involved more stabbing and less shooting and way, way more blood than he remember there being when it really happened. It's not the best way to wake up under normal circumstances but now it's just downright painful.
The machine monitoring his heart rate is racing, and it only gets faster when he realizes that Alex's bed, on the other side of the small hospital room, is empty. That's an alarming change, but he knows that if he doesn't calm down, the nurses are just going to come in and sedate him and then he'll be trapped in his own head with unanswerable questions and unstoppable worries as a result of the lingering traces of that nightmare.
So, since he is alone and no one has come to poke and prod him now that he's awake again, he opts to take stock of his plethora of injuries, see if anything has changed since the last time, when he was only sort of awake.
There's his arm, the most evident injury, where it's been immobilized in a heavy cast, slung against his chest. It hurts, but not like it did before. Now it's more like a dull ache, though he suspects pain medications have helped with that. His face is sore, too, and he still can't open one of his eyes. There's a faint ache in his ribs, where Sanders felt the need to kick him awake, but it's not impacting his breathing, so there's that at least. Someone's cleaned the blood off of his head and maybe bandaged the worst of the wound - stitches, he wonders? - and he's thinking clearer now than he had been in that basement. There's a line coming over the bed rail that's feeding blood back into his system, along with a few others giving him other things.
He hisses in pain when he tries to sit up straighter. Apparently, whatever he's on isn't that good.
But, maybe he's not as alone as he thought he was because the entirety of the team, sans Alex, appears in the doorway. They rush into the room upon realizing that he's awake and aware and quickly surround his bedside.
"Alright," Walter says, a grin on his face. "DaVinci's awake!"
Candace and Maxine rush over to give him careful hugs and even more carefully placed kisses on the cheek. Walter offers him a cup of water and he drinks gratefully, before he even tries to speak.
"Guys," he manages, though it sounds rough and makes his throat hurt.
"We were starting to wonder when you were gonna wake up," Maxine says, perching on the edge of his bed.
"How long's it been?" He asks, though he's not sure he wants to know the answer.
"About a day," Candace answers, "Alex just woke up a little while ago, we heard."
"Where is he?"
"Tests, I think."
And, well, that's exponentially better news that the morbid directions his brain had gone in, left to its own devices as it was. With a relieved sigh that only kind of hurts, he says, "That's good."
There's agreement all around and then the team launch into an explanation that Tyler hasn't heard yet about what went on when he was gone, starting with the meeting he missed and ending with an abruptly dropped conversation about a deleted post.
"I don't think I've ever seen Alex so freaked out. He hadn't even said anything and we all knew something was seriously wrong when he came back," Maxine tells him, when they mention how Alex broke the news to them. "There was no stopping him."
"Nothing would," comes a voice from the doorway. All eyes turn to Alex, as an orderly wheels him back into the room, after a couple of lengthy tests and a lengthier discussion with a couple of detectives over his statement. He takes control of the wheelchair himself, even though it causes a twinge of pain in his side, and wheels over to the group. "We're together, after all."
And, well, that was unexpected. Tyler doesn't mind. He'd suggested telling the team a few weeks ago, but they'd agreed to wait until after the case they'd been looking into at the time had come to a close. After that case, Walter had thrown them right into another and that conversation had gotten lost in the chaos. As much as this surprise declaration catches Tyler off-guard, it completely throws the others, who all only manage to stare, blinking blankly, at Alex as the words process.
"You're what?" Maxine asks, her eyes blowing wide before she lets out a sort of whooping laugh and declares, "I knew it!" Tyler is not at all surprised that she suspected, since she always seems to be the most perceptive of their little group, and he's sure Alex isn't surprised, either.
"You did?" Walter asks, clearly puzzled. "Since when?"
"How many meetings have we shown up for where Tyler was already there, despite living the furthest away? And how many times has he been the last to leave those meetings?" Maxine points out. "And that certainly explains why three tickets were required for that art show you took Lucy to last month."
"Wow," Candace puts in. "Must be serious if you're hanging out with Lucy, too." And then the questions start, the 'when' and the 'how' and the 'who knows about it' of it all. Tyler answers most of those questions.
"Well, we're happy for you both," Maxine says, a smile on her face.
"Thanks," Alex says, "we appreciate it."
Walter, who still looks a little shell-shocked, nods in agreement. "Totally, boss, DaVinci. We got your backs all the way."
Before anything else can be said, a doctor appears and boots all visitors out, stating that his patients may finally be conscious and talkative, but that they do still need their rest. "We'll be back tomorrow," Candace promises, as they take their leave of the small room, leaving Tyler and Alex alone for the first time since this craziness began.
"So," Tyler begins, slowly, as Alex wheels himself closer to Tyler's bed. "Thanks, first of all, for realizing that something was wrong so fast."
"I knew something was wrong before it even was. I just didn't know what," he says, "I felt off all day, from the second we woke up. And it just got worse and worse as the day went on. There was just this knot and it wouldn't go away. It didn't go away until you were safe."
Tyler doesn't really know what to say to that, to something that sounds absurdly super-powery, but was undoubtedly helpful in getting him rescued quickly and safely. Whatever connection he has with Alex probably saved his life, and he's pretty sure there aren't any words for that. Instead of trying to finds ones that won't be good enough, he forces his muscles to shift until he can lean over and he reaches out with his good arm to pull Alex in a little closer. Presses his lips against Alex's in a kiss that hopefully manages to relay at least a fraction of all the things he wants to say, but can't find the right words for. "Thanks," he says again, "Don't know what I would've done without you."
Alex doesn't seem to want to think about such a scenario, because he kisses back with even more force, even more unsaid emotion, and his hand slides up the less-injured side of Tyler's face until his fingers curl gently into his hair. "Hopefully, we'll never have to find out."
Three weeks later sees both Alex and Tyler long since released from the hospital, with nothing but a cast and some scars left behind. It's their weekend with Lucy, but it's at it's end, as Greta's about to arrive to pick her up.
"You'll pick me up from school on Tuesday, right?" Lucy asks of Tyler, who always gives her drawing lessons after school on Tuesday. They've been tricky lately, with his messed up arm, but he can still manage well enough.
"Of course," he answers, "and remember to take your sketchbook with you wherever you can. Never know when you'll see something worth drawing." He wishes he'd followed his own advice this afternoon, when he'd arrived with dinner. He'd wrangled his way into Alex's apartment, carefully balancing the take-out bags in his good arm while struggling with the keys, but he'd gotten in. Once he had, he'd found Alex sitting on the couch watching some old movie and Lucy had been tucked in close against his side, sound asleep. He wished he could've drawn that. But, he hadn't. He'd kissed Alex as he'd passed and Alex had woken Lucy and the three of them had all sat down for dinner, talking about the school's upcoming play and the boy in Lucy's English class who could never manage to finish a sentence whenever her tried talking to her.
"I will," she promises, and she's already carefully packed it amongst her things.
There's a knock at the door just a few minutes later, it comes just as they're cleaning up from dinner. Lucy hugs them both goodbye and they exchange a few words with Greta before she takes her leave.
"Always hate it when she leaves," Alex sighs, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, the dishes momentarily forgotten.
"Yeah," Tyler agrees. "Me, too." He loves having Lucy around - she makes Alex ridiculously happy and she's getting into art like she's into soccer. But, there are benefits to being alone with Alex, too. He crosses the room, stopping just in front of Alex, pulls him into a long, slow kiss that makes him follow after Tyler when he starts to pull away.
His fingers fly to the buttons of Tyler's shirt, undoing them quickly before sliding it down his shoulders. The bulky cast gets in the way, and thus requires some careful maneuvering, but soon enough he has it off and tossed aside. "And let's try not to bop me in the head with that thing this time," Alex teases, gesturing to the cast. The other night, when they'd been together, Tyler had misjudged the added bulk to his arm and had nailed him with it. It hadn't been fun.
"Will do," Tyler laughs, dragging Alex's shirt over his head, too. "I promised to make it up to you, didn't I?"
"You did," Alex carefully agrees, unsure of just what Tyler has in store for him. But that question is answered when Tyler drops to his knees, his hands working to undo Alex's belt, and then his jeans, and "Oh."
Tyler laughs at him again and palms him through his jeans before drawing them down enough to get at what he needs. He licks a stripe down his good hand and draws it up and down Alex's hardening erection, earning a guttural noise from Alex that makes Tyler grin. "Hold on," he says, keeping his good hand in place while the casted one settles on Alex's side.
And then Alex finds himself surrounded in the wet heat of Tyler's mouth, his tongue working skillfully in time with his hand.
"Tyler," Alex says, barely a whisper on his lips as his hips buck lightly. "Come on, come on, come on."
Tyler shifts his hold to try to rein in the squirming even as he steps up his actions. His hand is slick now, moves easier over what he can't get into his mouth. Fingers curl into his hair, but that's hardly surprising because Alex is always doing that to him - he even does it in his sleep sometimes, gets his fingers tangled in Tyler's messy hair - and he doesn't mind. There's a slight pull, then a minute push forward, and a mumbled, "Sorry, sorry," from Alex when he realizes what he's doing. "Just..."
He looks up and catches Alex's eyes for a second before he drops his gaze to focus on what he's doing. He takes a little more in, and just a moment later there's another tug at his hair. This one's a warning though, and just a few seconds after that Alex is done and Tyler's left with a salty tang on his tongue as Alex hauls him back to his feet.
"Come here," he says, claiming another kiss as he shoves his hand into Tyler's pants. He tastes himself on Tyler's tongue and bites lightly at his swollen lips as he pulls away, dropping kisses along his neck while he works at getting Tyler off. It doesn't take long - watching Alex lose it usually doesn't leave him very far behind.
"Bed?" Tyler suggests, keeping his hands on Alex's hips as he backpedals them out of the kitchen and down the hall to Alex's room upon his agreement with that plan. He pushes Alex down on the bed and tugs his jeans off, shedding his own before he climbs on top of him, more slow, lazy kisses traded between them.
"I'll make it up to you," Tyler says, again.
"What?" Alex asks, "the cast thing? I think we're even."
"No," Tyler answers, quickly, just as his fingers trace over the scar from the knife that stands out as a line of freshly healed pink skin on Alex's chest. "For this, for saving me."
And, well, that surprises Alex, and maybe not in a good way because the last thing he wants is Tyler feeling like he owes him something, like he's trapped here in this relationship if he doesn't want to be in it. "No. You're alive and you're here and I didn't have to wait three hellish years to have you again, so trust me when I say that scar was a small price to pay for that."
"You're probably the only one who thinks so," he counters.
Insecure Tyler is a rare sight. In fact, Alex has only seen this once before and that was when he was explaining why he doesn't talk to anyone in his family anymore. "Lucky me, then. Except you're forgetting the team, and my daughter. They all care about you."
"You could have been killed. Then where would Lucy have been? The team? If you'd died for me. How would that be worth it? I'm just-"
And that's as far as he gets because Alex can't listen to anymore of that when Tyler is so so so wrong. He rolls, gets Tyler pinned under him and kisses him like it's that day all over again, like he never thought he'd get to again. "The two people I love," he stresses the word, one he's never actually said to Tyler, "most in the world have both been taken away from me. I got Lucy back and I got you back and I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost either one of you. Okay? I love you, that's why it would have been worth it, that's why it was worth it."
Again, Tyler is at a loss for words, blinking up at Alex and trying to wrap his mind around the idea of such a thing. He's not sure anyone's ever loved him like that. His parents loved him, sure, but not enough to let him follow his own dreams, to see them as something that could be useful like Alex did when he pulled him into the group. There was that one girl, when he was in med school, who'd claimed to love him but she'd cheated on him with his roommate, so... So, there's Alex. Alex who knew he was in trouble before he even was, Alex who stopped at nothing to save him, who walked, unarmed into a dangerous situation for him, who got stabbed and could have died for him. Alex who gave him a chance when no one else wanted to bother with some kid on probation, who gave him a purpose with the network and a sort of family with the group, too.
"You, too," he manages, even though it's about a thousandth of what he wanted to say. "I love you, too."
There's a contented smile playing on Alex's face. "Good," he says, his arms curling tight around the other man as he presses another kiss to his lips. "Good."