Tumblr writing prompt response for: "Hey, have you seen the..? Oh."
Abe believed his father was accident prone. The only reason he had lived so long was that he was immortal. Without that, Henry Morgan might have been taken out long before his first death. It could have been something as innocuous as a slip in a water puddle.
So knowing that about Henry, Abe shouldn't have been surprised to find Henry in his current predicament. The thing about Henry, though, was that in addition to being accident prone, he was frequently given to surprising people. Life could never be dull in the Morgan household.
Wearing his favorite "Kiss the Cook" apron, Abe was looking through his kitchen things in search of his meat thermometer. His kitchen was very precise, as precise as his cooking. He was making a big Thanksgiving dinner that would include Lucas, Jo, and Hanson's family. The Lieutenant had politely declined, though she had requested a piece of Abe's pumpkin pie. He was going to make sure she got it, too, but he had to finish the turkey.
"Henry!" he called out into the living quarters of the shop. No sounds anywhere.
Abe assumed his father was in the lab again, putting away anything too incriminating in case Lucas, Jo or Mike went there again. Lucas would probably love it. He'd want to do experiments on the turkey bones when they were done. Who needed horror movies when one had tryptophan-induced hallucinations?
"Henry? Are you down here?" Abe asked as he descended the stairs.
"I'm back here," Henry said calmly.
As Abe rounded the corner to see his father, he soon realized it was calm disguising embarrassment. It took a lot to embarrass a man who ended up naked in the water every time he died.
"Henry, have you seen the meat thermometer? You're not using it for one of your experiments, are you?" Abe asked.
"Not intentionally, no," Henry said, his left side facing Abe but the rest of his body hidden in shadow.
"Well, then where is it? I need it for the turkey," Abe said, not having the patience for his father's shenanigans. There were days he honestly wondered just who was the parent in this relationship.
"I think it's in this turkey," Henry said, looking away as he showed Abe his hand that had the meat thermometer stabbed through it and him pinned to the wall like a sick variation of a children's party game.
"Oh," Abe said, opening and closing his mouth like the proverbial fish. Then he shook his head. "I'm not even going to ask you how that happened. Do you want me to help you get it out?"
"If you would," Henry said, looking anywhere but at Abe.
Sighing as he helped his father, Abe said, "You know I can't check the turkey with it now. I'll have to get a new one."
"I'm sure the turkey will be fine," Henry said as he flexed his hand once it was free.
Grumbling as he got the first aid kit so he could wrap Henry's hand, Abe said that fine wasn't good enough. Fine was what other people did, not Abraham Morgan.
"Is this what you do to get out of helping in the kitchen?" Abe asked.
"You said you weren't going to ask," Henry evaded as he looked at Abe's handiwork with the gauze wrap.
"I might not," Abe allowed, putting the first aid supplies back into the kit. "But we have two detectives and one very curious morgue assistant coming over. You may want to have a credible story ready."
"Quite right," Henry said as he looked down at his hand and flexed it. "Shall we? Didn't you have to check the turkey?"
"Yes, I did," Abe answered with a longsuffering sigh. "Go on. Get upstairs."
Henry went without any further comment, and Abe put the thermometer in the trash. It couldn't do any other harm this day, but he'd have to get the trash later. He didn't trust Henry to do it because it could result in another biohazard-like stick. He heard the arrival of Lucas upstairs, so Abe knew it was show time.