Triopic 1
by firechild
Rated T
Disclaimer: Only the neighbors are mine.
Warning: Contains references to corporal punishment.
A/N: This is from Marie's sandbox again.
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I couldn't believe that this was happening.
So, okay, I haven't been having the greatest day.
So, okay, I haven't been having the greatest week.
Seriously--I didn't ever think I'd hurt quite that much under his care.
But today... today he actually made me take a nap. A nap. Like a two-year-old. And I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he meant by his 'or else' look when I tried to protest.
Short version is this:
Couple weeks ago, I was home on a down day (between cases) when the lady from 6A came knocking on doors, in tears and desperate for someone to watch her four older kids while she took the baby to the emergency room; I didn't know what to do, what to say, I didn't have a clue how to handle this. I offered to take her to the hospital, but she'd begged in Spanish for me to take the rugrats, so I agreed. It was... interesting. I kept them until nearly 3am, and I carried three of them up to her place and put them to bed for her, though I probably didn't actually do any of that right. I can say this about it, those kids took something away from the evening: they all know how to stand, turn, salute, snap to attention, and recite the alphabet in military phonetics (and no, I was not torturing them--they wanted to know everything about the Navy and the Marines, and since only one of them speaks a little bit of English, they weren't really expecting anyone around here, especially not a big white guy with a badge, to be able to tell them anything.) They had fun, and they're great kids. Cute, sweet, polite, generous. So generous that I took something from the evening, too.
Chicken pox.
Yeah, you read that right. Chicken pox. And yeah, I had it as a kid.
Turns out, that doesn't actually guarantee squat, it's just a matter of probability. And you know me and probability. We go together like, well, like Leroy Jethro Gibbs and a tofu/bean sprout salad.
Also turns out that chicken pox for an adult is a much bigger deal (well, at least it is according to Dad... and Ducky... and Brad Pitt...) especially when that adult has had a pretty little case of pneumonic plague.
Long (and messy) story short, I wound up going from the hospital to Dad's house (huge surprise, I know) where I've spent the last miserable two and a half days, still itching and hurting and wheezing and all that fun stuff, and I was sure that today, when I'd finally started to feel a little stronger, he'd insist on, er, discussing why he'd found out that my allergies weren't allergies after I'd passed out at home, been found by the same neighbor, woken up just as the paramedics arrived so that I could tell them to go away, been carted off anyway, managed to talk the attending into not calling anyone, and been in the hospital for nearly two full days, and Dr. Pitt had happened to hear that I was there and dropped by to check on me and then called Dad to ask if I'd been exhibiting any other relapse symptoms in the hours before my hospitalization. So imagine my shock when, on what had never been my favorite holiday because of some stuff that's not really important, when I was sure that I really was gonna die before getting the chance to see fireworks that had nothing to do with assault rifles or me answering to him for doing something stupid, he woke me up (okay, yeah, so I kinda did fall asleep... again...) and made me eat some soup, and then he gave me this stern look and gestured for me to follow him.
This was it. I was dead.
I followed him...
Up the stairs...
Through the attic...
Out the window...
And onto the roof. Turns out, there's a section of it that's almost level, tucked away up there, and he'd lain out pallets with lemonade (not hard, but that's okay--I have a weakness for actual lemonade, which I guess Abby must have told him) and water and apple slices with caramel dip along the sides. Once I picked my jaw up off the shingles, we settled in on the pallets and kind of made small talk, or as close as he ever gets to it, while we waited. I actually didn't know what we were waiting for until I heard a pop, and when I started to go into shooter defense mode, he put a hand on my chest and told me to hold still, and a few seconds and a couple of pops later...
Wow.
I had literally never seen anything like it. The sky was mostly clear, and here on the outskirts of the 'burbs without all the city lights, the bottoms of the few straggly clouds got painted with all sorts of colors. It was all so bright, and though he told me it was the Capitol 4th celebration, I could actually smell the tang from the explosions. I loved every second of it, even if I did have to keep feeling for his hand on my chest (where it stayed) and telling myself that it wasn't gunfire.
After it was over, when my heart was still pounding and I'm sure I was grinning like a total moron, he kept me from getting up, and we just laid up there, enjoying the breeze and looking at the stars. After a few minutes, I realized that his hand wasn't laying on my chest anymore--it was rubbing, slow and meandering, on my chest and my stomach, and I don't know if he realized it or not, but it was soothing not just my nerves but the spots where I was still itching and burning. I have to admit that I dozed off for a minute or ten, and when he woke me up, I couldn't see his face in the darkness, but his voice was a little amused and real gentle when he told me that it was time to get inside to bed.
I wish I could say that I don't know what'll happen tomorrow, since I'm pretty sure I do, but I don't want to think about that. I really am about to konk out right here, so at the risk of sounding like a total pansy, I'll just say that this night, this present, this totally free gift of light and sound and color and fire that lasted maybe twenty minutes, was so much... bigger than anything my dad could have put in a box with shiny paper, and it's sure something that Father had never thought that he could afford.
Maybe someday I'll be able to find something even a fraction as awesome to give to this man who keeps giving me all kinds of fireworks and gets nothing back.
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