Author's Note: Thank you Master Li, Piper Julian, WickedBluerose, gabriel42, and shmeeped! Special thanks to Soului, for showing me the ropes. I always appreciate the comments guys – I'm actually kind of embarrassed about how truly uplifted I feel whenever someone drops me a note. I hope you're all enjoying your summers!
Affinity Part 7
"Hey." Olivia said in the dark. The grey-black glow of the idle TV screen cast the edges of the nearest objects in silver shadow. The movie had wound to an end sometime after both of them had fallen asleep and now neither one could rouse the energy to find the clicker and turn the TV off.
Olivia turned her head. Her lips brushed the skin of his throat as she spoke. "Hey. What time is it?"
He couldn't see the clock from this angle. The apartment was very dark.
"Late." Olivia sighed. She was warm and heavy. He felt strangely lethargic. "I should go." Liv said, but she didn't move. Her hand found the groove of his ribs underneath his T-shirt and she drew idle patterns there. "I should go." She said again, but she didn't mean it. What did she mean?
"You should stay." Toby said.
Liv chuckled, low and sweet. She had a nice laugh. "Or I could stay. Took you long enough."
"Mmmmm."
Liv raised her head and pressed a kiss to the point of his chin. She bypassed his mouth and pressed a second to the end of his nose. "You gonna make me sleep on the couch?"
He could fall into her eyes, here in the dark. He shook his head.
Olivia rewarded him with a kiss on the mouth.
They were half-way through the second Tremors (Which Toby, citing good taste, had never seen before and Oz had wacked him over the head with a couch pillow and waxed poetic about film-snobbery sucking all the good stuff out of modern film-making because, honestly – Tremors pretty much was the only movie he and his cousins had ever been able to agree upon at those interminable family reunions his folks used to drag him to once a year when he was a kid; it was just that awesome. Then, of course, they had to go rent all four of them because Oz was determined to make Toby realize just how great the films really were) when Toby suddenly decided he needed a breath of fresh air.
"I can't stop thinking about things." Toby muttered, and went out the window and up the fire-escape without even waiting for Oz.
Oz cursed. He cursed Toby for being a broody, moody, fretful mutant; He cursed Toby for his sense of dramatics because – and it didn't matter how hard Toby tried to deny this, it was darn well true and Oz had the stories to prove it – Toby was a drama queen; He cursed Toby for taking the freaking fire-escape and not the stairs like a normal person would have done. Seriously. They weren't teenagers anymore. Climbing through windows and up super narrow stairs with the added torture of being able to see through them was not fun.
Oz got halfway out the window then decided he wasn't going to do it. Nu uh. No way.
He hauled himself back into the apartment (and it wasn't an effort. It wasn't), plopped back down on the couch, and thought really loudly, I am watching the rest of this movie. If you're not down here by the end of it, I'm coming up there.
Oz paused and listened. There was no answer, of course.
Don't make me come up there.
Then, just because Toby had to be totally temperamental, Oz couldn't get into the rest of the movie. Instead, he sat worrying over what Toby was worrying over.
Oz tried another tactic.
They're breeding! The Graboids are breeding!
Ooooohh, man! Burt shot the car! Total over kill, but totally worth it. You've got to see this.
Boom!
C'mon Toby, really? Are you really gonna sit up there all day and miss this?
Can you even hear me?
Finally the credits rolled and Oz dug the clicker out from under the couch cushions and turned the TV off. Oz got up and fetched the beer out of the fridge. He found Toby's cooler and filled it with ice from the dispenser. He loaded the whole thing up and was nearly out the door before he thumped the cooler back on the floor and stood there, thinking.
Damn.
Damn!
Oz went back into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He stood over the kitchen sink and stared out the window. A woman on the street below walked a trio of big, black dogs. A couple crossed the street on the other side. They stopped in front of a shop window and examined the menu posted behind the glass. Two young boys sped past on skateboards.
Oz poured the water down the drain, placed the glass in the sink, shored up his nerves, and went up to the roof.
He made one quick stop at Toby's bathroom cabinet first.
Toby was eleven when Ray first met him. Toby had been referred to him by another psychiatrist and Toby's caseworker had shown up at Ray's office five consecutive days in row to get Ray to take the case. The woman was damn persistent. Ray was impressed, not that he told her that. Not many people could out-glare his secretary.
Ray was not a child psychiatrist. He wasn't even working in the field. Ray did primarily theoretical work and he was based out of the university. His few remaining cases were holdovers from his field days. He wasn't looking for new patients.
Toby's file was as a thick as War and Peace.
Toby Logan was severely autistic; no, it was an extreme case of Post Traumatic Stress; no, it was an unspecified Pervasive Developmental Disorder; no, it was early onset schizophrenia; no, it was selective mutism; God only knew what was wrong with Toby Logan.
He had been in seven foster homes. Seven. The kid was eleven years old.
His case worker couldn't keep him in a place. Even the places with trained care-workers eventually found the boy overwhelming. Nobody knew what to do with him.
"Look," the case worker said when Ray finally agreed to have lunch with her – her name was Tara Grenier - and let her talk him into taking the boy on. "Just meet him. A couple times a month. Tell me what you think." She grimaced. "Everybody's got a theory and nothing ever quite pans out. I can't do anything for him anymore. We don't have any resources left that will fit him and if I don't make something work, I'm going to have to shuffle him down the system." She gave him a hard stare. "That's Never Never Land, in case you weren't sure."
Tara stabbed her salad with her fork and moved it around her plate. "Smithe, his last psych, tells me you're cutting edge. Says you're working on some pretty advanced stuff, stuff that normally doesn't filter down into the field. Now," a limp lettuce leaf was flung across the table and Ray pretended not to see it. Tara kept talking determinedly, "I don't pretend to know what that entails, but if it will help Toby, and you need some case work, then I think we can work out something mutually beneficial."
Tara Grenier was far too used to wheeling and dealing on behalf of her young clients. Ray didn't need a case study. He could spare a couple hours.
"I'll meet him," Ray told her. "Two hours, on Wednesday. But," he held up a cautionary finger, "That's not an assurance that I'll take him on full time. Two hours isn't even enough time to really, properly diagnose someone, but I can give you my impressions and I can steer you towards someone who might be better able to help him."
Tara sighed and pushed her plate aside, untouched. "That's more than most will give," she conceded. "What time should I bring him?"
Of course, when Ray met him, Toby was nothing like his file.
"So." Oz thumped the cooler down between them and kicked the extra lawn chair that lived on the roof into shape beside Toby.
Toby stared up at the clouds passing over head.
Oz dumped his prize from the bathroom cabinet on Toby's stomach. "Put that on before you turn into a lobster." Then Oz gave Toby the fish eye until he rolled up his shirt sleeves and started spraying on the sunscreen.
Oz opened a beer when Toby finished, passed it to Toby, opened one for himself, and flopped out on the chair.
They drank in silence.
The clouds drifted by.
"That one looks kind of like my aunt. Did I ever tell you that story about the time she went to a symposium down in the states with some of her girlfriends? One of her girlfriends got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and clogged the toilet. She tried to turn the water off but the handle for the valve came off in her hand so she had to call down to front desk. Of course, all the girls were up by then so they all saw the poor guy arrive at the door with a toilet plunger. He said the hotel wouldn't let the guests have it and he had to plunge the toilet himself. So this kid wades into that bathroom and starts plunging the toilet and my aunt's friend realizes she's going to have to tip the guy. Only, nobody has any cash. Between the lot of them, they had twelve pennies and a dime."
This story got Oz chuckling every time and he had to take a moment to breathe.
"My aunt told her not to do it – it'd be even worse to tip the guy in pennies then not at all. But Lena – her friend – said she couldn't not tip the guy after he had to come up there in the middle of the night and plunged somebody else's toilet. So he finishes plunging the toilet and mops up all the flooded water and promises to send up more towels in the morning and Lena thanks the guy and tips him twelve pennies and a dime."
Oz grinned up at the clouds and felt darned pleased with the world. It wasn't a bad world when funny things like that could happen in it.
"I bet the poor kid told the story a different way." Toby's eyes crinkled at the corner.
"Oh, I bet he did." Oz toasted the sky, "But my way is better."
They finished off their beers and Oz cracked open two more.
"I've never been to the states." Toby mused. "Never been out of Canada, actually. Ray rented a cabin once, out in Newfoundland. It was out of town and there was nothing there but storms and ocean. I'd lie up at nights and listen to the waves crash against the shore. The amazing thing was, I couldn't hear anything else. Just that. Just the water and the seagulls and the wind. I'd never heard anything like that, before."
Oz nodded. He could picture what Toby was saying.
"I like the ocean, Oz. I like the storms and the rain and the smell of it. Been a while since I've seen it."
That other cloud kind of looked like a mushroom growing out of a hat.
Oz loved his best friend but he had just been kidnapped by a psycho, gun-wielding, nut job, too. He kind of wanted to spend time with his family: eating dinner, watching movies, assuring the whole crazy lot of them he was all right.
Toby had very, very blue eyes. They were kind of freaky, actually.
Oz sighed. "We do have a whole week off." He said. "You could go somewhere. Somewhere quiet. See the ocean."
Toby looked away. "I might just do that," he said. Then he pointed upward. "Hey, see that? That one kind of looks like a mushroom growing out of a hat."
Oz suddenly decided he had a real hankering to see the ocean.
Toby Logan was guided forcibly into Ray's office by his elbow. Both hands were clamped tightly over the boy's ears and his eyes were squeezed shut.
He sat when the case worker pushed him into a chair and didn't look at Ray.
Ray thanked Tara and told her to come back in a couple hours. He sat down across from Toby and looked at the boy.
The boy had dark hair and very fair skin. He'd probably freckle if he got out in the sun more. There was blood under his nails, Ray noted, but Ray couldn't see a worry-itch anywhere visible. The corners of his mouth and eyes were drawn white, like he was in real, physical pain. Ray wanted to reach out, and draw the boy's hands away from his ears but Ray's training held him in place. He wondered what colour the boy's eyes were.
"Blue," Toby said and opened his eyes. "And my name's Toby, not Boy."
"Don't worry, sweetheart. Just look at me." Alisha Carr was at the head of the gurney; her partner was driving from the back. They rushed through the emergency doors with the practiced scramble of experienced EMT's.
"No, don't look that way; look right here. I want to see your pretty brown eyes."
The nursing staff rushed to take the gurney from the two ambulance workers.
"There they are. Now, these nurses are going to take you to a hospital bed and Dr..." Carr looked up and saw Olivia on duty, "Dr. Fawcett is going to fix you right up. Okay?"
The nurses took over the gurney and the two EMT's fell back. Olivia lingered with them a moment.
"Fuckin' Pitt Bull." Carr scrubbed at her forehead with the back of her hand. "Fuckin' Pitt Bull whose fuckin' owner was more worried about her dog than the kid whose face it'd just ripped off. That little boy's gonna have scars for the rest of his life."
"I'll do what I can." Olivia promised, and Dr. Fawcett rushed into the fray.
One hundred and twenty three stitches outside and thirty-two inside later, Dr. Fawcett sent the worried parents into the private room where their little boy was sleeping. She told Dr. Erwitz she was taking a break and hid to the staff lounge.
Olivia hated cases like that. It was so unnecessary. If somebody had put a little more effort into socializing the animal, if somebody had made sure it wouldn't ever have access to children, if somebody was just a little more conscientious...
Well. The world didn't run according to Olivia Fawcett.
The nurse Olivia had spoken to about LaPaige at the beginning of her shift - Frieda Mayer – slipped into the break room. She poured herself a glass of water and leaned indolently against the sink, watching Olivia.
"I'm off." She said when she'd finished the water. "Just thought I'd let you know: LaPaige's fever has gone up a couple notches since the start of your shift. He's not responding well to the antibiotics." She shook her head. "Don't think anybody'd give a damn about a scumbag like that anyway, but..."
"It's not our job to decide that." Olivia snapped. "It's our job to give him every possible chance to pull through."
"Hold your horses, missy. I was getting there." Mayer really did have a smart-tastic way about her. "But...if LaPaige doesn't pull through, that's going to cause all sorts of problems for your boy Logan. So." She shrugged. "Fingers crossed." She plunked the glass carelessly in the sink and sassed out the door.
Olivia huffed at her retreating backside.
Liv did not even want to begin contemplating what kind of problems LaPaige's death (if he died...there was a whole myriad of other issues if he lived) might cause Toby. It would be source material for Toby's angst for years to come. Would there be legal issues? Liv didn't know. She could probably call Marks if she really wanted a good idea of the possibilities, but Liv hadn't quite decided if she wanted those worries on her plate just yet. Then there was Toby's secret...
Liv sighed. She wouldn't call Toby about LaPaige just yet. She'd see what way it was going to go first. Then she'd let him know.
"You don't have to do this."
"Yes I do." Oz snatched the lap top out of Toby's hands and booted it up.
"No, really." Toby said. "You wanted to spend time with your family, and relax, and hang out in familiar old places."
"Read my mind." Toby's password hint was: Cnd. wolf in Chicago. Really, Toby? Really? Oz typed in Diefenbaker and cleared the password page. "Read my mind, Toby." Oz repeated. "What does it say?"
"You're cranky." Toby said immediately. "You were looking forward to sleeping in your own bed for a week with no alarm clock."
"Well, that." Oz rolled his eyes. "What else?"
Toby goggled at Oz like a guppy. Oz ignored him and ran a search on isolated holiday cabins in Newfoundland. Okay, here was one on four acres of land...few! Eight hundred dollars a week. Shit.
Toby was taking too darn long to answer. "What else?" Oz insisted.
" People get annoyed sometimes. They get pissed off and they think bad thoughts and they don't always mean it."
"Huh." There wasn't much else coming up. Maybe they could go north instead? "You know a lot about that, Toby?"
"Yeah," Toby said. "Doesn't matter how much you like someone. Sometimes they rub you the wrong way and you need a little break sometimes."
Oz stopped and thought about that for a moment. He looked up at Toby. "What do you do when somebody needs a little space?"
Toby looked uncomfortable. He worried at an itch in the crook of his elbow. "Back off, I guess."
"See that, right there." Oz wagged his finger triumphantly at his friend. "That proves you were never properly socialized. You don't just back off. People don't just back off. Most people don't have a clue when they're irritating someone and they'll just keep on irritating that someone until that someone gets over it. It's a good thing you have me to tell you these things."
It was, apparently, the middle of the two months of tourist season granted Newfoundland. If ever Oz had wanted to go look at a giant rock, now was the time.
"Now family – and best friends, of course – can read you well enough to tell when you're irritated. Unfortunately, they don't care. They will ultimately love you more than you can irritate them."
Oz settled on a place he liked, and spun the computer to show Toby the picture. "We're going to need more than a week off work." He said.
Toby looked at the picture. He rubbed the mouse pad and clicked through a few more images. "So you don't mind going?"
"No, Toby." Oz said, like he was talking to someone who was being deliberately slow. "I want to go. We'll go on holiday. Fresh air! No smog! Not a single Starbucks for miles and miles around." Oz paused and thought about that. "Oh, God."
The by-now habitual note on the writing: So, I jumped timelines with this one. For some reason, I feel a lot more comfortable with Ray when Toby's a kid. Huh. However, I'm not entirely comfortable with the holiday idea...should I step out of location for a bit? I've got two possibilities lined up and both are the scenic route to my intended destination (figures the map went out the window at the first opportunity). Let me know what you think of the view!
