'Time to hit the hay, isn't it, my faithful companion?'

Meredeth said it to Arturo as she fixed herself a cup of tea along with a plate of cheese, crackers and fruit. She'd had the house to herself for the night; Esposito had told her that morning he'd be taking his buddy Gil Mazzara out for some drinks to celebrate the good news of his wife being pregnant. With no other plans made, she'd indulged in a long hot bath and spent her boyfriend-free night working on the first chapters of the next Lady Hawk story.

She'd decided to give her leading lady - Tabitha Stroud by day, Lady Hawk by night - a male companion in the form of Sergeant Tonio Uccello, a double-agent in the mafia's band of bought cops. Despite the fan-fiction writers who dreamed up various tales that Tabitha's co-worker Joshua Sunder was already her lover, Meredeth had a different idea in mind. She hadn't ever planned on giving Tabitha a boyfriend, but after Esposito had come into her life, she thought her semi-fictional counterpart deserved some happiness too. Of course, Tabitha's relationship with a cop would be far more dramatic than her own. The two of them held each other to the bargain that they talked through things instead of letting it stay bottled up: Tonio, on the other hand was a cop on the take turned mole dating a city official who moonlighted as a vigilante one-woman army.

Now, with a chapter out of the latest J.D. Robb novel keeping her company, she'd settled into her comfy bed when Arturo sat up suddenly, looking around like he'd heard a noise. Meredeth's hand paused on the page, one going to the paring knife sitting on the edge of the snack plate. It was a safe neighbourhood but every so often, she knew there were jokers who liked to sniff around and she knew the paring knife wouldn't do a lot of damage but a few pokes into soft flesh with it would give her enough time to get out of the house. Her breath whooshed out when she saw Arturo flop back down, the moment passing only for a moment when he got up and trotted downstairs to the door, like he was expecting someone to walk through in a few seconds.

'What are you doing, you silly animal?' she mumbled, getting out of bed and following him down the stairs. She stopped short when she saw Esposito standing by the door, scratching Arturo behind the ears with one hand while supporting a very wobbly-on-the-pins Gil Mazzara. He had a hand braced on the newel post as if he needed the inanimate object to help steady his balance and was mumbling half to Esposito, half to himself.

'Javi? What are you doing here?'

At the sound of Meredeth's voice, both men turned to look up the stairs; Gil blinked like bugs were swarming his face as he tried to focus on her face. 'Hey, Mere. You look pretty.'

'Are you...are you drunk?'

'No, just had a few with my boy Javier. You're not drunk are you?' he asked when she continued to stare at him in confusion.

'Who do you think drove you here?' Esposito stumbled a little under Gil's drunken weight; though they were the same height Gil easily had forty pounds on Esposito in body mass. 'Mere, give me a hand, will you?'

Meredeth got her feet to unplant themselves from the stairs and went to him, smelling the ripe stench of cheap liquor as she helped deposit the drunk detective onto her couch before turning to Esposito. 'Can I see you in the kitchen, please?'

'Absolutely. Gil, I'm going to get you some coffee, bro,' he said to his friend. 'If you need to hurl, bathroom is under the stairs. Vomiting on my girlfriend's carpet will put both of us in the doghouse.'

Standing upright, Esposito stripped of his own jacket and shoes, strode into the kitchen to see Meredeth drumming her fingers on the counter. He went past her and began to fix a pot of coffee as much for himself as for Gil; he knew she wasn't exactly happy to see him just now, not when he brought back his inebriated colleague and friend to her couch after she'd already tucked herself into bed for the night.

'Mere, there is a reasonable explanation for this.'

'I'm all ears,' she said tersely. 'I thought you were going out to celebrate his impending fatherhood.'

'That was the plan.'

'Looks like it went just fine to me.'

Esposito shook his head; he didn't blame her in the slightest for being snippy. When he'd poured the water through the Bunn Drip-o-Matic, he turned to look at her. Even when she was pissed at him she was still so beautiful, he thought. 'It's complicated but the upshot is that he's not having a kid and he's taking it really hard. He's in no shape to go home, and it was closer to bring him here with me instead of driving all the way over to East Fifty-Third.'

'Oh.' Now feeling slightly slimy, Meredeth opened the cupboard door to pull out coffee mugs for the two of them, a third to make herself some tea. 'Does he take cream or sugar?'

When the coffee was ready, Meredeth carried the tray into the living room; she passed two cups to Esposito sitting beside Gil, whose face showed the stamp of emotional devestation. She sat on the table facing him, Esposito taking the space beside him.

'What happened, Gil? Julietta lost the baby?'

'Not exactly. She's having a baby, it's just not mine.' Gil wrapped his hands around the cup Esposito passed him, took a slow sip. It burned the inside of his mouth as he swallowed. 'Goddamn it.'

All sympathy now, Meredeth put her hand on his knee, leaned forward. 'Gil, I'm so sorry.'

'She was fucking around on me, and she wouldn'ta told me if I hadn't heard from the doctor.'

'It's okay, you don't have to tell me-'

'No, everyone at the Twelfth knows, and your boy would prob'ly tell you anyways.' He took another gulp of coffee, tried to steady his nerves with a deep breath. 'Julietta an' me, we've been trying to have a baby for the last few months. We went for some tests last week, which had me freaked out but when she told me two days ago we did it, we were gonna be parents, I thought everything was on the level.'

'So what happened?'

'Doc called me on my cell this morning, said he wished he had better news for me but that I was firing blanks. I say to him, how's that possible, my wife's pregnant, she got the test done, she's having a baby. Doc says, I don't know what to tell you, but science says you couldn't have done it.'

'Oh, no. I'm so sorry Gil.' Meredeth moved so she was sitting beside him as well, gave him a supportive squeeze on the arm.

'I couldn't face that lying slut, so I told Javier here I just wanted to go out and get shit-faced.'

'I don't blame you.' Pursing her lips, she glanced over at Esposito. 'Babe, there's a quilt and some pillows in the linen closet upstairs, why don't you go grab them?'

'Sure.'

Once he'd left, Meredeth turned her attention to back to Gil. 'You're staying on the couch here tonight, so Esposito doesn't go out of his mind worrying about you getting home safely.'

Gil looked around, able to see through his non-bleary eyes a little better now. 'This is some palace. Chelsea, right?'

'Yeah, six blocks from Penn Station.'

'You rich or something?'

'Meredeth's a writer,' Esposito reminded his friend with a pat on the shoulder, returning with the warm blanket and pillows for Gil. 'She writes the Lady Hawk graphic novels.'

'Oh yeah.' Gil thumped his head back against the couch. 'What am I gonna do, man?'

'Right now you're going to get some sleep, and tomorrow, we'll fill you with some hangover breakfast and get things sorted out, whatever they may be.'

Esposito watched as she unfolded the blanket for the now not-so-drunk Gil, then put his coffee on the table before heading upstairs. He followed her up to the bedroom, flopped across the foot of the bed so he was staring at the ceiling while she read, Arturo curled up in front of her dresser.

'Would you still love me if I couldn't give you babies?'

Meredeth's head snapped up from her book. He could have hit her over the head with a gold brick and it would have been less of a shock. 'What?'

'Would you still love me if I couldn't give you babies?'

'Of course I would, what kind of question is that?'

Esposito sighed, dragged a hand over his face. 'He was so happy, Mere. He came into the station yesterday, saying Julietta told him he's gonna be a daddy. You'd think it was Christmas and his birthday all in one. Then today...I didn't see it, but word is they had one hell of a screaming match in his office up in Vice when she came in to meet him for lunch. And gossip spreads like wildfire in a precinct so by the end of shift, everyone knows Gil's boys can't swim and his wife's been playing lifeguard with someone else. And it sucks because they seemed so happy, like they had it together, you know?'

'You mean like us.'

'I didn't think of that right away, but somewhere around the third or fourth round of Gil drowning his sorrows, he told me we reminded him of when he first got together with Julietta, and started getting really depressed, how women don't want men who are neutered, and hard as I tried, I just couldn't get it out of my head. Besides, it's...it's been on my mind lately.'

'Really?' The idea that he wanted to have babies at all with her made her insides flutter. She'd thought about it, but had kept it to herself, not wanting to appear like the crazy fools-rush-in partner. But she never thought she'd hear it from Esposito's mouth; hell, they hadn't even reached their six-months together. And yet, as it always did with him, the big conversations about their future together always seemed natural, as if all couples talked about things like this so early in their relationship.

'Yeah.' Esposito reached over to link his fingers with Meredeth's. So soft, and so steady, arousal and comfort all in one. 'Ryan's my best friend's and he's going to be a father before the end of summer. I see the way he lights up whenever he talks about his baby. He's so proud of making that little unknown life with Honey-Milk. Just made me think what it'd be like for us to have that too.'

'Oh Javi.' Now Meredeth stretched out on top of him, so she could look him squarely in the eye. 'I love you very much, and that won't change, whether you naturally give me zero babies or a hundred.'

'Okay, maybe not a hundred, Mere.'

'Yeah, that would make my lady parts look like something from Stargate. How many were you thinking?'

Esposito bent his elbow up, so his palm could rest against the back of his skull. 'Like, maybe four.'

'Four?'

'Yeah. A girl, twin boys, and another boy. Then our princess would have her three musketeers.'

Because this hypothetical family planning was erasing his misery, Meredeth cocked her head to the side. 'And what, pray tell, would these progeny be named?'

'Well, for the girl, Zoe. And then the boys would be Alejo, Ricardo and Reynaldo.'

'Alejo, Ricardo, and Reynaldo,' Meredeth repeated, laying her hand on his chest. 'Any reason?'

'My father, and my two best friends.'

'Those are good names. Zoe Constance, Alejo Anders, Ricardo James and Reynaldo Ozymandias. That's a solid group.'

Esposito stared at her for a moment. 'Ozymandias?'

'Yeah, you know, like in Watchmen. Way cool than his alter ego, Adrien, plus it's also the name of a Byron poem. I am Ozymandias, look on my works ye mighty and despair,' she declared in a mock-baritone, shaking her fist lightly.

He laughed, his first one of the day since hearing about his friend's world shattering around him. 'Only you, Mere. God I love you.'

R&R&Enjoy.