'It's cold out there, you're standing there,
You're trying to face your greatest fear.
You're shivering, you're trembling,
It's warm in here so come back in.'
"Don't Throw Out My Legos" ~ AJR
The motel is nice, not the roadside, pay in cash type of seedy place Greg is used to associating with drug busts and domestic calls. It's got fibre op, free coffee, shower jets, and even a little hot tub off the main office.
None of this is enough to keep the gloomy, quiet huddle at ease. Nor do they sleep much, except for Sam, who's conked out thanks to being awake for over fifty one hours, while his wife keeps watch and chats with Wordy on a video call.
Lazlo and Hartford have camped out at their floor's common area table, labouring over profiles and Interpol notices. Cho is passed out on the couch beside him, Holleran still clacking away at the bidding site while chugging orange soda as fast as Greg can pass them.
More than once, he laments how slow the hacking process is without Spike. Usually said around curses about viruses and bouncing IP addresses. And more soda slurping.
Dean is…
Greg pauses in doing his rounds, the frustrated circuit he's been at all night. Where is Dean?
He checks the common area again but no sign of the boy. Creeping into the master suite, all he sees is Sam sprawled on his side, facing Jules, who's still sitting up, laptop on her knees. She whispers to Wordy and, by the sounds of it, Sadie.
Greg pokes his head in. "Is Dean with you?"
Jules glances up, the screen light throwing her tear tracks in bright lines. She frowns, eyes foggy with concern. "Actually, I haven't seen him for a while, boss."
"Okay…thanks. Get some sleep."
Jules ignores that one, waving to her daughter and flipping the laptop around so Greg can do the same, making a funny face that has Sadie giggling.
After silently shutting the door, Greg's footsteps pick up speed, in harmony with the fox trot beating of his heart. Dean, after there was nothing left for him to do or notes to take, sort of…deflated. Like the tree of purpose propping him up had suddenly been chopped down.
It takes almost ten minutes of wandering before Greg thinks to look outside.
The midnight witching hour has brought with it a crisp, almost-October temperature drop. It's not as cold here as Toronto, but Greg can still see his breath against the indigo sky, white puffs to match the few scraggly clouds. He takes a moment to zip his coat up all the way.
Frost crystals have gathered on the deck's railing, creating a haze over the metal of Greg's cane when he steps out the sliding door. Their room is on the second floor, with a view facing the woods at the back of the property instead of the road. It's a small but needed luxury after all the carnage they've been dumped with to process, in such a short time.
There's only one bench.
Dean isn't wearing a coat at all, so Greg shuffles back inside and comes out with it. Just like that afternoon in the SRU lobby, Greg doesn't rush in to his son's space, choosing instead to pad closer with loud, slow steps. Letting Dean hear him first and react how he wants.
Close up, tear tracks shine on his cheeks too. They've frozen about halfway down, caked to the down-turned dimples on either side of his lips. Staccato pants create thin streams of white air, mixed with the long and hot sighs of tired grief, postlude to a long weeping fit.
At his blue lips and the little trembles, jittering down his arms and clattering his teeth, a saber tip pierces Greg's chest. Something searing, melted, soft, and steely all at the same time—tenderness weaponized into action and propelling Greg's steps the last few feet.
Dean doesn't look at his father when he sits down at his side. Not even when Greg threads one of his arms through the coat, then the other one, like Dean is a little boy again. Rather than removing his hands, Greg holds him close, with a brisk rub to warm up the frozen skin.
A niggling, insistent part of Greg's mind wants to berate Dean for the lack of self care, sitting out here on a freezing cold night in nothing but a cotton T-shirt, for isolating himself when he's hurting.
Like father, like son.
Greg hasn't a leg to stand on in that department, so he says nothing.
Together, they watch the wind whistle across pine tree needles, hissing through bulrushes on either side of a small pond out in the forest. Despite the zero temperature, a few brave crickets still sing away. The milky white toenail of a waning moon bathes everything in a muted sapphire glow. It's...still. Alive and still, all at once. Kind of like Dean.
"I'm pretty useless, huh?"
Greg glances sharply at his son.
"I don't have any of the others' intelligence or analyst skills," Dean goes on. "I can't shoot like Jules. No medical training that could have actually helped Spike."
Greg has seen his son through a lot of emotions, even in the measly years they've had since Dean came back into his life. Joy, giddiness, frustration, impudence, anger, contentment, dismay…
But sorrow, sorrow is something else. Not flash-in-the-pan devastation at something upsetting happening—this is resigned, calm, and ghastly. Old fashioned, gut wringing sorrow that no young man should ever have to experience.
Sadness is too puerile a word for the shaking in Dean's fingers and the unblinking way he stares out into the night. It's trance-like, as if he's aged thirty years in the hour sitting out on this bench.
"All that Academy training." Dean's voice pitches higher with the staved off, second wind breakdown. "And none of it did any good in saving my brother. I'm useless."
"Dean." Greg cups his son's icy cheek. "You're the reason border patrol was distracted enough for Jules to get through. You found Spike and snapped the photo of Saul! You're the only reason we had a break in the case at all. That doesn't sound useless to me."
Dean's lips wobble, eyes filling again. "I had to tell him what happened."
"Tell who?"
"Clark." With a ricocheted inhale, Dean wipes at his eyes. He gestures with the cellphone still grasped in his fist. "I had to call my best friend and tell him that we lost his dad. Again. He…he was…"
Dean has to stop and Greg presses their heads together, trying to ease some of the too-heavy anguish in his boy's spirit.
"I could barely understand him over his sobbing," Dean finishes in a whisper. "It's the most painful thing I've ever had to do, Dad."
Greg, master negotiator and silver tongue for over half his life, has absolutely no words for that. So, like Job's friends, he just sits in silence and rubs Dean's shoulder for a long, long while.
"We lost him." Dean licks the tears that land on his mouth. "We lost Ed and Spike, maybe for good."
"Yeah." Greg tempers down his own trembling, the caustic fear over what state they'll find both men in, if he'll have to greet a body bag. He hasn't allowed himself to fully process what happened. "But we're not just going to give up, you understand me?"
Dean sniffs, rubbing his nose in such a messy, childlike way that it, contrasted against the mature eyes, makes Greg smile a little.
"That was really scary," says Dean, muffled by his now wet coat sleeve.
Greg keeps his voice breath-soft, bathing in the affection he has for this beautiful, ruffled boy. "What was scary? The plane swerving and the fire?"
Dean shakes his head. "That too, I guess. But his feet…his feet were splitting open in real time, Dad. Right there. Spike was dying from the inside out but he ran anyway."
With a beat of assessment, Greg eyes his son, trying to figure out why this, of all things he's witnessed and been victim of, would bother him. Dean's been shot at, for heaven's sake! Yet Spike's feet are what leaving him shaking in Greg's arms.
Heavy footfalls and a new, tired voice join their huddle. They glance up. "That's what loyalty does to a person, Mr. Parker."
The tone breaks a little, sounding exactly the way Hartford looks. Grey, like a shirt left too long in the wash and fraying at the edges.
"He reminded me of Saul, you know. And I envied that you could have your boy but I couldn't have mine." Hartford holds his breath for a moment, creating a gap in the white steam of his breath. "Spike has the same drive, the same creativity...and I thought...if you were as desperate as me—maybe you'd succeed where I failed."
Dean sighs. "But we didn't."
Son, father, and mentor all stare at each other, eyes hooded and far too knowing. Greg still hasn't quite found it in himself to forgive Hartford, not totally, but he understands that pained and grim look because he's wearing it right now.
"If I could take back what I did," says Hartford, "I would. It was wrong to lie to you, to manipulate the evidence so you'd use your resources and go after my protégé for me, even at the risk of your own lives."
Greg thumbs absently at Dean's frigid tendrils of hair. "Apology accepted. You meant well, and we all want the same thing here. I appreciate you asking to help with the search, before you're sent away."
Hartford nods. "I know how it feels, Sergeant, losing him. Mentor-to-mentor, we're on the same page."
Greg looks Hartford dead in the eye, his own rock hard. The threads in his chest light up. "Spike isn't my protégé—he's my son. And Ed, who is Spike's mentor, happens to be my closest friend. Don't pretend to fathom how deep the pain of their losses go in this family, especially you, a man without one of your own."
Hartford is stunned speechless, gaping at Greg and though it was a little harsh, Greg doesn't take back a word of what he said. There's an odd satisfaction to the sudden understanding in Hartford's eyes, the pain. They nod at each other.
Dean glances between them, equally surprised. "Do you think Spike's feeling okay, wherever he is? He never got to finish that soup."
The naivety of the question is a nuclear, rolling wave that blasts straight into Greg's diaphragm and fries the air out of it. Hartford wears it on his face too, shattered and searching for a way to answer the boy.
Both men get wet eyed, swallowing back shallow breathing, while Greg gently feathers a hand on the back of Dean's neck.
"Let's not worry about that right now, okay?"
They might have had that second breakdown after all, completely unsteady, except just then Lazlo saves them from it. He runs toward them at breakneck speed.
"What?" Dean's eyes are wide. Greg relates to the feeling, for he doesn't have it in himself to handle any more disappointment or bad news. "What is it?"
Lazlo has one hand over Greg's cellphone, the one he left on the table inside. "Scarlatti is calling from a burner!"
Dean is shaking this time from excitement, and he jumps to his feet to crowd as close as he can to Lazlo and the phone while still being socially appropriate. And that only just.
"Spike…" he whispers, knowing he can't raise his voice and give his brother's trick away. "We're here. I'm here, Spike!"
He's crying again, but this time he laughs through it, breathless. His tears shine in the night.
"I've placed the call to copy into our UN tech forensic experts," says Lazlo in a low, burning murmur. His other hand texts one handed to a European contact. "They've already confirmed voice recognition on the man talking to Scarlatti. I don't know if it will be admissible in court, they ran the test four times and it's definitely him, but it doesn't matter now anyway. He's a wanted suspect for war crimes at best. At worst..."
Greg stands too. "Who is it?"
Lazlo holds out a receipt, a name scribbled on the back.
Hartford's jaw drops for a second time when he reads it. "This is no time for joking and quite frankly it's disrespectful."
"I'm serious." Lazlo shakes from his own brand of exhilaration. "It's him. He's at the center of this whole trafficking scheme and the recent uptick in attacks. In fact, we think he's the one who bribed the FBI agents to let this case go. We're already working on an arrest warrant."
"Sheikh Almasi?" Greg's brows shoot up. "The huge oil and electronics tycoon? He was just on the news recently, honoured with a humanitarian award."
Lazlo gives a sharp nod, listening hard. Jules and Holleran join them, rigid with cautious, doubtful hope.
She asks a more urgent question. "Spike, how does he sound?"
Lazlo looks away, mouth set in a white line, and refuses to answer. Greg's stomach falls into his shoes.
