A Rosa By Any Other Name
Genre:Friendship
Pairings:Greg and Molly, background
Main characters: Rosie, Julian, Greg
"I've been thinking," Julian said one day while he and Rosie were having a quiet afternoon playing detective, with Scott and Johnnie Lestrade. The four year olds, just approaching their fifth birthday, had been enthusiastic participants, even if they weren't quite old enough yet to understand completely. The Lestrade boys had powered out on them and were curled up with their restless sister Greer – under the youthful observation of Julian and Rosie, and the unobtrusive, yet diligent adult supervision of Greg Lestrade on his day off.
Greg sat back, watching his children with their friends, and reading an old Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mystery set set in the Victorian era.
"You call me Jules, and nobody else is allowed to," Julian stated solemnly. "So I've made a decision."
Rosie Watson, her determination firmly with her genes, but her heart with her best friend, crossed her arms with a smile.
"And just what is that, Jules Bailey?" she stated.
"EVERYONE calls you Rosie, so that isn't very special at ALL. And you said that only very SPECIAL people can call you Rosamund so I'm not allowed to. So I'm going to call you Rosa." Julian sounded quite firm in his conviction, just as Rosie herself had been in her decision to call her new best friend "Jules" in the first moments after they had met.
"Rosa," Rosie repeated, as she pondered it for several moments. She wouldn't admit it, as it turned out, for a good 11 years, but this was even more special than her very specials calling her Rosamund.
"Well," she said, thinking it over, "I suppose that's fine… but nobody else will be allowed to call me Rosa. Only YOU, Jules."
Greg, watching the 6 year olds with a casual style of supervision, smiled to himself as he set down his novel to tend to his insistent little Greer, who at the age of two years and change, had become a delightful handful and a certified daddy's girl.
Greg had known from the time he and his new DS, Kieran Bailey, had discovered that Julian and Rosie had already met and bonded as classmates, that his new Sergeant's son was going to become lifelong friends with Rosie Watson.
He wondered though, how strong and close this bond would actually become, and with a whimsy that was rare to his nature, whether or not they would someday count the name "Bailey"amongst those names they would call family.
Greg had a niggling feeling that they would.