Chapter 3
"Alright, Danny," Damien said, disturbing the comfortable silence that had fallen over the small group. "Back to bed now."
Suffice it to say that both Damien and Sam were shocked – absolutely shocked – when Danny slid off of the bed and went to his room without a word.
Puck cracked open a rheumy eye, sighed grumpily, and decided not to get back up. He was an old dog, and enough was enough for one night…or perhaps he knew better than the humans.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth – at least when his life didn't depend on suspecting anyone and everyone – Damien quickly gathered up the tea tray and bid Sam good night.
He was met on the way back by Danny coming back in with an armful of bedclothes, duvet and sheets trailing along behind him.
"Danny!"
"What?" the boy said, his voice muffled due to the pillow he was balancing on top of the pile. "You didn't think I was going to let him sleep alone after all that, did you?"
"Oh, for pity's sake," Damien muttered.
"Excuse me, but you're in my way and my pillow isn't optimally stabilized."
The Drakes had yet another silent battle of wills there in the hallway while Sam watched to see the outcome.
The pillow fell to the floor with a soft ploof.
"I've never had a proper sleepover," Danny wheedled. "You're not going to deny me a crucial childhood experience, are you? Besides, Sam really, really shouldn't be alone tonight."
"Alright, alright," Damien said, as though he would have thrown his hands up had they been free. 'Why do I even bother?' said his entire attitude. "As long as Sam doesn't mind. And if he does, I'm sure you'll persuade him that your presence is absolutely crucial. And the door stays open, no arguments."
Danny sent him a beaming smile over his fluffy armload and scurried over into Sam's room. He dumped the bedclothes on the floor next to the bed and scampered back to grab the fallen pillow.
Sam met Damien's resigned look with an amused shrug.
To be absolutely honest, Danny wasn't wrong. Sam definitely would sleep better with him in the room. There was something about the boy that settled the tension in his core and spread throughout his entire body. Sam wasn't the only one who felt this way; there was, after all, a reason the rest of the posse kept coming around so often.
"Excuse me," Danny said, passing by his father in the narrow hallway.
"Now what are you doing?" Damien exclaimed, his voice suffused with exasperation.
"Laptop," the boy replied, his tone perfectly businesslike and not a little smug, now that he had gotten his way.
"Whatever for? You're to sleep in here, not work on your computer!"
"To play music."
"Why?"
"Studies show that playing relaxing sounds helps with post-traumatic stress disorder."
"Does it? What are you going to put on, Scarborough Fair?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of rain sounds and piano, but I'll definitely keep Simon and Garfunkel in mind."
Damien muttered a German expletive under his breath.
"Watch your language, Dad!" Danny taunted victoriously with a giggle, scampering away from the swat across the back of his head that his father aimed at him.
Damien turned to their guest. "Are you absolutely certain you want my brat of a child in your room while you're trying to get some rest?"
It was obviously a rhetorical question, considering the smile that had spread across Sam's face at their antics.
"Positively."
. . . . .
The following morning, Sam awoke gently, as though a warm breeze had come upon him and given him a soft nudge. It was a change from the sudden nightmare-induced heart-pounding awakenings he had become accustomed to of late, a welcome change.
He felt the soft sheets under and around him, and took a deep breath in to smell their fresh cleanness and revel in it—
But was promptly treated to a heavy pain in his chest that made him cough harshly and roll over into a fetal position, gasping for breath between violent expulsions of air.
Bad cold, bronchitis, or pneumonia, probably. Just what he needed.
His head felt hot and heavy after his bout of coughing, and his eyeballs were definitely too big for their sockets, not to mention the shooting pain up his back and the near-cramping pressure in his legs. He swore while rubbing his face with one hand and his sore chest with the other.
"You're not supposed to say that around me," a smug voice reminded him, "but I won't tell Dad if you don't."
Danny was sitting on the floor in the middle of a fluffy duvet and bed sheet bundle, tapping away at his laptop at full speed.
Ah, that would be the source of the soft clattering he'd heard but not quite registered in his groggy state. He'd evidently come to associate that sound with 'safe' when combined with the presence of a soft bed and other familiar trappings in the Drake home.
Sam nodded tiredly down at him from his bed, not wanting to move. "What are you working on?"
"Looking for evidence of dishonest practices in Humanocorp's servers." Danny paused his typing to take a sip from the mug beside him while scratching the dozing Puck on the head. The dog opened a lazy eye and grumbled into his pillow, which he'd evidently hijacked from Danny.
"Find any?"
"I'm having trouble finding signs of honest practices, actually."
Not particularly surprising. There had been some whispers here and there about shady dealings.
"What are you going to do with this information?"
"Leak it to the press and the authorities anonymously," Danny said firmly with a decisive shake of his shoulders and went back to work. "They shouldn't get away with it."
"Does your dad know what you're up to?"
"He tries very hard not to, so he can plead plausible deniability when the cops show up. He says."
Sam snorted. Typical. Of course, he'd wager that Damien actually knew all about what his son was doing, or at least had a very good idea, and made sure to keep things from getting out of hand. His main job since Danny had discovered explosives at the tender age of two was damage control and disaster prevention…all in regards to his precocious son's actions. "Happen a lot these days?"
"Not that much," Danny said defensively, which made Sam grin and shake his head, imagining what sort of hijinks Damien had had to deal with in Sam's absence.
Come to think of it, the older man had gotten a little thinner up top and slightly grayer since the last time Sam had seen him. Of course, Sam couldn't point fingers. He certainly wouldn't be winning beauty contests anytime soon.
"I've gotten pretty good at covering my tracks," Danny insisted.
"You're a good boy, Danny," Sam told him, resulting in another rolling of pre-teen eyes.
"I'm literally breaking the law right in front of you."
"What, you want me to arrest you?"
"I'm under the age of responsibility for cyber crimes." Of course the boy knew that particular law.
"I'm sure we can make an exception for you."
Danny stuck his tongue out at him, proving that he was still a child, despite his grown-up tastes and activities.
Soft footsteps neared the door, which was ajar, and presently Damien appeared, rapping at the door as he entered.
"Good morning, Sam. How did you sleep?"
Green eyes assessed his condition quickly and silently, and the expressive mouth pursed. Honestly, Sam didn't look that bad, did he?
Danny interjected before Sam could respond with something that at least drew a flimsy curtain over his present ragged state. "He was snoring and coughing a lot. I think he has a lung infection of some sort."
"Snitch."
Danny huffed. "Like you wouldn't rat me out in a minute."
"Why am I the bad guy here?" Damien asked, shaking his head at the childishness of the two of them.
"Because you're an Olympian-level fusser," Danny immediately shot back like one who knew.
"I second that opinion." Sam had seen the man in action, and dear god.
"Lunch is ready," Damien announced while he demonstrated exactly where his son got his penchant for rolling his eyes. "Wash up and come straight down."
"We should; we definitely don't want him to start herding us like a sheepdog or clucking like a chicken," Danny told Sam with the most serious expression in his arsenal.
"That would be utterly terrifying," Sam agreed just as solemnly.
"You have two minutes, children."
. . . . .
After a leisurely lunch punctuated by surreptitious anxious glances from the two Drakes in Sam's direction (one more covert than the other), Sam put his napkin aside and announced calmly that he would be going to Six to check in. After all, he was long overdue to go back.
Father and son exchanged relieved looks and sped through clearing up with exaggerated bickering, making Sam shake his head in fond amusement.
Danny had declared (loudly, and with monumental significance) as they were eating that he was thinking of dropping in on Q to show him some new plans he had thought up about some experiment or another (Sam, like Damien, had tuned out of the explanation once he'd started rambling about thermionic diodes), so of course, the practical thing was for all three of them to bundle into Damien's Astin Martin for a trip up to London. Of course.
When they arrived at Vauxhall, they checked in with Security, and Danny sternly admonished Sam to 'please behave like a responsible adult, at least for the time being,' much to the astonishment of one security guard (but not the other, who had been around for decades and had witnessed a tiny Danny Drake warning former 005 Stuart Thomas to cooperate with his doctors in a similarly severe manner during his battle with cancer), then immediately hared off down to Q-Branch.
Feeling suddenly bereft, Sam reluctantly led the way to Medical, where he was sure he would be subjected to vast numbers of tests and treatments (otherwise known as 'legalized torture').
It was his damnable luck that the ward happened to be swarming with recruits lined up for their own tests. A dozen comely young men and women surrendered to nurses with varying levels of submission (one man, rugged and blond — Navy, Sam automatically identified at a glance — flirted shamelessly with his blushing nurse: "And that wraps up our tests, Mr. Bond." "I'd like to unwrap you." "Mr. Bond! Off you go, now.").
The hungry, rather disappointed looks some of them gave Sam when he entered, with Damien an unnoticed shadow behind him (he was definitely not there to make sure he complied with the Tiny Dictator's orders), answered any questions he might have had about how the news of his return to the land of the living had been received by this quarter of Six.
"Fresh recruits. Look at them drooling," Sam groused under his breath to Damien. "Snapping at my heels. Want me gone so they can have a turn."
"Don't worry about it," his companion said with equanimity. "That's how it always is. They hardly ever last very long, anyway." And there was that smirk, the one every double-oh perfected, which showcased in its very smugness the self-assurance with which members of that elite species were all endowed.
"I suppose you'd know all about it," Sam told his predecessor to the 007 designation.
Damien snorted. "Don't lie; back in the day, you were waiting for me to slip up so you could have my number."
"Pleading the fifth, as the Americans say. Everyone wants lucky number seven; less chance of dying." Sam said grimly with not a little irony. There were definitely times when he wished he didn't have such a 'lucky' number.
"I haven't the slightest idea why, but it's true." Damien caught a doctor's eye. "Dr. Taylor, your patient."
"Thank you for delivering 007 to us, Mr. Drake. I hope he wasn't too much trouble?" she asked, glancing critically at the black eye Damien was now sporting after the events of the previous night. The coy smile that accompanied the arched blonde brow would have had Danny, had he been present, retching dramatically at the disgusting idea of his father flirting.
"Not at all, doctor," Damien purred, showing the young people exactly how an expert went about charming people, as the doctor showed them into an examination room (after ejecting its previous occupants). "You know how Danny has us all wrapped around his little finger. All he had to do was pout at Sam and he folded."
Taylor laughed, knowing exactly what he meant. "How old is he now, ten? Mr. Carmichael, your arm please?" she said, blood pressure cuff in hand; this was only the beginning of the battery of tests Sam knew he was in for.
"Twelve."
"Goodness! How time flies!" The doctor tsked over the numbers and produced a needle next. "I'll need a few samples."
Sam sighed and thought briefly about trying to squirm out of it. "I suppose resistance is futile?"
"Of course it is, Sam," Danny said, appearing out of nowhere.
"Damn. There goes my chance to escape," Sam said, suddenly feeling the warmth flood back in and relaxing. (Due to the squeezing and releasing of the blood pressure cuff, of course, not because of the boy's return. Obviously.) "Monty not in?"
Monty, or Dr. Montgomery, was the current Q, who had been appointed R (and thus Major Boothroyd's successor) shortly before Boothroyd's retirement with reluctance all around (but most loudly from the new R-turned-Q, who detested paperwork and bureaucracy and wanted more than anything to spend the twilight of his years in a cozy little lab).
"Unfortunately not. Meeting. Hello Dr. Taylor," Danny politely greeted the doctor, who had also been one of the team who had treated Stuart Thomas during his illness.
"Hello, darling," she said and kissed his cheek, leaving a smudge of pink lipstick that was rubbed off with a grimace as soon as her back was turned. "You've gotten so big! You used to be this small!" she exclaimed, waving her hand in the vicinity of her waist.
Damien entered the conversation before his rude disaster spawn could spout off one of his lovely sarcastic comments that made him so very proud as a parent. "Danny, didn't you stay to talk to your groupies?"
Q-Branch's denizens had, over the years, set Danny up as something of a deity amongst them, so popular were he and his superb intellect. It had begun when Danny was a toddler on his first visit to visit his godfather (the previous Q) at work and had only gotten worse.
"I had a premonition that I was needed elsewhere," Danny stated drolly, planting his skinny arse firmly in a nearby chair to ensure that Sam cooperated with the medical staff, like a mother with her unruly child. (Damien had no idea where he fit in this imaginary scenario.)
There, skewered under the preteen's gimlet eye, Sam meekly submitted to the battery of tests performed by the amused Dr. Taylor, who, to her credit, did her best to be quick about it (she pushed back all other appointments for all of the medical equipment and personnel for her VIP) while also being considerate of what his new triggers might be after his long confinement.
The Drakes also kept watch for any signs of distress that might be missed by someone who didn't know their friend and uncle as well as they did, even as they put on yet another impromptu show of bickering to amuse their audience.
"Alright, Mr. Carmichael," Taylor said, "That's the last of it. I'd like to keep you overnight for observation—"
"No."
Dr. Taylor, a veteran of MI6 Medical, was accustomed to obstinate patients. "Now, Sam, we need to observe how you react to the new medication. I'd also like to conduct a sleep study sometime this week, not to mention Psych wants—"
"We'll watch him," Danny said hurriedly, seeing that Sam's fight or flight response was ready to kick in.
"The sleep study can surely wait, as can the psych evals," Damien agreed, his eye on Sam wary, waiting for the tenseness to abate. After all, one should always be ready for the 'fight' instinct to win over the 'flight' response in an uncomfortable situation like this, and he was the only one in the room who could safely contain Sam if he suddenly forgot himself and went berserk. "If he experiences a medical emergency, we will contact you straight away."
"Well…" the doctor said, not quite willing to let her patient go, as she could never know for sure when she'd see him again, so adept were the double-ohs at evading capture by Medical.
Seeing that this situation called for more finesse than what his son's protective bristling heralded, Damien turned his charm back on and began flirting shamelessly to persuade the good doctor to release Sam to their care. After all, hadn't he taken over Stuart's at-home care when he was sick nearly a decade ago?
His companions relaxed, knowing that they would soon be on their way. Danny silently nudged the neat pile of folded clothes over to Sam, who slipped them on, relieved and not a little exhausted.
"I know better than to trust you not to lie and let him do whatever he wants," Dr. Taylor was saying, reluctant to let Sam slip out of her latex-gloved hands, but the last tattered vestiges of her professional judgment were giving away under the barrage of seduction by an expert in the discipline.
"But I've changed."
Danny made a show of gagging noiselessly in the background, out of the doctor's line of sight. His father serenely ignored him.
"Well, alright, then," the doctor sighed, not a little breathlessly, and the three of them had escaped from the building before she could recover.
"Whew," she said to herself several minutes later, fanning herself with a clipboard, "He certainly hasn't changed at all."
. . . . .
"Alright?"
"Yeah, fine," Sam answered his anxious nephew. "I'm fine, terrific."
To tell the truth, he was feeling drained after maintaining his mask of complete composure for several hours. It was one thing to let his defenses down around the Drakes; they were family. It was another to let others see the cracks and fissures and entire missing chunks of his strained psyche and physique. Outsiders – that is, anyone he couldn't trust – could end up using such weaknesses against him.
Of course, this didn't mean that the Drakes wouldn't use them against him, either, but it would be for his own good, or at the very least, for harmless reasons like pranks and such. He also knew that pranks were very much out of the question for the foreseeable future, and he knew that they knew, which meant that he could (and would) feel safe and comfortable with them. In fact, they were all aware that the next prank any of them would play would be by Sam, probably on Damien. They'd gone through this routine before (and not only with him, though not this drastically), so they knew how things were likely to go, and that made Sam feel more secure than ever.
He moved his leg and brushed up against the paper sack of bottles that rattled when it shifted. Pills, pills, and more lovely pills. Antibiotics, antidepressants, vitamins, pills to take the edge off of alcohol and painkiller withdrawal, pills for his bruised kidneys, pills for his congested chest, pills to help him sleep, pills to turn him blue (not really, but there was that time in Cuba)…
He fought the urge to toss the entire lot out of the window, knowing that such a childish action would be met with supreme disapproval and lots of scolding by the literal child in the back seat with him.
Predictably, said child's brow furrowed and his mouth pinched, as though he'd read Sam's mind. He probably had realized that Sam had considered it; he was that smart.
"D'you know what I want?" Sam asked, looking out at the storefronts passing by the car's window without really seeing them. "Ice cream."
"Ice cream?" Danny asked incredulously, even as Damien made a turn that would take them to Danny's favorite ice cream parlor when they were in town.
"Strawberry," Sam murmured, tilting his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. "My father never let me have it. Too girly. Funny, the things you think about when there's not much else to think about."
Danny sat straight up in his seat and looked solemnly at him. "Sam, we are going to get you the biggest ice cream they'll let us order, and then we'll order one more scoop on top of that. And it will all be strawberry. We'll buy them out of strawberry ice cream and not leave a single drop for anyone else. And we'll have mountains of whipped cream and all the toppings."
Then he pushed his glasses back up his nose and told him firmly: "Also, your father was an ignorant, beetle-headed knave akin to a plague sore. What kind of misogynistic shitbag assigns gender to ice cream flavors?" The disgust in his voice made Sam laugh out loud. "Ridiculous. Absolute bastard. I am very glad he's dead, else I would educate him thoroughly on the history of gender color coding. Pink used to be a bloody masculine color, for goodness sakes, and lace used to be worn by men!"
For once, Damien let his chaos child get away with swearing and rude language. After all, it was good for his son to be passionate about something and express it accordingly, wasn't it?
. . . . .
Sam groaned out loud as his uninvited visitor opened his bedroom door after a cursory rat-a-tat on it and sat on the end of his bed with his skinny legs crossed, as though he intended to stay for a while. In fact, the boy had brought an armful of what looked like art supplies with him, reminding Sam of the days when a tiny Danny would beg Sam to draw with him, the wide green eyes and pout a potent combination, even for a seasoned agent like him.
"Danny, not today. I'm tired."
It had been a trying couple of weeks as Sam grew irritable, terrified, exhausted, and hyperactive by turns as he worked through what he'd been through over the past year and a half. Sleep for them all was inevitably disrupted each night, and bleary-eyed yawns at the breakfast table were a common occurrence.
Sam would have worried about the effect this was having on Danny's young psyche, but the boy only seemed worried rather than disturbed, and any attempts to keep him sheltered (as much as it was possible to hide ear-splitting shrieks in the middle of the night) only resulted in tutting and more aggressive fussing. In fact, it was best to simply let him do as he wished to keep him at a minimal level of fretting. Despite what he'd said about his father, Danny had learned from the best and was also a professional-level fusser.
Damien, knowing the calming effect Danny had on Sam (and to be honest, all the rest of them, too, including himself), stepped back and took the back seat, only keeping an eye on them to ensure Sam didn't lash out at the boy – which he never did. That was the magic of Daniel Drake: that his very presence served to calm down even half-feral professional assassins.
Danny, despite the uninviting scowl on Sam's countenance just then, continued to spread the things he'd brought with him out around him on the end of the bed. Papers, notebooks, pencils, and textbooks on architecture and gardening with bookmarks wedged inside them quickly covered the bedspread, with no apparent thought given to the fact that Sam was still in the bed.
"Okay," the boy said, and patently didn't budge from where he'd set up his portable studio. He opened a notebook and began sketching, supporting the pad on one knee with it angled away from Sam's view. Whether this was intentional or not, Sam couldn't tell, but it irked him even further.
Several minutes later, Sam's curiosity got the best of him. "What are you drawing?"
Danny hmmed and took his time answering, his attention focused on whatever was happening on his paper. "Plans for a greenhouse."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Dare I ask why?"
Danny held the pad out at arms-length (still angled away from Sam, and this time it was definitely deliberate). He squinted at it with his lips pursed, gauging what he'd drawn. "Birthday present for Dad."
Sam decided to play along. "This year's?" Damien's birthday was in June, which was only a month away.
"Of course."
"Cutting it close, aren't you?"
Danny finally looked at Sam, and an impish grin lip up his face. "Oh, I only thought of it last night. I was hoping you might be willing to help me. After all, you did study architecture in school. Therefore, you are the resident expert in the subject, and I want to pick your brain."
Sam snorted, still lying back against his pillows. "You're a manipulative little brat, Daniel Geoffrey Drake," he grumbled, but found that he wasn't at all upset about it. In fact, he only felt a bubble of warmth spread in his chest at the thought that this brilliant lad was asking for his help, whether he actually needed it or not.
"Yes, I know. Well? How about it?"
Sam slid out from under the bedcovers, careful not to dislodge any of the things scattered across the quilt.
"Alright," he said with a fond smile at the boy. "Show me what you've got so far."
. . . . .
Notes:
Danny's weird insults: I bought myself a Shakespearean insults mug for my office. "Beetle-headed, flap-eared knave" was one of them. Definitely a good investment, as it never fails to make me giggle when I'm stressed.
Architecture: After Sam retires from MI6 (which happens soon, but not quite yet—he makes sure to go out with one last successful mission after getting back in shape with Damien's help), he goes back to his roots in architecture, supported in this decision by Danny (and the rest of the retired spy fam). Then he receives a wedding invitation in the mail from an old flame, and hops off to Greece and his Mamma Mia adventure.
