Doomsday
He found Alexis in the back bedroom sitting on the floor, watching the television coverage of the earthquake relief efforts, her spine pressed against the bed. She looked like she was hiding.
"Dad," she said, her shoulders up around her ears as she looked at him.
He came through the doorway and sat on the bed, ran a hand through her hair, scratched her scalp. "What's going on with you?"
"I'm okay."
"But."
She shrugged, leaned her cheek against the mattress close to where his hand lay.
He sighed. "You're alone back here watching reports about mangled elementary school children and drowned couples washing ashore in India. If that's not self-punishment, I don't know what is."
She huffed, but pointed the remote at the tv and muted the news. "You don't really know what is, anyway, do you, Dad? Not exactly one for self-discipline."
He spread his hand flat and gave her a long look.
Alexis flushed and buried her face into the bedspread. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Uh-huh," he said, drawing it out. "And you never snap at me. So what gives?"
"You're just going to marry her? Like that?"
His breath caught. "Like that." If she'll finally have me? Hell yes.
"And a week ago you were drinking in your study because she'd stopped talking to you."
"She hadn't stopped talking to me. She'd just stopped listening when I talked." Big difference. Small difference. He'd been pestering her to reconsider, to stop stopping this, to just be willing to let him take a bullet for her just as he was willing to let her do the same. (Except he really wasn't. He didn't want her taking a bullet for him, for anyone.)
"Dad," she said heavily. "I don't get it."
He glanced at her, eyebrow raised. "You were the one who said we needed to figure it out."
"I thought you'd agree to stop kidding yourselves and put each other out of your misery."
"You think we're kidding ourselves?" he asked qiuetly, studying his daughter's profile in the glare from the television.
Alexis turned her head and met his eyes. "Yeah. Dad - I do."
He glanced down. "You don't like Kate?" He shook his head at her scathing look. Not the point, okay. "I love her. And - and I love you. And I want us to be . . . I don't want tension when-"
"When what, when Detective Beckett moves in?" she said pointedly.
He sighed, rubbed a finger down the bridge of his nose. "Well, she'd be Kate, and not Detective Beckett, if you were out there trying. And not back here hiding."
Alexis regarded him for a moment. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Point taken."
"So. . ."
"So. Couldn't you have waited until I moved out?" she said bitterly.
He jerked back, stunned by the tone in her voice. "What's your deal, Alexis?"
"My deal? My deal is that you don't seem to be looking out for yourself whatsoever. You never do. You just let them do whatever they want to you, and then when they're gone, you're moody and morose and you throw stupid wild parties and sign women's chests and stop acting like my father and act more like a rich, insufferable jerk. That's my deal."
He blinked, his heart sinking like a stone. "Are - are we talking about Gina?"
"And every other woman you've had something with. So no, Dad, I don't want her to move in. I don't want to watch her step all over you. I don't want to have breakfast with you two and see her roll her eyes at you, see her take you for granted. I don't want to watch you fall all over yourself trying to make her like you."
"That's not how it is," he said quietly.
"Oh yeah? Really? Seems awfully inequal to me. You do all the work and she gets to stomp all over your heart, no questions asked. Here one day, gone the next three months, and you with your heart crushed. Because you're my dad, and you love me too with that same heart she's mucking around with. You're mine. And I don't want to share you with her, not for that."
He hung his head, scraped his hand through his hair, and tried to figure out what to say to her.
He didn't have a clue.
1. You have no idea what you do to me. You think you do, and you like to tease, and I love that you tease, but you have no idea the power you have over me.
Kate sucked in a breath and tilted her head back, swiped at the sudden surge of heat and tears. Drawing the laptop closer, she leaned against the headboard, tried to breathe through the sudden shock of his words on the screen. His list.
2. Fierce and loyal and stubborn and extreme and kind and generous, in all the good ways and the bad, I love your passion, your compassion.
She curled her lips into a smile and stroked the down arrow key with her fingertip, able to see him so clearly, all the times he'd said this already, all the ways he'd managed to express himself.
3. God, you're hot.
Kate laughed out loud, went on to 4. Your legs are amazing. I love running my hand up the outside of your thigh and to the curve of your waist. Have I said you're hot?
And then 5. Do you know you're hot? I think you do, but you've never let it make you mean. You've never been cruel. You've never played men off each other or dangled yourself like bait in front of me, for me, against me. You've never hurt me with it, even though you're so beautiful it hurts.
Kate pressed a hand to her lips. Hadn't she? She'd done those things, because she did know the power she had, she knew it. Had she never used it against him? - well if she hadn't, it was by some hand greater than her own, some power that kept her from it. It was a miracle she hadn't already ruined them.
6. The power you have over me? Includes making me a better man. I hope I can, in some small way, do the same for you. Stronger, not weaker.
She needed to - needed him. Now. She didn't want to go through the rest of this list without him there, without somehow letting him know-
7. Your smile is everything. I want to give you ever more reasons to smile like that. Even if it's not at me.
And she was smiling now, wanted him to see it, wanted him, wanted to only smile at him for the rest of her life and somehow, some way, pay him back for everything by not giving that smile to anyone but him.
8. I don't get many things right the first time (in fact, I'm told that a lot). But now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls, brought me here. And where was I before the day that I first saw your lovely face? Now I see it every day. And I know - that I am - the luckiest.
She laughed because that was a song - a good song - but a song, and he was stealing from a song that she loved so much, and surely he knew that, knew how much she loved this song? And he used it to tell her something beautiful.
9. You read. Holy shit, Kate, you know so much stuff! I know I keep forgetting you read - but just how much you've read, and the depths of your intelligence, the breadth of your knowledge, and how you use it - it's amazing. Dare I say, extraordinary? You can do anything, be anything, master anything, and it keeps me - moving. It keeps me on my toes. Challenged. Inspired.
It was too much, all of it, the way he wove words around her. She needed to make her own list. It couldn't be half as beautiful as this, but it might say what she had to say, what she'd needed to say. It might. She hadn't even finished reading his, and yet she craved a way to let him know. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, and then she added her number one right below his:
1. You have no idea what you do to me. You have no idea how I love you. But I'm going to take all my passion, all my loyalty and fierceness and kindness and strength and intelligence, and bring all of it to bear on you, focus those things you love about me on being for you what you've been for me.