Disclaimer(s): All recognizable people, places, and events in the CSI:NYverse are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
All recognizable people, places, and events in the HPverse are property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic and Bloomsbury Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. In all cases, no infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
Charlie Eppes and Cal-Sci appear on Numb3rs and are the property of Cheryl Heuton, Nicholas Falacci, Jerry Bruckheimer, and CBS. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
A/N: The end. No more. There will be no direct sequels, but there are other stories in the continuity. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read.
Don Flack had envisaged many scenarios for his homecoming. He had imagined the Conquering Hero routine, with Rebecca meeting him joyfully at the door with hugs and kisses and Junior on her lap. He'd imagined a quiet night with dinner and diapers and love under cover after Junior was asleep.
He'd also entertained the possibility at the other end of the spectrum. He'd pictured coming home to an empty apartment, the walls stripped bare of pictures and only outlines on the floor where the furniture had been. Just like the crime scene photos he flipped through every day. He'd wander into Junior's room on numb legs to find his crib and all the sweet-smelling nostrums of infancy gone. Maybe the mobile would be left, the one that played "Hush Little Baby" in rhythm to soothing lights, and he'd watch it hover dreamily over the place where dreams had once lived. Then he'd shuffle into the kitchen and find a note taped to the refrigerator door, and it would read simply, Too gone for too long. Rebecca-speak for The End.
Neither of those scenarios greeted him as he slid his key in the door six days after their conversation in a cheap motel bathroom. Instead, he heard Rebecca's voice from behind the door.
"Oh," it said. "Well, I don't think a wipe is going to clean that up."
When he pushed open the door, he was confronted by the sight of Rebecca holding Junior's feet up to expose a filthy bottom, her mouth puckered in a moue of dismay. Underneath him on the couch was a much-abused diaper. Rebecca looked up at the sound of his grand entrance.
"Welcome home," she said, and gestured like Vanna White at Junior's dirty, bare ass.
It was so surreal that the power of speech momentarily deserted him, and he could only stand there with his arms full of his overcoat and bags from the Chinese place down the block. He blinked at his wife, who was still holding Junior's feet in the air like he was a young turkey ready for dressing, and then let his gaze drift to the poop-smeared buttocks the position revealed. Junior, unperturbed by the indignity, sedately gummed one chubby fist.
He started to laugh, softly at first, but soon he was howling, head thrown back and throat open wide to gulp air that was immediately expelled again in a stuttering guffaw that erupted from his belly. He scissored into the kitchen on unsteady legs and set the bag of food on the counter before it slipped from his fingers. Another breath, another spate of laughter, and he had to hug the countertop to keep from crumpling into an undignified heap.
"I'm glad you're amused," Rebecca said peevishly, and through his tear-blurred vision, he could see her scowling.
"S-s-sorry, doll," he sputtered weakly, and wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his hand. "Diarrhea?" he asked when he had regained some semblance of composure.
"God, I hope not. His tummy doesn't seem to be bothering him. I think he just made a pig of himself. Apparently, he doesn't realize that there's always more where that came from. Give me a hand?"
"Sure, yeah. You wanna hold him while I grab his bath seat?"
"How about you hold him, and I'll get the bath seat? If I sit him on my lap, he'll get poop all over me."
He came out of the kitchen and relieved her of Junior's feet. "Hey, buddy. Am I glad to see you," he said, and bent to kiss the sole of one twitching foot. "'S been so long."
Too long, corrected Gavin. Hell, one day-one hour-is too damn long. He's on your mind and in your heart every minute of every day. You think of him when you're strappin' your guns on every mornin' and when you're unloadin' the clip at night. You see his face every time you're cuffin' some young skel with zits on his face and track marks on his arms. Every time you arrest some junkie mother with bruises under her eyes and crabs in her cunt, you see Rebecca bearin' down with every ounce of strength left in her exhausted body to bring him into the world.
Before he was born, you could go anywhere you pleased and stay there as long as you liked, but from the second he drew breath, you wanted to be wherever he was. The week Rebecca spent in St. Vincent's after he was born, you left him only long enough to take a leak. When the nurses advised you to get Rebecca up and movin', you put him in a swaddle sling and tucked him to your chest while you coaxed his achin' mama to totter a few steps down the hall.
Goin' back to work was the hardest thing you ever had to do. He was seven days old, and you had to leave him and his sore mama alone with no one to protect 'em. You were a pissy bastard with everybody that first day back on the clock, even the nerds. Mac Muppeted up and hid in his office for most of the day. Stella told you where to cram it, and Danny avoided you like the plague after the first explosion. You didn't mean to sharpen your teeth on their unsuspectin' asses, but you were so afraid for your boy. You knew what was out there, waitin' to hurt him.
You musta called home twenty times that first day, and it was all you could do not to leave your desk and rush home to check. You kept imaginin' her fallin' while tryin' to lift him outta his crib, or the creepy new tenant down the hall askin' to borrow a cup of sugar and then rapin' and murderin' her while Junior screamed in his crib. You've learned to let go of your paranoia for the most part, but you still call twice a day just to be sure.
Thirteen days without holdin' him or feelin' his feet kneadin' your forearm while he fed was a slow torture. You'd wake up in the middle of the night in some roach motel and listen for the sound of him in his crib, but there was only the sound of Delgado snorin' or the chuff of the balky radiator. You wondered what he was doin' and if he even noticed your absence from his life. By the end, you hated the pervert mafioso more for takin' you away from your son than you did for what he and his cronies had done and were doin' to those anonymous kids in the pictures the DA showed you. That's why you wanted to take him down in the end, and that's why you did.
Not that it had made much difference. After all that surveillance and cloak-and-dagger bullshit, the kids in those photos were all dead or gone. After the Pervert incriminated himself on tape, Vice and SWAT had moved in. A raid on his warehouse produced four dead kids in various stages of decomp and several thousand videotapes. Vice and the Feds were still sorting through the titanic mountain of evidence, and God only knew how many children it represented. His stomach had turned over as he'd watched the EMTs roll the four small bodies to the waiting ambulances, and beneath the righteous anger at being bested had been a bitterer, more selfish thought: I almost lost my family for nothin'.
He'd been ashamed of the thought, but he couldn't dispel it. It had beaten like a pulsepoint behind his temples as he drove back to the precinct, and not even the scalding water of the stationhouse shower and three applications of Irish Spring could banish it. It wasn't a cop thought; it was a father-thought, and he was still startled by such a radical shift in his thinking.
What finally knocked it loose was the realization that any one of those kids lyin' there coulda been Junior. All of 'em started out as a wrinkled little face in a snapshot hung in somebody's locker. You towel-dried your hair in the precinct locker room and trailed your damp fingertips over the picture of Junior stuck in the corner of your locker. You'd taken it while he was lyin' in his bassinet, and his feet were still smudged with ink from printin' him for his birth certificate. All those kids used to look like him, and now they were dead, and if the wind had been blowin' differently, Junior mighta been there, too.
"I missed you, buddy," he murmured quietly, and blew on his feet. Junior squealed.
"Please tell me he didn't just make another deposit," Rebecca called from the bathroom. He could hear her rummaging in the cabinet under the sink for the baby shampoo.
"Naw, he's good. We're just playin'."
"Thank God. Mind he doesn't piss in your face. That's a treat, let me tell you. He's got worse aim than you do."
"Hey, my aim is golden," he retorted.
"Well, something is golden, any road," she muttered, and he grinned like a fool.
"We don't have to listen to this," he told Junior, and scooped him off the couch, careful not to let his butt defile the fabric.
He carried him into the kitchen, and from behind him came the sussurating rush of Rebecca's wheels. He turned to see her balancing the bath seat on her lap. Every roll, she stopped to adjust the seat on her knees. It took her six rolls to gain the sink, and she set the seat on the counter with an accomplished plop.
"Listen to what?" she asked, and blew a strand of errant hair out of her face.
"You slanderin' my good name."
She snorted and began removing the shampoo and loofah from the plastic basin of the tub. "It's not slander if it's true."
He turned on the tap. Junior, sensing a game was afoot, began to squawk indignantly and lift his feet off the countertop. Don tested the water streaming from the spigot with his fingers.
"Hey, I didn't tell you to opt for explosive decompression," he told him, and sloshed water onto his backside. Junior bellowed in outrage.
"Oh, God," Rebecca said disconsolately. "I'm sorry. This isn't the homecoming I wanted to give you."
"Naw, it's good," he told her. "It's real good."
It was good. It was normal. It was changing diapers and talking to his wife and taking care of a family he'd been sure he'd lost. It was Chinese takeout and maybe feeding each other eggrolls in bed. It was listening to Rebecca sing Junior to sleep while he suckled, or singing him to sleep himself while Rebecca took ten minutes for a shower. It was everything he'd felt slipping through his fingers as he'd watched her roll down the street with a face blank as marble.
When the worst of the mess was gone, he lay Junior in the bath seat and strapped him in. The baby kicked furiously and shrieked at his sudden imprisonment.
"I need to talk to your ma for a minute," Don said implacably, and turned off the water.
Rebecca, who had thrust a sponge under the faucet, blinked in confusion. "Don?"
He plucked the wet sponge from her slack fingers and dropped it into the sink. Then he turned her chair to face him and dropped to his knees in front of it so that they were eye to eye. "C'mere," he said tenderly, and cupped her face in his hands. "I'm the one that should be apologizin' to you, plannin' a homecomin' for you with roses and diamonds. I'm sorry for what I put you through. I shoulda told you, but I'm not the brightest guy, you know? I just thought it be easier if you didn't know."
Her hands came up to cover his. "Why did you let me just walk away?" Hurt, bewilderment, and a terrible, lost innocence.
"Because I love you," he said simply. "If I left that table and that bastard made me, he coulda found out who you were, found out about Junior. If he was connected, he'd've come after you to hurt me. He'd've found you, and he'd've raped you and killed you in front of me, and after he'd blown my brains out, he'd've taken Junior and sold him into a life of fuckin' rich, horny perverts. I couldn't let that happen. So I watched you walk. But I swear-I swear to you that it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." His voice was ragged, and his hands were trembling. "The only thing that even compares to it was when-,"
Oh, but that hurt to much, to dredge up the memory of clutching his dead sister against his chest, so he pushed it away and kissed her, coaxed her lips open with his tongue and breathed his remorse into her. He let his hands drift to her hair and gathered it in his hands. It was light and soft, gold and absolution.
"Rebecca," he murmured against her mouth. "When I married you, I married up. Don't you know that?"
A shuddering breath escaped her. "You're so full of shit." Fragile and too high, but she finally returned his kiss, all lips and tongue and clashing, scraping teeth. Her cool hands cupped his burning cheeks, and she tasted of salt and toothpaste.
He wanted to pull her out of the chair, to pull down her sweatpants and hike up her blouse and leave his mark on her in saliva and sweat and come. He wanted to take her on the kitchen floor, her hot skin against the coolness of the floor tile, but Junior was still in his bath seat, and while he couldn't drown in it, he was just creative, determined, and developed enough to roll himself off the counter if they gave him enough time.
"We, uh, we better get Junior cleaned up before this goes any further," he managed between parting kisses.
A wicked smile curled in the corners of her mouth. "You're assuming I want it to go any further," she mused.
He shrugged and feigned nonchalance. "If you're not interested, fine by me."
"If you let me touch the Triangle, you can do whatever you want," she purred, and sucked his bottom lip between her teeth. "You can use the scarves, the cuffs. You can shackle my feet to the footboards and e-,"
"God, Rebecca, stop before all the blood rushes to parts unknown and I can't stand up," he pleaded unsteadily.
His febrile mind was busily conjuring the images her shameless lips had suggested, and he saw her, naked and splendid and spread before him, bound to the bedposts by silk scarves or the spare cuffs he kept in the closet. There hadn't been much time for sex since Junior, let alone wanton, kinky sex, and the picture his hormone-flooded brain presented to him as he knelt on the floor with his wife in his arms made him dizzy. He could mount her and ride while she twisted and bucked under his hips and the bedsprings railed against Mrs. Petrinski's hectoring, or he could slither between her open legs and coax forgiveness on the wet point of his tongue.
"It's too late for that, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"But we still have to get up, don't we?" Rueful.
"Yeah."
But still he lingered to kiss her and draw his thumbs along her jawline. She was soft and sweet and familiar under his mouth and hands.
"Okay. On three," she murmured. "One." A kiss. "Two." She cupped his nape. "Three." She ran her hand over his chest.
He got to his feet, but he could not bring himself to break the kiss. He sidled to the sink with his lips still pressed to hers. When he finally broke the kiss, Junior was none the worse for wear. In fact, he was staring at his parents with an avid, goggling expression. Why, whatever are you doing, Father?
Flack chuckled and restarted the tap. "Trust me, Junior. This'll be one of your favorite activities when you get older."
"Oh, yeah? Well, what's your favorite now?" Rebecca asked mildly, and began to soap a tiny foot.
Her lips were still plump from his kisses, and he was tempted to kiss her again. "Wouldn't you like to know?" he answered smugly, and waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Oh, I'm sure it has to do with keeping a firm grip on your pistol," she said breezily, and inspected between Junior's toes for dead skin.
You remember the first bath? his father grunted, and there was a fondness in the question that startled him. He was three weeks old, and you were both scared to death. You handled him like he was blown glass, and every squeak or grunt was cause for close scrutiny, lest the water prove toxic to his fragile skin. Some part of you knew you were bein' ridiculous, but you were terrified of fuckin' it up, of blindin' him with the soap. He'd come to you with all his parts intact and in perfect workin' order, and you were desperate to keep 'em that way.
You marveled at him, and so did Rebecca. Neither of you could believe you'd created such a perfect creature by goin' to bed. I mean, yeah, love was magical, and sex was fantastic, and you'd known about the birds and the bees since you were six, but you never thought it made somethin' like this, like Junior. It exhilarated you and scared the shit out of you at the same time to see your eyes lookin' outta that munchkin face, and to know that you were responsible for him for the next eighteen years.
That first bath took forever 'cause you and Rebecca had to savor every part of him. It's a damn wonder he didn't catch pneumonia while you were watchin' the water bead on the ends of his fingers. You talked to him and each other in awed whispers, and when you poured the baby shampoo over his head, it felt like a sacrament, a holy rite in the kitchen sink.
It still is, but it'll never be as powerful as it was that first bath. Familiarity hasn't bred contempt so much as contentment. You expect to see perfect limbs and a small, round head with what Rebecca calls baby-pattern baldness, so they no longer surprise you. It makes you sad to think that magic is already wearing thin, but that's what happens when a kid leaves Wonderland, isn't it?
He was startled by a fine mist of water on his face.
"Penny for your thoughts, babe?" Rebecca asked. "You've been washing that same arm for three minutes."
He blinked. "Huh?" Oh, nothin'." He shook his head to clear it. "I was just thinkin'. About how fast he's growin'."
"We've still got plenty of time. Besides, if you've still got baby rabies, there's no law that says we can't have more."
"I do not have baby rabies," he countered indignantly. Then, "But you'd really have another kid? Go through all that again?"
She laughed. "Hopefully not until this one is out of diapers, but yeah. Why not?"
"It was hard on you," he said, but he was seized by the undignified urge to bounce on his toes.
She still wants to build a family with me. Junior's gonna have a brother or a sister, maybe more than one, and we can still work on getting the dog and the house with the big backyard and the picket fence.
"It's hard on everybody, babe," she said placidly. "Besides, I wouldn't trade making babies for the world." She playfully swatted his ass. "So, what's in the bag?" She jerked her head in the direction of the bag of takeout he'd left on the counter.
"Shit." In all the commotion, he'd forgotten about it. "I brought home a bunch'a stuff from the Chinese place down the corner. Thought you might not wanna cook. It's sort of a peace offerin'. I mean, I know-,"
Her eyes lit up. "Sweet and sour shrimp?"
"And sweet and sour pork, wonton soup, eggrolls, Mongolian beef, fried rice, Mooshu pork-,"
"Don Flack, I love you."
Even though he knew it was the product of excited hyperbole, the declaration made his chest ache. "I love you, too," he said quietly.
Her face softened, and in the next moment, she was on her feet, clinging to his shoulder for balance. "I know you do," she said, and kissed him. Her free hand slipped around him for further support.
He had his son's soapy arm in one hand and his wife in the other, and it was perfect. He was precisely where he was supposed to be, and dead children who might have had his baby's face were long ago and far away. He breathed in and smelled toothpaste and baby shampoo and Rebecca's clean skin, and it was heaven. He moved closer, not giving a damn if she felt the insistent, hard heat of his prick through the fabric of his pants.
"You want to finish up here, and I'll go dispose of the Junior's diaper before it seeps into the fabric of the couch and renders the living room unfit for human habitation?" she said when they parted.
"Absolutely." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and helped her settle into her chair again.
One hour after that, Junior was asleep in his playpen, the couch was soaking in a liberal application of cleanser and Febreze, and he and Rebecca were sitting on the floor, backs propped against the couch and ankles crossed in front of them. They were surrounded by takeout cartons, and Rebecca was prodding the shrimp in her sweet and sour shrimp with the tines of her fork. She speared one and brought it to her mouth.
"Damn, that's good," she declared, and chewed with obvious relish.
Chopstick-deep in his Mooshu pork, he had to agree. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he'd started to eat. He swallowed his bite and immediately fished for another. "Fantastic," he agreed thickly. "Fried rice?" He held out the appropriate box.
She plucked it from his hand. "Thanks." She took a bite, chewed, and said, "Tell me something?"
"Anything."
"What do you mean, 'you married up'"?
He snorted and wiped the corner of his mouth with a crumpled napkin. "You gotta be kiddin' me. I mean, look at you. You're a brilliant, confident, gorgeous woman, and I went to a college where you could major in ass-wipin'. What've I got to offer you?" Besides too many hours alone and a broken heart?
"What've you got-," she repeated incredulously, and dropped her fork into the box of fried rice. "You've got to be kidding me. You gave me all of this." She gestured at the cluttered living room with newspapers on the coffee table and a breast pump perched atop the TV like an alien antenna. "I never thought I was gonna have any of this-a husband, a child. I thought I'd end up a spinster teacher with too many cats and no one to care when I died. I hit the goddamned lottery when I found you."
"But your math-,"
"Math waits forever. Besides, who's to say I'm not still working on it? I have notebooks of calculations in my night-table drawer. I work on them when Junior naps. Sometimes it's only twenty minutes, but it's twenty minutes. Krantz-you remember my Department Chair?-is still holdin' my job. In fact, she offered to extend my paid leave until the spring semester in January."
"Yeah? That's fantastic."
"Mmm. And Charlie Eppes from Cal-Sci wants to collaborate on a paper on Applied Probability and Quantum Mechanics for The Journal of Cosmology and Modern Mathematics. It could land us both a fat research grant."
He had no idea what quantum mechanics were, but it sounded wonderful. His wife was still working in the field she loved, still thriving, as a matter of fact. He had thought when he'd rolled her whiteboard out of the room in favor of Junior's changing table that he was robbing her of that identity, consigning it to the storage unit along with her desk and her markers, where it would gather dust and be remembered with a distant, aching fondness.
You underestimated your girl, didn't you? Moran sounded amused. You shoulda known better. She's resourceful and determined, and when she wants somethin' bad enough, she claws her way to it. She told you once that folks at that school in Scotland likened her to a mongoose, and right now, you're thinkin' that was pretty damn apt.
"And I've got some other prospects going," she went on. "If the collaboration gains acceptance in the field, it could net a lecture circuit. Some of those land ten thousand a pop. A nice chunk of change for Junior's college fund or a down payment on a brownstone or house."
"That's even fuckin' better," he said emphatically.
"You didn't really think I'd given up the numbers, did you?"
He suddenly felt very arrogant and stupid. He blushed. "Well, I just-,"
"The only thing you ever did for me was make all my dreams come true. Isn't that what a prince is supposed to do?"
He opened his mouth to reply, but could find no answer.
She interlaced her fingers with his and said, "Now pass the fortune cookies."
The next time she spoke, she was beneath him in their bed, eyes glazed and mouth working as he teased her swollen, leaking nipples with his tongue.
"He told me love was poison," she gasped, and ran her fingers through his hair.
"Who?" he murmured absently. He was intoxicated by the taste of her on his mouth and the damp heat radiating from between her legs.
"A professor I once had." She arched and moaned as his tongue traced his name over one breast.
"He was full of shit."
"No. No, I don't think he was. Not about that."
He raised his head to meet her gaze, and she mewled and shuddered as his prick nudged her wet folds. "No, Rebecca?" he whispered. "Then help me die. Help me die," he pleaded, and thrust into her.