Infinity
By LMR
Archiving: You can put this on Amorous Intent if you want, but if you really think anybody goes there for the K+ stories, I have a TV show to sell you.
Disclaimer: Which brings me to the point that I have no TV show to sell you.
Reviewers: I love you! Those who do not review: Okay, I still love you, but only because I'm too freakin' nice for my own good.
Rating: Still K+, but I lied: It's once again borderline, not quite T'ish. I don't think anyone will mind. I'm sure you're all just rushing to report me for putting in almost too much sexuality. (Eye roll)
Serious Fluff Ahead. Turn back all those with weak stomi...stomac...stumi...tummies.
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Chapter 4: Family Tradition
Bobby came down to the kitchen alone at seven the morning before Christmas. Alex's sisters were already there, along with Danielle's husband. John Eames, to his relief, was nowhere in sight. "Alex is sleeping in," Bobby explained as he poured himself a mug of coffee.
"Wore her out, huh?" Danielle whispered as she passed.
"Hey, no, we-" he started, tripping over himself, before realizing that she'd said it for her own amusement. She was smirking at his embarrassment.
"Stop baiting him, Dani." Alex said, meandering into the kitchen, yawning. She saw the startled look on Bobby's face and smiled. "I lost my favorite pillow and I smelled coffee." She shrugged. "I couldn't get back to sleep." She kissed his upper arm, a comfortable height for a woman too sleepy to safely be on tiptoe. But Danielle observed her real motive when her nostrils flared just slightly and she took a deep breath. He was doing the same with the top of her head.
"Oh, Sweetie," Danielle said to her husband sardonically. "Why don't you ever smell me good morning?"
Bobby smiled and reddened, suddenly self conscious of their routine.
"Yeah, they're sexy like that," Andrea said unabashedly. "I mean, the first movie they watched together as a couple was rated NC-17," she pointed out.
All jaws in the room dropped, including couple in question. Smirking, the two sisters and brother-in-law resumed heading into the breakfast nook. Finally understanding what she meant, Alex whacked Andrea lightly on the arm as she passed. "It was Evil De- oh," she appealed to the leaving crowd, who wasn't listening.
"Who let that twerp pick a buckets-of-blood movie for our first date, anyway?" Alex asked her partner, rubbing her forehead, looking down at the floor. "I blame you," she decided, tapping him lightly on the chest before starting to follow the others out of the room. He stared incredulously at the now empty kitchen as she rapped her fingers against his back.
"Me?! You're the one who wanted to watch gore all day Valentine's Day." He pouted, pretending the shove had hurt. She wasn't buying it, and smirked over his shoulder.
"Only because I was single at the time! Once you got there, I was happy to let Andie sit in other room for the rest of the night, all weekend if need be, but you just had to be nice and invite her back in."
"They don't think she's serious, do they?" He sounded worried. She shook her head. A biting, somewhat sick sense of humor was an Eames family trait. "Well, I'm beginning to think your sisters took out a life insurance policy on me," he said, pulling her arms around his shoulders, making her stand on tiptoe.
"Death by embarrassment?"
"No, death by your father."
She laughed. "Don't be ridiculous." She paused. "You know perfectly well they wouldn't be able to collect if you were killed by one their relatives." She kissed him on the back of the neck and left him to ponder that thought over his coffee, hoping her old man would keep his promise and have that talk with him pretty quick.
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Andie ratted the package, getting only a muffled thumping for her efforts. "Cologne?"
Alex scrunched up her nose with distaste. "Neither of us likes smell-interference. It's like wearing a mask. I want his smell; I'm not in love with an Avon catalog.
Andrea gave half a laugh to that one, shaking her head. "Sweet. Disturbing. But sweet."
"You're never going to guess what it is. Give up already," Alex insisted.
"It's a...holy cow," Andrea picked up a sloppily wrapped package behind the one in question.
"Now what would he want with one of those?" Alex asked seriously.
But a huge smile had broken out on Andrea's face. "He is going to shoot right over the moon when he sees this." She handed Alex the package.
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Alex walked into the dining room to find Bobby sitting on the floor with her nephew, surrounded by little plastic animals. "Whatcha' kids doin'?" She squatted down to their level.
"We're playing zoo. You know the difference between crocodiles and alligators, Aunt Alex? 'Cause I do."
"Something about their noses, right?" She beeped his nose for emphasis. She smiled at Bobby, who seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh at something.
"No, silly. Crocodiles have salt glands that secewete sayleen, on their tongues and that's why they live in the ocean, and alligators don't," he reported proudly.
She stood shaking her head. "Great, Bobby. I needed another one." She bumped a laughing Bobby's arm chastisingly with her bare foot. He caught her off-guard by keeping her foot, holding her hip in his hand to make sure she wasn't going to tip over. He put her foot on the side of his leg, stroking it absently while he continued to make a lioness stalk a dolphin.
"Bah-bee," Nathan said, drawing the name out in overdone exasperation. "Lions don't eat dolphins!"
He grinned. "Why shouldn't they?" Nathan seemed perplexed by this, his little brain working at it, realizing he had never really thought about it before.
"The things you are teaching him," she said, shaking her head as he gently put her foot back on the ground.
"I'm teaching him to be a free thinker," he said in a completely serious voice.
"But I came in here for a reason." She bent down to his ear. "There's something under the tree that you really gotta see. Trust me on this, hm?"
He nodded and started to stand. "Okay, my man, you think you can handle this crowd on your own for a bit?"
Nathan nodded, still paying attention to the animals.
"Even the platypus?" he checked.
"Ex-pecially the platypus," Nathan assured Bobby, who was already being dragged to the next room, toward the tree.
"Look, look!" She held a package up to his face. The wrapping was a mess, a loose ribbon taped on, the work of a five year old, no doubt. But neither of them could look at anything but the tag.
To: Uncle Bobby
Love: Nathan
Uncle Bobby nearly choked. "And you didn't tell him to...?"
"Nope. If I had talked to him about it, I would have told him that the pretty shiny silver tape isn't for Christmas presents," she said, running her finger over the frayed edge of a piece of duct tape largely covering Rudolf's head.
Uncle Bobby. Those words shook him to his core in the best possible way. Bobby couldn't have children of his own because of the schizophrenia genes, and it was something that had hurt him a great deal. It had also kept him from more than halfheartedly pursuing a relationship. Until Alex. She'd already told him that she understood. She wouldn't try to change his mind. She was okay with it.
He knew he should worry about what Nathan's parents would think. What Alex's father would think. Boyfriends aren't family, and kids aren't supposed to get attached. But his heart wasn't listening to that.
It was listening to the wonderful little voice inside him and on this tag telling him that Nathan - beautiful, perfect Nathan - was their nephew.
Bobby didn't notice the man standing in the doorway, surveying the scene. Alex did. 'Bout darn time, she thought. He'd promised her after dinner last night that he wasn't going to raise Bobby's blood pressure unnecessarily. She kissed him lightly and left the room without a word, knowing that if Bobby saw her old man coming before she got out of there, he wasn't going to let her leave.
That had been John's condition. He lets Bobby off the hook, and she stays out of the room while he does it. If he says anything about this I swear I am going to smack him senseless! Alex thought.
"Bobby, can I talk to you?" Bobby froze. It's okay, she mouthed from the doorway, flashing a small smile before disappearing into the kitchen.
"Yes, Sir?"
"John," he insisted.
It flashed through Bobby's mind that some men might prefer to be on a first name basis with another man before they killed him. He did his best to push that thought away.
"When I first found out that my daughter, a detective, was sleeping wi - sorry," he said, seeing the upset that flashed over Bobby's face. "That's what I thought it was, at the time. Well, that she was romantically involved with her partner, I thought it was some stupid mistake that she'd made. Giving in to hormones or loneliness or goodness knows what else with someone who was convenient. Bobby started to protest, but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.
"But after what I've seen, I have to say that I think a person would have to be a complete idiot to..." Here it comes, Bobby thought. "Well, to have the kind of connection that the two of you have, and not chase after it for all it's worth." He looked at him seriously. "So I was right the first time: I'm glad you got stuck with my daughter."
Bobby now remembered to breathe. "You have no idea what that means to me, Si- John."
John looked at him appraisingly. "I think I do," he said simply, leaving Bobby to wonder exactly what it was John knew.
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It was Christmas Eve, and it was time for bed.
Time for revenge.
Tucked away in their room, Alex had just changed into her pajamas. She turned to her partner. "You do realize, Bobby, that your wardrobe, or lack thereof," she corrected, running her fingers lightly up and down his arms: He would only barely feel it through the sweater he was wearing now. Judging by the look on his face, he was feeling plenty. She moved her fingers up to his neck as she continued. "Has been driving me crazy for the past couple days."
"Uh-huh," he managed.
She started kissing his neck between words. "I know." Kiss. "You. And I know that you." Kiss. "Have probably been planning what you'll give me for Christmas Eve for a while now." Kiss.
"Um-hm," he affirmed with all the eloquence he could muster.
"And I know you'll want to make sure." Kiss. "That this will be the best Christmas Eve I've ever had." She moved her hands down to his chest. "And you know, Danielle did give us her blessing, and it's true about Nathan's sleeping."
"Your f-"
"My old man could sleep through a tornado." Oh, yeah, he's convinced. She hid an evil smile. "There is one little problem though." She rubbed his shoulders, moved her mouth back up toward his chin. "Every. Mmmm. Christmas Eve. The whole family." She gave one last cruel kiss to his jawline. "Sleeps under the tree," she finished, losing the sultry voice and attitude.
"Ughhh," he groaned as comprehension of what she'd said dawned. "You're mean, you know that?"
She kissed his nose. "I'll make it up to you, I swear." She looked at his face. He was trying to get himself back under control. Her smile slid off. "I'm sorry, Honey, that was too much." She reached to hug him, a light hug, so as not to make matters worse.
To her happy surprise, he just lightly kissed her on the top of her head, and he was smiling into her hair. "No worries. I can always one-up you, Al."
Her smirk was back. "Always, huh? You don't think I can out-trick you?"
"Out-trick me?" He shook his head. "Four letters Eames-
"A-B-B-A," he said conclusively.
She tilted her head away from him, hands on her hips. "Okay, I have to admit, marrying Swedish dance hits and Jamaican culture with a holiday about naked, flying babies was pretty creative, but it isn't the end all of wacky surprises." She poked his chest, challenging. "So we'll just see about that one-up-manship, Goren."
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Danielle put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room, frowning. "Sleeping arrangement's set then. Pajamas ready? Oh, right, Bobby, do you need to borrow a...?" She let the sentence drift off. Her husband was a fairly big guy, but there was no way any of his nightshirts would fit Bobby.
Bobby grinned. "It's okay, I packed one." He glanced sideways at Alex as, sure enough, he pulled a neatly folded nightshirt out of his bag.
"You jerk," Alex said affectionately, smiling as he headed out to change. She opened their sleeping bag and crawled in, waiting for her partner to get back from the bathroom.
Nathan watched Bobby as he came back into the room. He had an appraising look on his face, as if his mind was fumbling around an idea. He kept watching, quietly, as Bobby slipped into the sleeping bag behind his partner.
"Ca' I sleep with Alex and Bobby?" He finally piped up to his parents.
"Only if they say it's okay, Hon."
Alex didn't have to look behind her to know that Bobby was grinning. She opened her arms as much as she could without budging off the floor. "Come 'ere you little Backache. We would love that." He eagerly snuggled in between the two. "I want a kiss from my big man," she told him. Nathan gave her a big smack on the lips, giggling. "And my little boy." She gave her lover an intimate, if G rated, kiss.
"Yucky," Nathan informed them.
"Oh, did you hear that, Bobby? We're yucky. I'll give you yucky, kid!" And she proceeded to kiss the child loudly all over his face and belly, making him squeal with laughter.
Bobby, however, was completely lost in wonderment. Settled here on Christmas Eve, under a family tree curled up beside the woman he loved, and her own little child, whom he adored. He wondered if he could ever make this his family. Would they welcome him into it? Would Alex want him to become a part of it?
For now, at least, the three were like their own little nuclear family.
Which of course, is not a completely apt metaphor, as nuclei are -
Down, Bobby, he told himself.
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Alex's mind was occupied, too. She laid there quietly, fingers stroking a soft, smooth object in her pocket. It was too bulky to properly fit into her pajama pants condom pocket, but was making a valiant, seam-bursting effort at it anyway, as she wasn't letting it off her for an instant.
Tomorrow was the day.
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Hmm, maybe I should make you wait till Christmas for the next chapter. Whatdya' think?
And I'm putting it to a vote: 8 pt or 10 pt font?