Graphic Warning For This Chapter


Banana Pancakes

Hard Rock Hotel and Casino – Tampa, Florida

January 16th, 2004 – 9:28 am

There was sun on her face for the first time in months, bright, orange sun in fact. This was why people came to Florida, to feel this rampant glow every morning. As she tossed over in bed again between the Egyptian cotton sheets, she felt the cooler spot that had been neglected through the night, and breathed softly into her pillow. She wasn't quite ready to wake up yet, and tightening her eyes, she let herself fall back into a half sleep. Partly interrupted by the sound of the shower running in the bathroom across from her bed, and partly by the sound of shouting from the guys' room next door to them. Nothing though, she convinced herself, would get her out of the sweet comfort of the pillow, out of her sheets, out of her room for at least another hour. Yet neglecting to remind herself of who she had ventured to the sunshine state with, Lily left herself wandering in aimless napping, just about the time the room phone rang. Repeated, over and over a ring, until she managed to stretch out through white cotton, and grasp the receiver.

"Hello?" She questioned raspy and weak, rubbing the sleep from the corners of her eyes.

"Yes…" the voice began, a tone she could hardly make out from her drowsiness, "This is a 9:30 wake up call for a Mr. Hawk."

"Mr.…who…Hawk, who?"

"Mike Hawk. Wake up call…for Mike Hawk." The voice stuttered with a hushed chuckle, as she sat up to analyze what had just been repeated to her. Her brow was twisted disturbingly when she finally understood it, and rolling her eyes, she returned to the call. "Nice try, Jeff," hanging up loudly after.

She fell back in a gust to the sheets again as Shane came out of the bathroom in one of the fluffy robes, smiling.

"Who was on the phone?"

"I believe it was the person who skinny dips in your gene pool." Shane laughed and came to sit on the bed opposite Lily, brushing her dark hair through.

"I think he's missed you."

"Has a genius way of showing it. His file says he's thirty-four, but he acts four still."

"Hey I won't argue with you, my brother's a douche if ever I saw one." With a gruff, Lily giggled into the pillow face down then pushed up to find her own toiletries for a shower. It was only when she was trying to decide what color lingerie to wear for the day, that she instantly wondered what exactly the plan was for the case, and turning around to Shane, she began to question it.

"What's the deal for today, are we going somewhere?"

"Not you yet."

"Why not?"

"We've gotta case this asshole first, his house and the bars down on the beach. Then…we'll decide on you, Lil. Okay?"

"Yeah…" she replied disappointed, but clinging to her clothes with a smile. Shane was quick to retort with a worthwhile option, one she knew would probably get an interesting response in itself.

"And good news is…you won't be alone all day. Jeff's sticking to the hotel too."

"Oh…great…" she turned to go into the bathroom, after giving her hope and goodbye to Shane. Being thrilled by the news of having to share a wall with Jeff all day long was tough, but she knew that there were worse things, and it might even give her a chance to make some sort of a breakthrough with him, medically speaking of course. More than anything, Dr. Lily Hanson wanted to get down to the bottom of Mexico, what had happened, why and by whom. All of the facts left undisclosed on his file in her suitcase. All of things that he would have told her easily ten years ago, and now probably only under the influence of flirtation and sweet memories.


Next door, under a sprinkle of warm water and between mumbling politicians on CSPAN from across the bathroom, Sands was livid with the urge to rid his head of the thoughts he'd slept on, the ones that had left him desperately clinging to a sheet for modesty's sake early in the morning. The jets of the shower weren't helping at all, only improving his ability to recall the feel of a woman's fingernails digging tightly into his shoulders and back. It had been almost two months now since he'd found the pleasurable company of anyone but his own hand, and it was another one of those days. Reaching down to where he felt nothing but pained, he tried to stroke easily, bringing himself into some sort of distorted pleasure. Yet every time his mind attempted to play out a scenario, whether it be the Coors twins or Britney Spears, he was left hopelessly with nothing but more pain, and more darkness. His hand stopped moving to rest on the tiled wall of the shower, cool, urgent almost, playing against the heat and steam surrounding him.

And then, in his final moment of care for anything at all, he shook the water from his dripping hair, and thought about what had so haunted him the night before. It wasn't a perfectly proportional celebrity or a chick from a sports ad, it was the face of a young girl, no more aged in years than his lasting erection was in days. She came to him with dark hair, glowing eyes of the richest blues, sauntered about in his head, blew kisses, danced to The Pogues, and wore a ragged old baseball cap. A girl the last time he'd seen her and a woman now, without his will to view or guess. She had come to him in a nightmarish delight, from between the walls of a hotel suite, and circled around until he was eventually awoken with pain. And the further he thought about it now, the quicker he began to notice his finger stride against the underside of his hardness, pulling, extracting everything with force, ridding the contents of what he knew was going anywhere. He felt her inside of him, trapped, slicing away at his soul for almost a week now, only a week. A week's pain, brought on by eight years of much worse. His hand shook violently over his length, pumping at the pressure of one of the shower's jet, standing, waiting, wishing that he could be free of it. He pictured her lips, tangy, fruitful still, her hair, long and twisted into delicate curls of the darkest of the Cape's stone, her breasts, firm, small enough to call his own and just enough to satisfy his every need, as she had for those four long years. Lily was everywhere, all around him, young Lily, grown-up Lily, Lily in a Red Sox cap, Lily in lace, everything he could remember about her, until eventually the images took over, and he gave into a wave of ecstasy, a call of her name in an echo of rushing water and his heated seed down his inner thigh. It slid down his leg while he stood catching his breath, water falling into his mouth. It slid down until he reached the cool tiles under his toes, circled in a puddle, and ran away. Lily ran down and away from him. Although he knew, and feared even more, that she would come back soon enough.

Sands didn't want to admit that she had gotten the best of him already, and that her arrival at the airport had thrown him for every mental capacity he still derived. A room away is where she was now, just one room. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Was she ok? Was she still mad from last night? Did it even matter that he asked himself the questions anymore? He'd given that up a long time ago.

After a quick rinse, he reached for the towel on the glass door, hopped out of the shower and began to dry and dress in the clothes Shane had set out for him. He couldn't find the remote for the perfectly unnecessary plasma screen in the bathroom wall, so he just let the government continued chanting at him while he lowered his hands to the counter for his razor she had left him as well. For whatever reason, he had woken up with the urge to shave, and he liked to think it was because he was trying to collect hot Floridian chicks at the hotel, rather than why he really expected it had come to mind. He covered his face with shaving cream, and carefully slid the razor along, never noticing his bleeding mistakes, never caring anyways. Finishing up, he threw on his shirt with the jeans, made his way back out into the room, and played the three digit code for room service over in his head while dialing the phone…3…5…6. It rang three times, and eventually the voice of someone at least half his age and beauty answered, and fighting the urge to ask her name, he placed a breakfast order.


"Apple please….yes." She replied, answering the questions of the room service attendant, Yes, suite number, 168. Top floor…" Again silence as she listened to the woman, then a confirmation and a thank you before she hung up the phone. The View was on the TV, and trying not to get too entirely annoyed with the woman, she fell into the screen of her laptop, aimlessly checking her full inbox of mail and government crap. She'd called Allie a few minutes after she got out of the shower, explained what she could to her, and given the simple instruction to close up shop until the twentieth. It was a bizarre request, but when Lily informed her she would still be paid for off time, Allison couldn't help but to agree even though unaware that Lily was settled in a hotel room opposite her boyfriends. She tried to answer a few emails, but was uninspired to play doctor, and instead started flipping through channels while waiting for her food. There was of course nothing on as always was the case when she wasn't working, and this left her mind to wander slightly, over a few different things, the first her mom's face the night before and her surprise at Lily's decision to chase after Jess and Shane, the second, her brother and for some reason his stupid old wallet that he refused to replace, which then led to Sheldon, a man who she couldn't seem to wrap her mind around for anything.

Here he was, next door, and she was too afraid to even bother him, or acknowledge him again after the wakeup call she'd been gifted. He was this obtuse mystery to her now, as if his being blind made him invisible to the world, made him more secretive, more challenging. It was a challenge she was ready to fight against, a battle she wanted to win, but just didn't know how. One week for eight years was all it had been so far, and even though he sounded the same, and smelled the same, and partly looked the same, he felt different to her, so weak, so distant. He just wasn't Jeff anymore. More than anything she feared it had been the result of his career move, the CIA had taken all they could get out of his skills before rendering him a lost soul to the world and leaving him with his memories to haunt him, alone and scared in the dark forever. If she could only just break through the black somehow, tear down a wall with even a shadow of light for him, she would be relieved some. But to do something like that was going to take time, and patience, and above all else compliance, which Lily knew, wasn't his strong point.

When her mind recoiled from the thoughts on him, she realized she had scanned through almost two hundred channels of cable more than once and never noticed a single show. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there, lost on the inside, wrapped up in her robe, but it was long enough to make cause for a knock on the door of the room. Leaping from the bed and pulling her robe tighter, she reached for the handle and opened up to see the young room service boy and a cart of food. It smelled delicious, and when she signed for it, the kid wheeled in the cart and left, never having even bothered to wonder if he'd made a mistake. But within minutes Lily knew, as she rolled the cart to the edge of the bed, and sat down to fork into her apple pancakes, she noticed an odd texture to them, but ignored just long enough to bring them to her taste buds. And it certainly wasn't apple. She didn't spit out the food, but winced and continued chewing, thinking of only one thing…banana on pancakes…who the hell puts banana on pancakes? Just as she was about to swallow the crude taste, she choked on the food with a second knock, this time at the door leading into the guys' room. It was soft but forceful, and knowing who it was, she jumped up and moved to open it.

There was the stench of bananas on her breath when she caught him leaning against the doorway panel, a plate in his hand, glasses on, and an annoyed expression circling his face around the few dried razor nicks he'd acquired.

"Apples?"

"What?"

"You…" he tried again while exhaling and holding the plate out further to where he could smell his own food on her breath, "You're the apples."

"Oh…and you…you're…gross. Bananas? On pancakes?"

"Stop knocking my breakfast and hand it over."

"Hold on…" she walked back into the room to grab his plate and hand it to him as she grabbed her own. He nodded in thanks and turned back around without a word. It shocked her, but what shocked her more was her immediate response, "You too good for my company, Agent Sands?" It worked, as he stopped dead in his tracks, swiveled back with a cocky grin and tapped his thumb on his plate in thought. Lily waited with a smile and a lick of syrup from her own plate, until she saw him nod his head back and respond, "I'm the blind guy, so you get to be transient. My balcony…"

"Its forty degrees outside…" she mocked with a glance out of the sliding glass doors of her own room.

"If you can't handle Florida in January, how the hell are you gonna handle a bullet wound?" And with that, he finished his steps back and walked out onto the balcony from a distance as she watched him. Her eyes darted a few more times to the icy windows in her own room, the mere look of cold from where she stood, and then in true Hanson family fashion, she jumped into gear, sucked it up, and followed him. Outside, it wasn't as cold as she had pictured it to be, and in all ridiculousness it actually felt nice. Sands was already stretched out in one of the rod iron patio chairs, breathing in the coastal wind, and stuffing his face. When he heard her finally come out, barefoot nonetheless, he laughed and jilted her for his own pleasure, "How does a girl from Chatham Bay, freeze her ass off in Florida?"

"I don't know…probably the same way a boy from Elizabethtown gets pissed at a Boston summer."

"Hey now, I distinctly recall telling you never to mention that fact."

"What…ten years ago? Hardly counts…" Sitting down across from him, she sat Indian style, winding her legs together for warmth, and sinking into her own plate. Something about Jeff though preoccupied much of her mind, his hands as they held onto both, table and fork, the veins still in protrusion, green, rough, and desperate to relax beneath the taut skin. His cheeks were already growing red with numbness as she felt her own doing the same, his hair, slightly wet at the curling ends, and the scar on his neck, something she had only just noticed in the right light. It was a battle wound of some sort, a mission, a fight he'd probably won easily but not so withstanding as to leave him clean of blood. Eventually he began to speak again, and she stopped staring to focus on her food.

"You must be the craziest fucking chick to have ever lived…afraid of nothing huh? Old Hanson family tradition, fear nothing?" He was finding her again, and it scared her. Sands knew her all knew well, he understood her mind, because in actuality, theirs had always operated on the same basic level of being. They understood one another; they were each other at one point. "Can't say Tommy Boy isn't proud right now. Christ…he's probably sitting somewhere laughing his ass off."

"Yeah laughing his ass off at his blind partner…going into battle for him." She finally insisted with a sip of orange juice.

"No, at his 'cop shrink' sister, running off to Florida with his blind partner, to get revenge…that's the joke here."

"Whatever…" She finished, taking another mouthful of pancakes and looking out over the distant, foggy bay of Tampa. After a few harsh gusts in her eyes, she looked back towards the room instead, doors open to take in the view of two messy beds, piles of guys clothing, and from the corner of her eye, and settled at the corner of the couch near the sliding doors, a guitar. When she fell further into focus, she couldn't deny what it really was, the black sheen, worn from ages of playing, but still perfectly well off for any Fender musician. One such a musician, licking his fingers of syrup, downing a full glass of orange juice, and hardly even realizing what she was seeing. Smiling, she interrupted with cough that disturbed him, and finally asked, "Does he still play well?"

"What?" Sands replied with a confused brow as he sucked on the rind of an orange.

"Hank…I can't believe you still have him."

"Oh…uh, yeah." The answer was blank, but it didn't stop her from pushing back the chair and walking over to where it was settled against the couch, throwing it over her shoulder as she fell into the cushions. For whatever strange reason, Sands found himself immediately on edge by her interest with the guitar, more than likely because of the history it had shared not only in his own childhood, but between the two of them. It was the guitar that had strung out more love songs for her than he could even recall writing or covering. The same six strings that had played minutes before he'd gotten down on one knee at Lockeman's Pier. The same light strum that she had once played beneath his own fingertips, as he taught her how to be one with the music. He pushed back from the chair quickly, feeling his way around the table and back inside to the room, following the sound of the dying strings, and coming to the couch finally. There was no hesitation when he reached down to find the handle of the guitar under her grasp and tear it away from her with a lasting strum.

"Hey, what the hell!?"

Matching her shout with a toss of the guitar onto the nearest bed he could feel, he turned back around with a glaring brow, "Don't play it."

"Why not…?"

"Because." It was the only response he could come up with, at the expense of another three seconds, when he mind fell backwards in time, and his body became motionless before her.


Call from Boston to the Cape

August 12th, 1994 – 3:20 am

"What'ya wanna hear?"

"Just play me anything…I'm tired."

"No way, you pick." At the soft determination in his voice, Lily sat back up in bed to focus her thoughts more clearly on picking out a song. Jeff was back at school for the week, an hour away, and way too many feet and arms distance to count. And even though it would be another two weeks until she was in Boston, she needed him now, in the middle of the night, for at least another twenty minutes, and she knew she shouldn't take it for granted. When he was away during the weeks, he would call around midnight or whenever he finished training, and they would talk for hours after, sometimes till the sun came up and they both were getting dressed for class. She had learned more about him through their phone conversations over the years than she would have liked to admit, and enjoyed them far too much for what they actually were; loneliness.

"I don't know…just anything good…"

"You drive me nuts you know that?"

"Mmm…" she laughed with a smile, laying back down into the sheets, knowing he would eventually choose for her tired mind, "But you love me anyway."

"I have no choice…I screw up now, I get shot in my sleep by Brother Hanson."

"He's my watchdog," she cooed, nestling her head against the pillow further as she heard him slowly tuning up his strings at a distance. Trying to picture him in her mind was easy at this point, he was more or less half naked, his skinny legs hanging down the edge of his bed, hair a mess, his grandfather's dog tag chain dangling at his bare chest, and a guitar settled between his rippled stomach and the place she'd come to know all too well. It was a vision that had left other women in a cloud of anticipated delight on occasion, but for Lily, it was greeted with a content smirk. The lust was gone now, it was only love.

"Alright, I think I got one."

"Well good…" she yawned finally, "Play it Sparky."

And so he did, as the strings wound themselves routinely between his fingers, strokes and dabs of raw emotion and pleasure filtering out over the instrument. It was and had always been his, a good thirteen years and six guitars later. He never got rid of Hank, named for by his sister's unoriginality, and lasting still to that moment. Feeling the harmony building from the guttural moan of the beast, he passed it through on a journey to the lowest hook of Cape Cod, a never-ending tradition. Lily eventually got the wind of the tune he had struck up in thin air, something sweet and low, something he rarely played.

"Yeah…I'll tell you somethin'…I think you'll understand…"

This was the Sheldon the world would never know, and she knew this even then. There was certain secrecy about his ways, mistrust, a lack of confidence if you will, to share it, to express it. But with Lily, there was really no choice.

"When I'll…say that something…I wanna hold your hand…."

While he sang to her, lightly, almost as if he were drifting into sleep with the words, she began to picture his hands behind closed eyes. He had the longest fingers, ones that could reach for the stars if he tried, guitarist's fingers, lover's fingers. They could be soft or they could be haggard, but always one or the other, never halfway done. And it was when he held her hand, the weekends, holidays, anytime he skipped class to drive down the coast and break her out of school, when he held her hand on those days, she knew there was a reason Tommy had met Jeff. There was a reason that he had come into her life just as hers was getting better, and his, falling apart.

"Oh please, say to me…you'll let me be your man. And please, say to me…you'll let me hold your hand…"

The song continued on for another minute or so, falling darkly, soundly into rest as both of them realized the extent of their tired eyes. But it was the dreams Lily concocted every night that kept her from losing her mind while the highway separated them. And for Jeff, it was the sound of her breathing when he woke up the next morning, the phone still to his ear and hers.


Reference: I Wanna Hold Your Hand by The Beatles