Alright so I know you all love Don and Syler, but I felt like I had been slacking in the Danny and Lindsay department of the story, with their beautiful twins on the way. I tried, believe me I tried to write to a scene for them, but then the idea of this chapter came to me in a dream, literally. Okay not exactly like this, I was Syler and my one of my best friends Blake was Don, but the conversation is the same, and after that every time I sat down to write all I could think about was my dream and how perfect it would be for them. But I am rambling, so without further ado. I give to all of you, Chapter 18!

The sound of a phone ringing at three in the morning was not unheard of in his home, in fact it was to be expected in his line of work for someone to need him, because people who do the things that cause him to be called, never seem to have any concern for the hour at which he is awoken. But it was however quite abnormal that his home phone should be ringing. If Don were to be perfectly honest, he was never sure why he even paid to keep the line open, it seemed to only be there to take messages nowadays, no one called it outside of his sister, and no one really had the number besides her either. Which is what made it's unfamiliar ringing all the more confusing.

Rolling over unto his back, Don left the warmth his sheets had taken, for the cold side, and flailed around blindly at his bedside table, as he stubbornly refused to open his eyes, because he was supposed to be asleep. But after several more moments of his fingers grasping nothing but air, and let his head drop back, and he groaned, peeking open his right eye, and could see the numbers glowing in tune with the incessant ringing which he was making a mental note to change later that day.

"Flack." He barked into the receiver, not bothering to look at the caller ID, or ever to dislodge the sleep that was in his throat.

"You know your voice was uncharacteristically sexy just then." Her voice came through the phone groggy almost to the point of incoherency, but it was unmistakable just the same.

"Sy?" Instantly he felt stupid for asking, he knew perfectly well who it was on the other end of the line.

"Oh my God!" She shrieked, and then went silent.

Don sat up in bed and clicked on the lamp cringing as the light flooded the room, and briefly wondered if this was the longest she had ever gone without saying a word to him, before he thought she might have hung up.

"Sy?" He asked again.

"I didn't think you would be up, I didn't think you would pick up, I thought--I woke you up didn't I?" She finished finally, in a way that wasn't really a question.

"Yeah, but--"

"I am so sorry, I shouldn't have called I didn't even think about the time difference."

"Syler, you're in D.C." Don said dryly.

"So?"

"So you are a two hour train ride away from me, there is no time difference--" He trailed off as realization hit, she wasn't groggy, he knew this voice, that flirtatious air about her, it was not the norm. She was drunk.

"Sy, have you been drinking."

"Just a nightcap or two with a couple hundred clients--no wait, maybe it was a couple hundred night caps with a client or two--" Her sentence died off in a high pitched giggle, which confirmed it, definitely drunk.

"Syler are you still at your hotel?" He asked, his need to be sure of her safety growing by the second, and tightening around his heart.

"I can't go back there." She whispered.

Don's heart lost all rhythm, "Why?" He asked through gritted teeth.

"I broke their lamp." She said, her tone laced with shame.

"You what?" He was almost positive he had heard her wrong.

"I was a little tipsy when I got to the room tonight, and I was trying to get into bed when I knocked over the lamp, which broke, so I had to get out of there as fast as I could."

"Syler where you right now?"

"The Lincoln Memorial."

"You are sitting at the Lincoln Memorial at three in the morning, because you broke the table lamp at your room at the Holiday Inn." He recapped.

He could heard her jewelry clinking, and her hair rubbing against the speaker as she nodded, "I'm laying right now but yeah, and it's really creepy out here."

"How so?"

"I think Abe is looking down my shirt." She breathed into the phone.

Lying back on his bed Don laughed, finally having a better reason to be awoken at three o'clock in the morning, talking to Syler was a lot better then having to look at someone whose life was cut short.

"This is not a laughing matter," She was saying harshly into the phone, "I am a fugitive, I entered and broke, and then left the scene of the crime."

"I think you'll be fine to go back to the hotel, the most they can do is make you pay for the lamp."

"Really?" She asked unsure.

"I promise, you will not go to prison, even if I have to come down there and rescue myself."

She laughed into the phone, "Can you come in your dress blues?"

"That the Marines." He corrected lightly.

Syler stood to her feet, and wavered on the steps for a moment, before righting her equilibrium and giving one final wave to Abe, and taking off. Don couldn't recall the last time he had talked this long to someone on the phone besides his sister, she seemed to have sobered up, even though she did put her phone in her pocket as she entered the hotel until she was safely back inside her room, she pulled it back out and placed it back to her ear.

"I made it." She told him whispering for no real reason again.

Don felt the cold hand, that he hadn't realized was clenching his heart, at the thought of her out alone this earlier in the morning, loosen it's grip, and he began to breath easily once more, "Good, now do you know what would be a good idea?"

"What?" She asked, excitement creeping into her tone.

"Going to sleep. Forget about the lamp until morning."

Even though he could see her, he knew that the silence that followed was her cringing, "Sleep?"

"Yes."

"But it's morning already."

"Think of it as an early siesta."

A sigh escaped her lips as she drew back to covers, and didn't bother to toe out of her shoes, just slipped them underneath the covers, "You know that I used to go to sleep each and every night with a bed time story."

"No I can't say I did."

"Yeah my dad would always make up some great story every night, and say he had been working on it all day, he was a great story teller."

"I'm sure he was."

She laughed, "Don?"

"Hm?"

"Tell me a story."

Don was silent for a long moment, he didn't know how to tell stories, he hadn't been given a bedtime story in his whole life, how was he supposed to compete with an entire childhood of bedtime stories on his first try.

"Donald dear, I'm waiting." She laughed.

"Okay, well," He tried to think back, to remember some Disney princess movie he had watched with his nieces, but his mind suddenly went blank, and could think of nothing, so he started slowly, "Well once--there was this-- this boy, what do you think his name should be?" If he could get her to tell half the story he would be home free.

"Don." She said thoughtfully.

He smiled lightly, "Okay, Don, and when Don was a kid he wanted to be a space cadet, he wanted to go into space and see all of the stars and planets, he wanted to be weightless because then he could really fly. See Don also dreamed of flying, and one day he built a rocket out of an old barrel, and some fire crackers, and told his dad he was going to fly. But his dad told him to get his head out of the clouds, and do something real with his life, and then he took the barrel back into the shed, and threw the fireworks away--" Don trailed off, he had never told anyone that before, he hadn't meant to tell her now, but his lack of thought led him to revert back to truth instead of imagination.

"That's a really bad story Don." She spoke softly, trying to lighten the mood.

Blinking once, twice, three times, he recovered, and smiled watching headlights flood through his window, flashing what looked like a tiger against his ceiling, Don breathed deeply, "Yeah but see all of that happened before the tigers from Mars came."

"Space tigers?" She asked slowly, like he might actually believe tigers were in space, though he was sure that half of the things she had said over her lifetime were three times as ridiculous as tigers from space.

"No tigers from Mars, do not interrupt." He chided lightly.

Once the tigers from Mars had arrived, and taken the Don from Earth to let him live upon their planet where they let him be anything he wanted to be, and the boy grew up and decided he wanted to go home, and become a space cadet to show his father that he could be anything he wanted to be, he realized that Syler had stopped responding.

"Babe?" He said softly, and was met with no reply, "Syler?" A deep sigh emanated from her end of the line, and Don knew she was sleeping now, "Syler, I wanted to tell you something tonight. That I am completely, hopelessly, painfully, and forever in love with you, and have been drowning in the fact that I am not able to tell you that every moment of every day, for weeks now." He whispered these final words, and disconnected the call.

He had said it, to an unconscious Syler, but he had said it, and that was all that he could do at the moment. He would tell her, eventually.

So.............BAM! Sorry if you were hoping he would say it this time, or if Syler would say it this time. I'm still not sure who will say it first, maybe pull an Olsen and have them say it at the same time? Just a thought tell me what you think about the chapter despite the lack of 'I love you's' said to coherent individuals.