Chapter 2

They sat, the three of them together, the Drakes updating Sam on their lives, lulling him to a more tranquil state than he had been in for over a year. Slowly, muscles that he hadn't realized had been in a state of constant tension this whole time began to relax.

Danny dominated the conversation, with Damien providing dry comments as the deadpan straight man to his son's excited rambling. Sam sank back into the comfortable cushions, watching the various expressions flit across the boy's animated face, drifting drowsily while the words flowed past him.

Presently, Damien checked the clock on the mantel and got up to make dinner.

He met Sam's heavy-eyed gaze, confirming that his boy would be safe alone with him. Sam nodded; the frantic thundering in his chest and the haze in his mind had settled at last. He trusted himself with Danny now, and Damien could too.

At least, at the moment, Danny was safe with him. They all knew that it could change at the flip of a switch.

But for the present, he was tired, and his eyelids dragged closed, and he finally, finally felt able to let go, cocooned in the comforting sound of Danny's voice. The boy was talking about some kind of chemical compound secreted by snails that he was currently studying, but Sam wasn't really listening. The words washed over him and he fell asleep, completely dead to the world.

He resurfaced briefly when the boy huffed and tucked the fluffy blanket around him more securely, but that was alright; it was just Danny, Danny, who remained curled up beside him as though he knew that Sam would wake and be unable to go back to sleep if he left.

The kid was smart; he probably did know it.

. . . . .

Damien kept an ear out for any unusual sounds coming from the other room while he cooked, but none came. Danny's chatter trailed off after a minute or two, and after that, there was silence.

He slid the chicken into the oven to roast and went to check on the two of them.

Sam had evidently been lulled to sleep by Danny's rambling. He was slumped against the boy, who was looking with glazed eyes towards the ceiling. Ah, solving a maths problem in his head, then. Maybe it was the Riemann hypothesis again.

Puck flicked an ear and glanced up at Damien. He thumped his tail in greeting, then went back to chewing on…Dammit, was that his shoe? Damned dog.

Danny snapped out of his calculation and met Damien's eyes.

"Alright?" Damien signed in BSL.

When Danny had been a very small infant and Damien had seen the early signs of his son's extreme intelligence, he had remembered something he'd read in one of the mountains of parenting books he'd purchased and promptly learned British Sign Language for the sole purpose of communicating with his pre-verbal child. Danny had picked it up quickly enough to shock even Damien, who was ready for just about anything by now and hadn't learned it nearly as fast, which was ridiculous, as he was the one teaching it to Danny. He had to admit, however, that it was a useful thing to know, but really, the things he did for that child.

"Bored," Danny signed back. "Book please?" he asked hopefully. He couldn't get one himself without waking Sam, or else he would have already.

Damien stepped silently towards a bookshelf and picked a book out at random.

"Not that one!" Danny objected vigorously.

Damien put Brave New World back with a sigh. "Which one?"

"K-I-M," Danny fingerspelled.

Damien groaned internally. The general fiction section (which was where all books that weren't categorized as other types of fiction, such as science fiction/fantasy, poetry/plays, and mystery were sorted) took up the entirety of two massive bookshelves, and 'K' (for 'Kipling, Rudyard') was located at the very bottom of the first shelf. Non-fiction had its own room.

'The things I do for that boy,' he grumbled again in his head as he bent down carefully and waited for the inevitable pop in his bad knee and the twinge in his bad back. He was getting old and he knew it, and the things he'd gotten up to in his youth hadn't helped matters one bit.

He got the book and went over to hand it to Danny, who accepted it with a brilliant grin and a quick "Thanks, Dad."

Well, alright. It was worth it to see his face light up like that even for something as small as this…Which, really, was why he was a spoiled brat, but at least Damien wasn't the only one who spoiled him.

Speaking of people who spoiled Danny, Sam had cracked open a sleepy eye and was watching the two of them, a crooked half-smile drawing up the corner of his mouth.

Damien caught his gaze. 'Alright?' he asked silently.

Sam gave a slight nod. 'Alright now.' Then he closed his eyes and fell back into a doze.

Danny, already engrossed in his much-loved book, snuggled against his uncle and settled down to read. At their feet, the old dog snored, dripping drool onto Damien's ruined shoe.

. . . . .

Damien's roasted chicken was the best thing Sam had eaten in ages (one year and three months, to be precise), and he wanted to stuff it all down his throat.

He knew, however, that shocking his system by eating too much would be an extremely terrible idea.

Luckily, though it was not a pleasant thing at all, his missing teeth in the back made it slightly difficult to chew. His merciful captors had given him just enough medical care, including antibiotics, to ensure that he survived his torture more or less in one piece, so his gums had healed instead of festering. Still, they grew sore quickly if he tried to eat anything too hard, and his mind was nagging at him to make a visit to the dentist to remedy the situation. He'd avoided it so far – the thought of having hands in his mouth again and being at the mercy of someone else so soon after his ordeal was one he kept pushing away – but he knew that he needed to get it done sooner or later. He'd basically kept to a liquid (and mostly alcoholic) diet since he'd gotten out.

Damien, observant bastard that he was, had noticed the missing molars and had made soft foods like mashed potatoes and rice pudding without saying a word. For some reason, that annoyed Sam – bloody perfect man, perfect agent, perfect father, perfect cook, perfect bloody arsehole – but he retracted his uncharitable thought as quickly as it came. That was completely unfair and uncalled for–

–And bloody hell, the man probably knew what had gone through Sam's head because he cleared his throat and said softly, "I think you'd better go to bed, Sam. Make yourself at home; you know where everything is."

Suddenly, Sam felt the shame flooding in, felt his strength flagging…

"You're right," he agreed, setting his fork down with a sigh. "I am rather tired. I think I'll turn in early. Do you mind if I use your shower?"

"You definitely should take a shower," Danny said loudly. "You're a little whiffy, and brushing your teeth wouldn't go amiss, either. You smell like diacetic acid."

Sam didn't know what diacetic acid was, but he knew loving criticism when he heard it. At least he could remedy this rather easier than not.

Damien let his head fall into his hands with a groan. "I give up. Would you like to take my rude, sarcastic, almost-teenager off of my hands? You can have him for free. I'll even toss in my entire knife collection. Please."

Sam found himself grinning. "Oh, I dunno about rude, Damien. Brutal honesty is refreshing." He stood stiffly and patted Danny's bony shoulder affectionately. "But if you want to give me the knife collection anyway…"

He sent a grateful look to his old friend and ruffled his nephew's unruly hair, eliciting an annoyed yowl, then made his creaky-kneed, achy-backed, wheezing way up the stairs to the guest bedroom and bathroom.

He hated to admit it, but he was really feeling his age now, all forty-seven injury-filled years of it.

. . . . .

The woman – Chief Interrogator Captain Song was her rank and name, though her voice was anything but melodic – pressed him for answers, threatening to increase his suffering…

…As though he could hurt any more than he already did…

(He knew, though, in his heart of hearts, that he could…)

He refused, and spat blood in her face.

. . . . .

He screamed and screamed, struggled and kicked and lashed out blindly against the body he sensed near his…

. . . . .

"It's alright, Sam. You're safe. You're home…"

He came to himself slowly.

He was sitting against a wall. It wasn't an icy concrete wall, but wallpapered, and the floor under him was wood. He could feel the textured grain of the familiar hardwood boards against his hands and bare ankle.

"Are you with me now, Sam?"

It wasn't Song crouched in front of him, but Damien Drake, who was sporting a bloody nose and a quickly-bruising eye.

Sam blinked slowly.

"Sam?"

"I'm awake," he mumbled. "I– Sorry."

Damien sat back on his heels, satisfied that Sam was indeed back in the real world and not stuck in his head. He wiped at his nose and examined the smear of blood on his hand with nonchalance. "Don't worry about it. I haven't had a good spar in ages," he said lightly. He was panting a little.

Evidently, Sam had given him a very good fight in his panic.

Sam looked around the room and winced at the damage. Lamp broken and knickknacks swept to the floor, not to mention the conspicuous hole in the wall made by someone's shoulder.

"Sorry." The word stretched at the fresh cuts on his lip and cheek.

"It's alright. Nothing that can't be fixed or replaced." Under the other man's words was a question, that same question he'd been asking since Sam had arrived: 'Are you alright?'

Sam pretended not to hear it. "I apologize for waking you. Where's Danny?" he asked stiffly, slightly horrified at himself now that the haze of his nightmare was fading. His hands trembled as the adrenaline left him. He'd never lost control like this near Danny. Had he scared the boy? Would he be banned from the Drake home?

Damien's expression told him that this was not the case. "I told him to stay in his room," he said with a twist of his mouth that expressed what he really thought.

Sam tried to smile, but he was sure that it looked positively ghastly and dropped it immediately. "Eavesdropping at the door then?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Sorry," he mumbled again, rubbing his face. The blood smeared, making his fingers tacky as it dried.

"Stop bloody apologizing," Damien said firmly, his intense green eyes boring into Sam's face, "You can't help it. Danny's fine; some nights he'll stay up until morning if I don't pick him up and dump him on his bed."

An outraged huff came from behind the door at that.

"Come on, let's get up off the floor. We're too old for this." Damien said tiredly, standing with a groan and a crackle of his knee.

Sam gave a sympathetic wince as he took the other man's hand and let himself be helped up with a crack of his own.

"I'm a mess, Damien," he confessed hoarsely once he was on his feet, his voice low enough not to be heard at the door. "I've come apart into so many pieces, I don't think I'll ever be whole again. I can't do this."

"You know what you need?" Damien's voice was equally soft, but flooded with understanding.

"Tea. A good old-fashioned cup of tea." Damien pitched his voice towards the door. "Daniel, that's your cue to go put the kettle on."

"I'm going, I'm going."

"And grab some wet washcloths while you're at it, please."

Vexed, inarticulate grumbling drifted through the door; however, the words 'domestic servant' could be very clearly heard.

Sam managed to give his lips a twitch in amusement, knowing that the Drakes were putting the show on for his sake.

Once the boy was gone, Damien fixed Sam with a serious look. "You're going to pull yourself back together, Carmichael. You're going to do it for Danny, but moreover, you're going to do it for yourself. You hear me?"

Sam nodded, his eyes clenched shut against the tears that sprang to his eyes. "I hear you. But it'll be something of a patchwork affair, I'm afraid."

"We all are, but he loves us anyway. That helps." For all his seeming equilibrium, Damien Drake had his own demons that haunted him still.

Sam swallowed hard. "I meant it, you know. I came home for him. I can't begin to tell you how thankful I am that you let me into your lives. I was a complete stranger to you back then, and you let me into your home and meet your child."

Damien's expression turned thoughtful, as though he often wondered at his past self too. "Stuart trusted you, even at a time like that, when there was a traitor at Six. That was good enough for me. Not to mention that he'd told me enough about you before, in a general sense." He paused. "I rather think, too, that it was because I know exactly what it means to someone like us. You forget, if you're not reminded, what you're doing it all for."

Seeing that Sam was still mired in the foggy helplessness that sometimes plagued one after a nightmare of that intensity, Damien picked the bedcovers up from where they had fallen and dragged them back onto the bed.

"First of all," he said conversationally as he tucked the corners in neatly, "you need to get checked out for VDs." The glance the older man cast him was nowhere near judgmental, but Sam felt yet another flush of shame anyway. He really had slept his way around wherever he'd landed, with no thought given to the safety of himself or his partners.

"Then we'll get your teeth taken care of," Damien continued, fluffing the pillows and smoothing them. "It might not be high up on your list of priorities, but you'll feel a hell of a lot better. We'll get your weight back up to what it's supposed to be, and get your strength back up, too."

Sam's throat convulsed, and he felt himself tearing up again, much to his embarrassment.

Damien looked at him closely, this time with more intensity. "What are you on?" he asked quietly.

Sam snorted. 'What aren't I on?' he asked himself cynically.

"Painkillers?"

Sam nodded silently. He had pointedly left them at the shithole where he'd been staying, but he was really craving them now, as evidenced by the way his hands were shaking. He clenched them to get the twitching to stop.

"I'll go back to Six tomorrow. Get sorted out," he croaked. "Hopefully, they won't keep me locked up to the end of time."

Damien gave him a long, thoughtful look. "You can stay here as long as you need to, Sam. Or we can go with you back to London to check in, get whatever procedures you need done, and then you can come back home with us to recuperate. Whatever you need."

Sam skewered him with a sudden, sharp glare. "You're really going to let a drug-addicted alcoholic with severe PTSD stay with you and your child?"

"Well, if you put it that way…" Damien feigned thinking about it for a moment, arms crossed. "Are you going to hurt me or my child?"

"I'm not planning to, but I can't tell you if I might," Sam said seriously. He gestured at Damien's face. "I already have."

"That isn't what I meant." Damien Drake wasn't one to put his son's safety at risk, but he evidently saw something in Sam just then that told him that Sam wouldn't hurt Danny physically.

Sam sagged and sat on the newly-made bed. "I don't know, Damien. I don't know anything right now. I'm a mess. That's all."

"Do you want to stay?"

"Yes." It came out hoarse and barely audible, but it was definitely what he wanted. "Yes."

"Then you're staying."

And that was that.

There was a tentative scratch at the door. "I brought the tea," Danny stage whispered. "Is it safe to come in?"

The men shared an amused smile. Sam wiped the wetness out of his eyes.

"All clear, Danny."

Danny walked in, sleepy-eyed dog in tow, with a teapot balanced on the tea tray. The soothing scent of lavender filled the air. Sam noticed with detached amusement that the boy had brought three mugs, clearly signifying his intent to stay and have a cuppa.

"It's lavender and chamomile. You don't need caffeine at this time of night," Danny said, sounding like a prim and proper maiden aunt as he poured the steaming liquid into the mugs.

The dog grumbled and turned in a circle before settling on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Damien picked up the two damp washcloths from the tray and handed one to Sam, using the other to wipe the blood from his own face.

"Smells lovely," Sam replied, dabbing at his cut lip and cheek. Because really, what else could one say? He was a coffee man, usually. He'd tolerate tea for the sake of the Drakes, who loved the stuff, but lavender belonged in soap, not beverages, in his opinion.

Danny served the tea with an exactness that was incredibly and endearingly Danny-like and made himself right at home at the edge of the bed, sitting cross-legged and inhaling the scent of his potpourri tea with the most content expression in his arsenal as though he'd be happy to drink it through his nostrils.

Sam felt himself settling just watching him, so he followed suit, exchanging amused glances with the boy's father at Danny's happy sigh. Yes, despite Danny's apparent enjoyment of the tea, it still smelled like his grandmother's linen closet.

"You're staying with us, then?" Danny asked presently, eyes closed and his nose still stuck in his mug.

Sam nodded, wary of his reaction, though he shouldn't have been.

"Good," the boy said with satisfaction, and not a small amount of condescension. "You shouldn't be on your own. Self-medicating is a terrible habit, you know."

'Little arsehole,' Sam thought fondly at him while his father let out a weary and long-suffering sigh.

. . . . .

Notes:

Yes, Danny sorts his bookshelves by genre and author. So do I, for that matter, but not quite so strictly. I do, however, have six bookshelves and more books stacked on the floor. All that, plus a library card and internet. If I ever become a zombie, chances are, I'll be groaning, "Boooooks" instead of "Braaaaains."

A note on Kim by Kipling: I recently read it and I was pleasantly surprised at how fun and interesting it was. Basically *spoiler alert* Kim is a homeless waif in colonial India and eventually gets trained to be a spy! There's even a thing called "Kim's game" that is/was apparently used to train spies in real life. It's a memorization game. I had no idea what the book was about before I read it, but it was on my "to-read" list (I've been picking books off of "100 books to read before you die" lists lately), so I read it. I definitely recommend it. Anyway, because I read Kim after I'd decided that Danny knows various languages but not Hindi, I am hereby changing that bit in my story "Have No Delight to Pass Away the Time" because one of the cool things about Kim is that he can speak a bunch of Indian dialects. I'm sure wee!Danny would have loved pretending to be Kim. The language Danny learns in that story is now Indonesian, not Hindi.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Another recent read. I didn't love it, but I certainly thought that it was very good (as I've grown older, I've realized that there's a difference between 'I liked it' and 'it was well-written'). It had elements in it that were surprisingly ahead of its time, like genetically cloned everything and free sex. I had a hard time believing that it was published in 1932. Also, of course, I included it as an allusion to Skyfall.

Diacetic acid: The 'booze' smell you secrete in your sweat after you've had a bit to drink. Apparently it smells like vinegar?

Use of 'VD' (venereal disease) vs 'STD' (sexually transmitted disease): The term 'VD' was used in the 1990s, so that's what I used here, since that's the term Damien would be familiar with.

Lavender tea: I personally like it but I can see how some people (my mother included) would have Sam's opinions on it. In my headcanon, both the lavender and chamomile came out of the Drakes' garden, which adds a touch more of that 'love and comfort' feeling.