….
"So the next time you see me we're gonna be throwing punches." Todd said idly, dropping his head to the headrest, casting a glance at Natalie in the front seat. She sat bedside the plan clothes agent deep in conversation. He sighed before looking back at Victor's blank face on the screen. "Maybe we should talk about something that pisses us off."
"I don't need to be mad to hit you." His brother shrugged.
"That's not very nice." Todd feigned offense.
"Says the guy that thought he was capable of my murder." Victor snorted.
"We both know I'm capable of a ton of awful things, especially to people I care about." Todd chuckled. "Speaking of people I've done awful things to, how's my son?"
"He's fine. He crashed on the sofa right after we got here." Victor leaned left and a rumpled blanket with curly brown hair came into view.
"Good, he needs sleep." Todd hummed.
"We all need sleep." Victor added. "You probably most of all."
"Yeah well, that's not gonna happen." Todd scoffed. "You talk to Jack yet? About the Spencer stuff."
"Not yet."
"I thought you were going-?"
"I'm not as good at it as you are." He huffed.
"Tough shit, I wasn't there then. I can't talk to him about it. You were his father then, so you need to deal with it now." Todd sighed heavily, in the way Victor knew meant that he was trying not to call him an idiot.
"How do you make this seem so easy?" Victor growled.
"What, parenting?" Todd screwed his face up.
"This! Sharing them with me. You could barely share the kids with Blair and you are totally insanely in love with her." Manning considered it for a second.
"I'm thinking about them. They think of you as a father and-."
"They really don't." Victor interjected softly.
"Yes they-."
"No." He shrugged. "Not really, not anymore. Not even Jack. Not even my own actual kid."
"Sam's had a tough year." Todd whispered.
"You're a good dad." Victor told his brother suddenly. "Kids love you. My kid loves you. It's always 'Uncle Todd' this and 'Uncle Todd' that. You're good with kids. You're a good dad. Turns out, I'm really not."
"They love you."
"In a nostalgic 'uncle who used to take you out and by you presents' sort of way." He waved his hand dismissively. "Hell, Starr tolerated me because I was you. Jack barely even tolerated me until the GiGi shit. You're their Dad and I'm okay with that."
"You're okay with that?"
"Yeah. I like not being you." He shrugged. "I passed. When they didn't have you, I passed as a reasonable sub for them, even for Blair for a little while, but it took about five minutes before Sam was enamored by you. You kissed your wife and the moment you did, she knew. Starr knew. It took a Jack and Dani a minute but you got to them too."
"And you're okay with that?"
"They're good kids." He shrugged. "My favorite nieces and nephews -not that the competition there is super steep- but they're your kids." Todd blinked at his brother for a few seconds. "So I'll talk to Jack, uncle to nephew… and then when this is all over I'm going to go ahead and have you adopt Sam." Victor nodded. "It's what he wants."
"He told you that?" He known that's what Sam wanted, he'd been asking him for a year, at least.
"No. But he's been very carefully calling me Uncle Victor since I got to town." He shrugged. "Hell they all are, except for Dani's whole 'father number two' routine, but when she got freaked out the other night and came running out calling 'Dad'? Not one of us thought she was talking to me."
Todd looked away from the screen, taking a deep breath.
"This is what's best." He shrugged when Todd looked back. "They're yours."
Manning shook his head at his brother slowly.
"How am I supposed to hit you now?"
"Think about how I slept with your wife, in your bed, in your penthouse." He shrugged his shoulders, and Todd made a gagging noise. "Right before I sold it. See? Problem solved."
He pressed the button and ended the connection.
…
"Hey Babe." She smiled sadly at the weariness of her husband's voice.
"You guys all settled in?" She whispered.
"I guess." He huffed. "I don't like the idea of Natalie being alone in this seedy motel."
"She's a cop Todd." Blair reminded.
"She's a forensic specialist, not like she's Swat." He scoffed. "This place is full of transients and drug addicts Blair, and my young attractive niece."
"If you keep talking like that people are going to start to think you like her."
"Yeah well.." He sighed deeply.
"Are you ready?" Blair whispered.
"As ready as I'll ever be." He sighed. "Do it."
She reached across the table to her 'other' phone, the one she used for calls to everyone but her family. She typed in the message and sent it. She could hear the beep from Todd's side of the call. She pictured him spinning his old phone on the table before stopping it with his hand.
"It has begun." She hummed.
"Yeah.." He gulped.
"You okay?" She used the melodic tone she knew soothed him.
"I miss you." He sighed.
"Go lay down." She told him softly. "You need to be well rested for tomorrow."
"Blair.." His voice came out as an airy whine.
"Get in the bed."
"Yes, Dear." He muttered, and she strained to hear the sound of his shoes hitting the floor of the motel room across town. She closed her eyes and envisioned him as he groaned and fussed with the blankets until he exhaled slowly. "I don't like that you're alone out there either."
"I can see John's car from here." She told him, pulling the curtain back just a little, as if he could see him too. "I'm okay."
"Natalie didn't even tuck me in." He muttered, she hummed out fake comfort.
"Close your eyes, Love." She told him, crossing the room and climbing onto her own bed. She knew he'd have his arms locked tight around himself, in her mind she was already stroking her nails over his cheeks, fingering his thick earlobes and slowly knotting her legs with his."I'm here." He sighed heavily. "I borrowed your blue Armani." She slid the tips of her fingers along the cuffs of his shirt that she was currently wearing.
"I stole your pillow case." He exhaled slowly, she snorted back a laugh. "I win most pathetic."
"I love you." She whispered to him.
"You have it on?" His voice was fading, she smiled softly.
"Yeah." She put the phone on speaker and closed her eyes.
"Good." Todd breathed. "Love you too."
She hadn't realized how tired she was until then, she could feel the world blurring around her as she drifted off.
"Blair?" She saw him behind her eyelids, his mouth half open, lashed fluttering, fighting sleep.
"Todd?" She hummed back.
"Don't hang up." It was the small scared voice that she both loved and hated to hear.
"I'm here."
…..
The next day John McBain was in the helicopter above an altercation involving the Lord twins. As planned, Blair had interrupted Victor/Walker's attempt to turn Jack to the dark side and a fake hostage crisis had ensued, covered by a planted news team. One that ended with the most recently still missing and presumed dead Lord Twin, Todd Manning, had arrived to rescue his wife and son, ending up sacrificing himself as a hostage for his maybe brother's escape as a quickly approaching police team (aka John's wife and her cousin) closed in.
The whole thing was caught on video, by the man sitting next to John McBain himself. It was all over the news by sun up.
…
"Now what?" Todd said, almost bored, turning his face towards Victor as they drove. They'd 'lost' their niece and nephew about six miles ago.
"Now we hope somebody makes contact before we get to Pine Valley." He shrugged. Todd had spent the last twenty minutes or so dialing and redialing the top numbers on Walker Lawrence's phone on his own. Not his actual phone, but the one he'd had when he left Llanview to find Victor the first time. The one Blair had sent her fake sos to last night, begging him for help. The one he hoped was being tracked.
So far it wasn't yielding any results.
"You talk to Jack?"
"Jesus you're like a broken record." His brother growled.
"Did you?"
"Yes." He growled.
"Did it help?"
"Him or me?"
"Him." Todd said like his brother was an idiot. "You're beyond help."
"I think so." Victor muttered, not bothering to scoff at Todd's jab.
"Blair can't talk about it. Still."
"Yeah well, she testified against me and watched me die by lethal injection so..."
"Technically she testified against me."
"Nah. She wouldn't have believed you killed someone." He sighed.
"Your ability to separate us and put us back together makes me dizzy." Todd shook his head. "She thought you were me."
"She did." He huffed. "But like you said, I wasn't a carbon copy. She didn't believe in me the way she believed in you. She thought you'd changed."
"Almost like I was a whole other person." Todd snorted with laughter.
"She spent the next year trying to make it up to you." He grinned a little. "It was worth it."
"That's enough of that." Todd murmured, with a vaguely sick grunt.
"Seriously. They're good stories. You'd have loved it. All that cutesy 'Mr. and Mrs Manning', holding hands, Bonnie and Clyde shit that you love." Victor turned and looked at him again. "Just think of it as something that happened between you and her."
"That's what you do." Todd realized suddenly, surprised to find he wasn't quite as bothered as he just had been. His twin shrugged.
"I guess." He tilted his head, as his eyes studied the road in front of them. "At least the good ones."
"What you keep the bad ones for yourself?" Todd snorted.
"No I just know it would have been different. If it had been you." Victor sighed, his brother waited. "I don't have the same- effect- on her that you do. I can say all the same words with all the same feeling." He shook his head. "But I'm not you and on some level she always knew that."
"She cares about you." Todd told him softly. "It may have started out about me, but you two had your own weird little relationship. She cares about you in a separate way. She realizes you're a whole other person."
"Must be nice." His brother grunted.
Todd looked up at him waiting for him to continue, but he didn't. He started to ask him what he meant when the phone on the console made a faint buzzing sound. Manning slowly lifted it towards him.
"Well?" Victor asked expectantly, his eyes flicking from his brother to the road.
"It's an address." Todd told him flatly.
…..