Fic: Selfie In Blue, Part IX

Apr 07, 2014 18:35

As he handed her into the bus at midnight, Reese slipped an envelope into Badge’s coat pocket.

“This should last you until Tacoma.”

She patted its thickness and laughed.

“Far beyond that, I bet.”

She sidled down the aisle, her stomach bumping each seat back as she passed.

When she reached an empty row she looked up with a startled expression at Reese who had followed her.

“You going with me?”

He shook his head.

“I can’t, you know that.”

He pulled her close to his body, his hands tight around her back.

“Here’s what I want to say: you need to forget everything. New York, Otter, Elias, me, everything. Understand?”

He hugged her until she squeaked slightly.

“That’s the best gift you can give your baby, Danica. If you keep remembering you will throw away any chance for fun or meaning in your life…and in hers.

" ‘This is the last, best gift, the gift of forgetfulness.’ ”

Badge’s eyes lit up, their soft blue enchanting him all over again.

“Wind in the Willows. I know that quote too. I love that chapter about Pan.”

She leaned back a little bit so that he had to bend over to hear her next words.

“That part is just so beautiful and sad too. I think this is how it goes:

“ ‘Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow and overshadow mirth and pleasure. ‘ ”

He whispered the rest of the quotation with her:

“ ‘And the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.’ ”

Reese felt the bus growing hot, clamping down on him like a serrated trap. Regret bludgeoned him and he choked on the next words.

“Yes, that’s it. Forget and you will be just fine.”

Badge kissed his cheek then and took her seat, releasing him to flee into the night.

+++++++++

Epilogue

Two days later, an hour after dawn, Fusco called Reese to a crime scene near the docks.

“Four-eyes said you’d want to see this. You know this mope or something? Harbor police pulled him outta the river this morning.”

Fusco unzipped the body bag and folded back one of its corners so that the head of the dead man was visible.

A wet pelt of black curls crowned a thin face whose faint mustache and wispy beard suggested this boy had not yet begun to shave. Black eyes, flat as buttons, stared at nothing. Reese started counting Otter’s water-spiked lashes but gave up; if he noted any more details he would never be able to forget.

The jaunty red scarf was knotted twice around the kid’s neck as if it could protect him from the freezing waters of the Hudson. Its cheery color mocked the blood crusted around two bullet wounds at his right temple.

Reese was silent so long that Fusco repeated the question.

“You know him?”

“Yes.”

After another long pause, Fusco pushed on, official exasperation giving way to friendly concern as he softened his voice.

“So who is he?”

Reese stood at attention.

He felt remorse at this boy’s death, of course. He had killed Otter as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.

But he didn’t regret the bargain he had struck with Elias. He had made a choice, traded Otter’s life for Badge’s. And her baby’s.

It seemed the right deal to him.

“His name is Bobby Ruiz. He is twenty years old.”

+++++++++

On an unusually warm night in late October, Larry the Worm interrupted Reese’s retreat through the lobby of the Taj Mahal to hand him a white business-size envelope.

“This came two weeks ago. I was all set to throw it out. But then I figured it had to be for you so I hung onto it.”

Reese looked at the envelope, stained with greasy fingerprints and coated with a fine dusting of grime.

The postmark over the flag stamp indicated it had been mailed from Oakland, California. It was addressed to

Mr. John Good
The Taj Mahal Hotel
23 Cooper Square
The Bowery
New York, NY

He handed Larry a twenty and hurried to his third floor room.
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of typing paper. Printed on it was a photo, tinted blue, of a solemn faced baby with a shock of indigo hair. A bow was tied in the forelock and her eyes were cobalt.

The baby was sitting on a lap; in this selfie, the only visible parts of her mother were blue jeans and the sleeve of a cable knit sweater.

Reese turned over the sheet. His hand was shaking with so much emotion that he had to press the page on his thigh to keep it still so that he could read the message.

The inscription was in Badge’s looping innocent scrawl: Jemma Hofer Ruiz, Born September 26, 2014, Seattle, Washington.

Below the birth announcement was a simple note from the baby: “Portly can’t wait to see Daddy Otter when he visits soon!!”

The baby’s nickname, taken from the Otter’s wandering child in Wind in the Willow, undammed tears he had held back for months.

When they were all spilled, he folded the page along its original creases and returned it to the envelope.

As he recovered his breath, he wiped away the smeared dirt over his name. Then he slipped the envelope under the mattress, pressing it into the box spring for safe keeping.

Though he had planned to spend the night in safety at the Taj, he changed his mind, raw desire for Joss overthrowing his paranoia and common sense.

+++++++++

Reese gathered Joss to him, his chest gliding over the sharp planes of her shoulders, her golden skin shimmering in the lamplight.

He drew his palm over the perfect fullness of her ass, feeling the trembling in her thighs that echoed in the quivering of her stomach where his fingers pressed and clasped in time with her moans.

He wanted to join in her now; sharp yearning for the pleasure ahead made his heart ache. He wanted this completion, this connection, with a fierceness that drove all thoughts from his mind.

His cock, heavy in expectation, pulsed with blood for her. Hope mixed with rigid passion in a cauldron of longing, as his stomach churned and clenched in anticipation. He wanted to be inside her, but he wanted to delay the sweet achievement too.

He pressed his mouth to her nape, kissing her spine, her hairline, sucking at the concave behind her ear. His hands found their familiar rhythm kneading her breasts as she sighed for him. She burrowed her face deeper into the pillow and angled her hips towards him.

This was a nostalgia of the body, without logic or theory. Pure, bittersweet sensation.

As he knelt behind her he listened for her voice, the mournful sounds that made up his name. In her mouth, his name seemed sad, like a lament in a secret language. But her saying his name -- this liquid eagerness for him -- was the surprise by which he measured each day now.

To brace himself for the first penetration, he gripped her waist, his thumbs meeting in the sweat-slick channel of her spine.

Love, undefined and unnamed, was all that remained when he had forgotten everything else; an appeal beyond memory.

He surged forward into her body, ready for this haunting return.

original character, joss carter, john reese, reese/carter, harold finch

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