Wilby fic: Long Sleeves And A Sandwich, by kuonji (PG-13)
Title: Long Sleeves And A Sandwich
Series: Points In Common
Author: kuonji
Fandom: Wilby Wonderful
Characters: Duck MacDonald, Dan Jarvis, (Stan Lastman)
Pairings: Duck/Dan, Buddy/Carol
Category: family, angst, *highlight for spoilers: death of an original character
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~2720
Summary: Duck was first in the door when they got back, the stink of the airport still all over him.
Long Sleeves And A Sandwich
by kuonji
Duck was first in the door when they got back, the stink of the airport still all over him. He took off his jacket, before he'd even stopped to untie his shoes, and tossed it over the back of the living room couch.
Going into the bedroom, he kicked off his bright black oxfords, only finally beginning to show some wear after countless years of sporadic use. Then he plucked off the silver cuff links that Dan had given him for their fifth wedding anniversary. They didn't show anyway, because the sleeves of his suit jacket were too long.
He'd bought the suit off a department store rack for their wedding, and with all the preparations leading up to the event, somehow he'd just never had the time to get the sleeves taken in. Since then, he'd only worn the thing maybe once or twice a year. Every time he put it back in the closet he told himself he ought to get the sleeves fixed... but he never did.
Shit. Fourteen years. Fifteen?
"How the hell long have we been married?" he grumbled out loud.
Dan, coming in behind him, replied, "Uh... Is it fourteen or fifteen years in March?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking!" Duck retorted. Talk about a useless answer. He finished shucking off his clothes and hung up his belt and tie. Glancing over, he saw Dan, still in his own black suit with nearly invisible white pin-stripes, putting Duck's cufflinks back in their padded box with enough care for the crown jewels.
Snorting in impatience, Duck went to the bathroom and tossed his dress shirt in the laundry hamper. He peeled his socks off and stepped out of his underwear as well, then climbed into the shower. He heard Dan moving around outside, coming briefly into the bathroom and running the water but not trying to speak to Duck. Duck shut out the sounds and concentrated on the shush-shush-shush of the water pouring over him, as hot as he could stand it.
By the time he got out, he felt marginally better. He pulled on fresh boxers and a T-shirt, then his work overalls and thick socks.
"You're going to work?" Dan asked. His tone was even, but a frown creased his forehead.
"Why not?" Duck challenged, lacing up his boots tight.
Dan shrugged. "I'll make you something to take with you."
"I don't need anything." But Dan had already left for the kitchen.
Duck noticed that his suit jacket had been hung back up. "God damn it, Dan," he swore under his breath. He took the jacket back down and hung it on the bedroom doorknob. Tomorrow, for sure, he would take it to Stitch N Snip to get the sleeves taken in.
Going out, he slammed the front door behind him decisively and went around back to gather his tools and supplies from the work shed. If he worked fast, he could get both second floor bedrooms done in the McCollin house today. He'd had to delay them an entire day already. They'd said it was all right if he took another, but he had a reputation to maintain, after all.
He had just tapped the remote for closing the garage door when Dan came running outside, in dress shoes, dress pants, and a short-sleeved undershirt. A neon green insulated nylon lunch bag dangled from one hand. He looked ridiculous. Grunting, Duck rolled down the window so Dan could hand in the eyesore. At the time Duck had bought it, he'd figured it would keep him from losing it on a job site.
"Give me a call if you stay out past eight, okay?"
Duck swallowed something uncharitable about curfews and said, "Yeah, okay." He tossed the lunch bag onto the passenger seat without looking at it.
Ignoring the hurt in Dan's gaze, he banged the stick into reverse and roared out fast enough that the truck bucked in protest. Once he was out of sight around the first curve, however, he pulled to a stop on the shoulder and flipped on the hazard lights. He leaned his head against the steering wheel and took long, deep breaths, yelling at himself in his head.
"Hey, Duck! You okay?"
Startling, Duck let his foot off the brakes for a moment and felt the truck start to lurch downhill before he stomped down again. Yanking the parking brake up, he shielded his eyes against the sun to look out at the guy talking to him.
Stan was leaning across the passenger seat of his police cruiser and peering up at him through the passenger side window. "You need a tow truck or something?" he shouted above both their engine noises.
"I'm fine!" Duck answered quickly. "Just had to stop for a second. Dropped something on the floor." Shut up, he told himself. There was nothing like over-explaining yourself to make people suspicious.
Luckily, Stan wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. "Okay." He straightened up to drive away, and Duck breathed a sigh of relief. But before he'd quite finished, Stan leaned down again and shouted, "Hey! I'm sorry about your..." He trailed off, evidently unsure how to finish that. "I'm sorry!" he repeated.
Duck gripped his steering wheel hard with both hands. "Thanks!" he called back.
This time, Stan did leave. He probably had better things to do than check on motorists. Buddy had left him as Deputy Chief until tomorrow morning.
Buddy. Jesus. Duck owed him one. He'd snatched Buddy away this morning and dropped him back off at his house half an hour ago with hardly a word of thanks.
Carol had offered to come, too, but Duck had thought that would be too much to ask, especially since there hadn't been enough time to drive. He felt rotten enough that Buddy had paid for his own plane ticket. There was no point in dragging Carol along, too, when they didn't even know anybody else there. Even Mrs. Trent had only recognized Duck from a picture.
Duck wasn't fit company anyway. He had no idea how Dan and Buddy had put up with him. Since the moment he'd gotten Mrs. Trent's hesitant, flustered phone call yesterday evening, he'd been acting like an utter bear. Everyone around him seemed to irritate him.
Dan, and Carol, and especially Sandra made him furious. Even Jim-- Jesus, even Jimmy made Duck angry. Especially Jimmy. The kid was so young, he didn't know how amazingly lucky he was. Plus, he was getting to that age where the sweet, uncomplicated little boy Duck had known was fast disappearing.
When Duck and Dan had gone to pick up Buddy to drive to the airport, Jim had hung back, uncertain and a little sullen. Buddy had cancelled a rare fishing trip with his son, and Duck wasn't sure how much Buddy and Carol had explained the reasons for it. He hadn't had the spare energy to ask. Duck would have liked to have a hug from the kid right then, but he'd learned that Jim was unlikely to give him one purely for the asking nowadays.
Dan had gotten him to the airport and to the house and to the service and back to the airport, and somewhere in all that mess, Dan must have gotten him to eat something, too, because Duck didn't have any appetite to speak of right now. His husband had literally held his hand through it all. The man who had once been afraid to buy a bunch of flowers for his boyfriend had stood up in a roomful of people and welcomed Duck back with a long embrace after Duck's embarrassingly inadequate, ill-prepared speech.
And Buddy. Whenever Duck had needed distance, there he'd been, enviably dry-eyed and stolid. Every inch the objective, competent police chief. He'd done most of the talking, too, smoothing things over when people expressed confusion and outright indignation about who the three of them were and why they were there and what their relation was to each other as well as to the deceased.
The deceased.
Jesus fucking Christ, Duck still couldn't believe it.
Two weeks. Two weeks. If they'd just told him-- If someone had thought to tell him even just two days earlier...
If she had been his real mum, they would have had to contact him. There would never have been any question. No one would have been able to forget him then. If she had been his real mum, she wouldn't even have been there, maybe. She might've stayed here on Wilby and Duck could have... He could have...
Well, nothing, really. He couldn't have done anything, but at least he would have been with her when--
Savagely, he banged the heel of his hand on the steering wheel, then sprawled back in his seat.
If she had been his real mum, he might've taken the time to visit her, or done more to help her visit Wilby again. He could've called her more often. Done more than send her Christmas cards as if she were just another far away acquaintance. He wouldn't have let anyone forget about him. He wouldn't have let her down when she needed him most.
"She knew how you felt, Duck. I promise," Buddy had assured him. He'd sounded so certain. After all, Chief French knew bloody everything in the universe, didn't he?
That wasn't fair. Hell, when it came down to it, Buddy was the only person who could come close to understanding how Duck was feeling. He was both a son and a parent. He probably knew what he was talking about. Duck hoped so, anyway.
A blue sedan zoomed by, swerving at the last minute. The truck shuddered a bit from the passing. He shouldn't be stopped here. People were used to speeding down the hill -- something Buddy had been complaining about for years on their morning runs -- and they would be caught by surprise by a non-moving vehicle in front of them. Duck was likely to get rear-ended.
Sighing, he got ready to go, checking behind him for oncoming traffic. That was when the neon green of his lunch bag caught his eye. Remembering the hurt expression on Dan's face, Duck scowled. He manuevered the truck farther onto the shoulder and slapped the brake back on. Then he reached over to pull the bag into his lap.
Unzipping the top, he pulled out the expected plastic-wrapped sub sandwich, an apple, a napkin -- and a piece of folded paper from the pad they kept in the kitchen for grocery lists and messages. It was slightly stained by where the tomato from the sandwich had leaked, but when he opened it and turned it around, he read clearly, in Dan's slanted scrawl, Fifteen years in March, and I don't regret a single second. Take all the time you need and come home safe. I love you.
He stared for a moment at the words, noting where the damp stain had made the words 'regret' and 'time' nearly transparent.
It started like a cough, a choking, swollen sensation in the back of his throat. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed, the air seemed to get very thick around him, like being underwater. His head throbbed. He could hear the blood squeezing through, wha-whoosh, wha-whoosh with every beat of his heart.
Pulling in a breath through his mouth, he forced himself to swallow. Then he pulled out his cell phone and made a brief call to the McCollins. Bill picked up. He was sure he must sound deranged or possibly just pathetic, but that was better than the alternative of showing up at their house that way. Hanging up, he swiped the back of his hand across his eyes and checked the street again. Clear. He shifted the truck into gear, pulled out, and turned back toward home.
Dan opened the door just as Duck was coming out of the garage. He had changed into a T-shirt and soft worn corduroys.
"Are you okay?" he asked, sounding surprised. His eyes went to the garage, maybe worrying if the truck was all right, then looked over Duck himself.
Duck nodded. He couldn't actually say anything. Not without breaking wide open. Pressing his lips tightly together, he knelt and worked on untying his boots. The lights were on in the kitchen. Through the doorway, he glimpsed a notebook on the table and a seat pushed back where Dan had evidently been writing. That reminded him that he had forgotten the lunch bag in the truck. He decided it could wait.
"Duck?" Dan closed the door behind them, looking more worried. "What's going on?"
Boots finally off, he stood and took in his husband of almost fifteen years.
Dan's hair was thinner than when they'd first met. Silver lurked among the messy mouse-brown strands -- in random tufts instead of spreading from the temples like most people. Wrinkles carved permanent parallel lines across his high forehead. They also ringed his mouth, though they showed up in the corners of his bright brown eyes only as tiny feather-light lines. Dan had wonderfully sardonic, deadpan smiles that didn't need to reach his eyes to show his humor. His adam's apple seemed to protrude from his long neck as it always had. His sloped shoulders maybe stooped a bit more than they once did. Right now, bags under his eyes and forming stubble on his chin made him look older than he was. As careworn as Duck felt.
Til death do us part. They hadn't included that line in the vows that they'd picked out together. It had seemed somehow morbid, given how their relationship had begun. But Duck always thought of it as implied. At least on his part.
Sighing, he yanked Dan to him and held on. Dan grunted at the impact but quickly wrapped Duck in a hug. Where Duck had put on weight despite all his conditioning, Dan seemed to grow just a bit thinner and bonier every year. They joked about how his body fat was mysteriously migrating to Duck while they slept. That made Duck smile for a moment. He stood there, absorbing Dan's heat and the closeness of their shared lives.
"I love you," Dan murmured into his hair. Too soon.
Ambushed, a small gasp escaped him. Quickly, he moved to smother any further ones against Dan's shirt. He told himself he was not going to start bawling just because his husband had made him a fucking sandwich.
"Aw, babe, it's okay," Dan assured him. "I've got you."
"I read your note," Duck said quickly, before Dan could go on. He cleared his throat. "Shit, Dan, fifteen years and you still can't remember? No tomatoes for packed sandwiches. They leak." His voice sounded unnaturally nasal to his own ears. He was glad when Dan made a brief amused sound.
"I was in a hurry," Dan scolded him. "Whose fault was that?"
Smiling, he rested his forehead against Dan's shoulder while Dan rubbed circles over his back. "Let's watch a movie," he suggested, suddenly wanting nothing more than a couple of hours of mindless entertainment.
"Okay."
Dan led him to the couch, where he first handed Duck the box of tissues with a smile that crinkled his eyes just the tiniest bit. Then he tucked the afghan around him. After Dan had put in the movie and come back, though, Duck opened it out so they could share. Again, he rested his head on Dan's shoulder, and he closed his eyes to shut the world out. He didn't really care what they were watching, anyway.
"Sorry," he said, in the middle of the orchestral opening music. "I've been--" A yawn interrupted him. "--such a bastard."
"You sure have." Duck snorted at the matter-of-fact agreement, and Dan stroked his hair. "It's okay."
He sighed. "I don't know if-- I don't know if I won't do it again," he admitted. He still had a whole box of feelings that he'd probably only unpacked a tiny piece of today.
"It's okay," Dan said again. "Now shut up. I'm trying to watch a movie here." He kissed Duck's head, though, and left his hand on Duck's shoulder.
Duck dozed off to guitar music and the ongoing epic battle between outlaws and the forces of good.
END.
Back to Points In Common Story Index
If you enjoyed this story, you might try these:
What MacDonalds Do (Wilby Wonderful), by kuonji
Away, And Home Again (Wilby Wonderful), by Nos