[rookie blue] fic | New Ways to Fall Apart
Title | New Ways to Fall Apart
Fandom | Rookie Blue
Characters/Pairing | Gail/Luke [Traci/Jerry, Andy]
Word Count | 8500
Rating | MA
Summary | The ABC character bio for Luke Callaghan includes this phrase, he experienced a grotesque family tragedy as a child. This is an end of season two AU exploration of that fact. Andy and Sam are still a thing, Jerry’s alive, and Nick does not exist. Poor Nick.
Warnings | Implied non-canon character death and past severe domestic violence
Author’s Note | Written for catteo for yuletide 2012
PART ONE
Between the drinks and subtle things…
She’d like to say it comes as something of a shock, Traci’s accusation that she’s ‘practically stalking him’, and, in fact, that’s exactly how she reacts initially.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, please. Don’t act all indignant.”
Traci is carefully pouring a line of coffees as she speaks; one holstered hip pressed up against the counter and devoting more of her attention to the filling of mugs than she is to Gail’s sudden panic; at least, so she hopes. Gail is almost convinced she manages to tone down the horrified expression she’s sure she’s sporting before Traci looks back up again.
“I don’t have to ‘act all indignant’,” she retaliates vehemently, eyes wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Traci’s reply is all sarcastic eye roll and impatiently sighed ‘Whatever,’ as she hands Gail two mugs of coffee, collects the third she’s just stirred milk into and brings the drink to her own lips. Gail stares back at her for a beat, torn between repeated denials and desperately wanting a second opinion on what she’s sure is Detective Callaghan’s imminent descent into un-shaven, un-showered, un-fed, career suicide.
Traci just stares back. One eyebrow cocked in a manner that Gail doesn’t particularly appreciate. She’s not used to being figured out before she’s managed to figure herself out after all, and she wonders, fleetingly, if this is what having actual friends might feel like; can’t decide in that moment whether she’s pleased or disappointed by the revelation.
The stalemate breaks when Traci’s cell phone bursts to life in her pocket. She shrugs nonchalantly at Gail as she squints at the screen, lifts her gaze over it eventually with a look that clearly says, well, something. Gail’s just not entirely sure what…
“Off you go then…”
“Can you please speak to me in full sentences? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She’s still balancing the two cups of coffee she’d been handed, her fists wrapped securely around a handle, each. “Again.”
Traci’s knowing grin splits her face victoriously. And Gail’s still not entirely sure what game it is that they’re currently playing, just knows beyond doubt that she’s losing. Badly.
An unfamiliar sensation if ever she’s had one.
“Take. Him. The. Coffee.” Traci emphasises the pronunciation of each word like she’s speaking to an idiot. Tilts her chin in the direction of the second mug she’d handed her as though the answer had been blinking neon-light obvious all along. Gail feels the moment her jaw drops open, ready and willing to fight back. She inhales and prepares her barrage and is met only with a turned back as Traci walks away, leaves behind little more than a trail of mocking laughter.
Gail’s teeth come back together with an audible clink as Traci raises her left hand over her shoulder with a dismissive wave. She pokes her tongue out at her retreating back, just because she can. Gives herself three seconds to deny that she has any plans to deliver coffee to anyone, let alone Detective Callaghan, before she sighs to herself, concedes inevitable defeat and lets her feet carry her in the direction they’d always intended to take.
The door separating his office from the chaos that is the rest of the station is ajar slightly, she wonders if he thinks about suffocating in there if it’s closed, shut tight.
Knows she would.
She knocks but doesn’t really bother to wait for his response. Clings to the heady illusion of control with the barest tips of her fingernails as she grins widely and proffers coffee in his direction like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like she isn’t suddenly sixteen years old and swallowing back her own thudding heart beat with every ticking second.
“Traci made it for you.” Which is only the truth, after all.
He blinks back at her, confused. Pauses before dropping the pen he’d been using and leaning forward to accept the mug. “Uh, thanks?” A question, she notes. Chooses to ignore it.
“So, Andy and Sam, huh? That-” She trails off as his eyes widen and it’s not until she’s fallen back to silence that she registers what she’s just said. “Uh, wow. I’m sorry. That’s none of my--”
“Peck?”
“Yes?” Too quickly. She’s sure she says it too quickly.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Right, ah, like I said,” She shrugs like she couldn’t care less, “Traci made it.”
“Well, thanks Traci.” He grins and she thinks it might be genuine. “Hey, you busy?”
She is, kind of, but suddenly, she’s also really not. “Mm mmm…” she offers, shakes her head along with it as she slurps noisily from her own drink.
He pushes a pile of paperwork towards her, files stacked on files with photos and evidence tags and sticky notes providing haphazard splashes of colour. “Do me a favour and take a look through these. Seriously, if I read the ME’s report one more time I’m going to jam this pen into my own eye socket just so something different happens.”
She flicks open the cover of the first file; William Crombie, aka: Will-C, twenty five years old, dead. Murdered. Lets the familiar terms fill the white noise inside her head that had been threatening to overwhelm her; looks up at Luke briefly with a grin and a nod, “Sure. No problem.” Reaches across him on a whim and swipes the still discarded ball point from his desk, “But I think I’ll take this with me too, yeah? Just in case you get the urge to do something stupid.”
She’s only half teasing.
It’s late when they finish. Her friends having all departed for the day, long since abandoned shifts that should have ended hours ago. He thanks her for her help, for the change in perspective she brought, for the coffee she didn’t make, for saving him from self-inflicted mortal harm. She thinks his exhaustion has worked to chip away any insincerity he might usually hide behind. Sarcasm; a tool only for the wide-awake and fully functioning.
She contemplates suggesting The Penny but can already guess who’s filling up its beer-tacky tables and the thought of subjecting him to more of that stops her from saying anything further. Relief at the re-engagement of her vocal filter is almost tangible.
“Do you need a ride?” he offers, has his own keys looped around fingers curled loosely by his side. She contemplates lying that she does but refuses in that moment to be the girl Traci accused of her being earlier that afternoon.
“Nah, I’m good,” she counters, tilts her chin in the direction of the sidewalk. “I’m just going to walk. I live like, two minutes away, and, to be honest, I could use the air…” Doesn’t think she’s quite managed to rid her mind of the grisly post-mortem photographs she’d spent the better part of her day examining. Figures there’s nothing like mid-December temperatures to evaporate all clear thought.
“You sure?”
She’s not. But nods that she is anyway. “Night…” Turns then, shoves her fists deeper into the pockets of her winter jacket and hunches her shoulders up around her ears.
She counts to twelve steps before she stops, raises her face with a grin towards the soft snowflakes that have started to pepper the road ahead of her, turns again, “Hey, Luke?”
She doesn’t think he’s moved from where she left him, looking somewhat lost outside the main entrance to 15. She can see him raise his head a little in response to her call but if he speaks she doesn’t hear him over the sudden rush of a vehicle making its way cautiously down the street beside them.
“See you tomorrow?”
His coat is undone, barely covering the striped dress shirt she’d been carefully imagining removing when Traci had first called her out. She fights back the urge to leap across the pavement towards him and forcibly zip him up. To point out that it’s snowing, snowing! and if his goal is to catch pneumonia and die then he’s three steps towards achieving it. She doesn’t, but only just. And the realisation that suddenly, inexplicably, she does not recognise herself when she’s around him is equilibrium shifting.
He steps towards her, tentative; just his right foot and only several inches.
It feels like miles and oceans and mountain ranges.
She grins. Has no idea what his intention was to portray with that movement, but decides, suddenly, that she doesn’t particularly care either. She stalks back towards him and doesn’t stop. Wraps her mittened fists around the back of his head forcefully as she presses her numb lips against his. Notes the heady contrast of her cold skin against the heat suddenly ignited in every other cell in her body; a paradox of sorts.
He gives in initially, acquiesces completely to her commands and delivers with it a sense of levelling familiarity that had so far failed her. She knows how to be in control. She just had to find it again…
But he stops then, stiffens under her hold and pulls back. Murmurs something she can’t quite fathom over all the static buzzing noisily in her chest.
“Luke…” More an expulsion of air than anything else. Her breath hot in the space between them.
“No, stop.”
She does. Feels her blood run cold in the process.
“You don’t want to do this.”
She laughs, relieved. Of course she does… Prepares to tell him exactly that-
“Not with me.”
He’s trying to take steps backwards now, but the zipper of his coat is caught in the tail of her scarf and he’s fighting a losing battle. The sudden panic that ghosts across his face fills her insides with cement and lead.
“Luke.”
She’s desperately trying to get him to stop moving. To stay still for long enough that he can listen to her. She uses her teeth to pull her mitten from one hand. Closes her fingers over where his are working frantically to disentangle the fraying wool of her scarf.
“Luke, stop.”
The words are sharper than they probably need to be, but have the desired effect nonetheless. He stills to stone in front of her, the harsh sawing of his breath, of hers, in and out and in, the only sound that matters as she separates the caught strand of fabric from his zipper and he all but falls back in his haste to step away.
“Luke? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry.” He looks like he’s about to be sick; all wild eyes and raw edges.
Her confusion could not be more profound.
“That’s not what I asked. I said, what’s going on? I thought-”
“I should go.” He’s nodding to himself now. Like the added movement will somehow serve to convince him of the fact.
“What? No.”
But he’s still nodding. Still taking steps towards his car. Still wearing the same ghost of an expression that makes her think of trauma victims and shock and countless other emergencies that never fail to ice her veins.
“I’m sorry…” He continues muttering the phrase like some kind of mantra. Like it won’t be true until he’s convinced her of the fact.
She doesn’t even know what it is he’s sorry for…
She trades with Chris the following day. Rides with Oliver and fills the hours with sarcasm and traffic infringements and badly belted song lyrics as they patrol the streets surrounding 15. He buys her lunch, she’s buys him three coffees, they call it even and argue over who gets to drive.
She wins.
They get called to a body dump as the late afternoon sun filters weakly through snow heavy clouds, and she falls silent in anticipation of what is coming. Lets the static from the radio echo inside her head as she prepares her game face. Fierce.
They arrive before Homicide does and she’s secretly relieved for the fact. Figures it gives her something of a home ground advantage as she works to help cordon off the area and keep inquisitive passers-by from trampling all over their prospective crime scene. She teams up with Andy because she calculates he’s even less likely to approach the two of them together, and eventually they move into preparing to interview the witnesses.
“Are you okay?”
Andy’s enquiry catches her off guard and she concentrates on the notes she’s making in an effort to disguise the fact.
“Huh?”
“You seem weird today, quiet or something…”
“I’m fine,” she counters, hopes she manages to sound convincing. “I could probably do with less snow and more, you know, beach,” she kicks her toe at the slush slowly melting in the gutters, “But other than that…”
She trails off. Lets Andy finish the sentence however she sees fit.
“If you say so.” There’s a pause, the sound of pen on paper and notebook pages being turned, before: “To be honest, everyone’s seemed kinda weird today. Maybe it’s just me…”
“Oh, yeah? So, what? We’re all normal and you’re the freak? Only just figuring that out, huh?”
She gets a not-so-playful punch to her left bicep for the comment.
“Nah, it’s just… I dunno. It’s not really any of my business now anyway, really…” Andy trails off, like she wants to say more and is waiting for an invitation to do just that.
“As if that’s ever stopped us, let’s be honest.” Gail keeps her tone light. Joking. Feels her pulse ramp up a notch in anticipation despite it.
Andy slides her notebook into her pocket and leans back against the squad car. Squints through the snow bright glare. “It’s just, like I said, it’s not my business, but…”
“But…”
“I think there’s something going on with Luke.”
She wants to scream yes and me, too and I think I traumatised him with my frozen lips last night, it could just be that…. “What do you mean, going on?”
“I don’t know really. I mean,” Andy’s gaze settles on her, “promise you won’t say anything?”
“You mean, promise I won’t say anything where Sam might overhear and find out you’re still obsessing over your ex-fiancée?”
“No. Yes.” She sighs and Gail can’t help but understand her frustration. “I don’t know. Just, don’t say anything, okay?”
She nods.
“He just seems, different. Quieter. Withdrawn or something. I mean,” she does a quick scan of their immediate surroundings, alert to the proximity of several other uniforms also preparing to take statements from the gathered crowd, “I mean, it’s not like he was ever really all that out-going anyway, so it’s probably nothing. And I’m not, like, trying to say that the fact I’m with Sam now has had any effect on him because, hey, it wasn’t me who couldn’t keep it in my pants, but I just-”
Gail lets silence fill the space between them. Contemplates her next move carefully as Oliver indicates for them to join him.
They’re crossing the street when she finally speaks. “I’m going to say something but you have to promise not to be mad.”
Andy slides her gaze sideways, quirks her lips as if to say, oh, really?
“I…” She swallows, thickly. Starts again, “I kissed him last night.”
To Andy’s credit, she barely breaks stride. Gail rushes to get to the important part. “But he completely freaked out. Like, I thought he was going to have a panic attack and die right there on the sidewalk…”
“You kissed him on the sidewalk?! Where?!” And Gail thinks Andy might have missed the point entirely.
“I am a good kisser, alright. People do not have panic attacks when I kiss them.” Andy’s incredulous snort is insulting to say the least as Oliver signals for them to hurry up.
“We,” she motions her finger back and forth between the two of them, fixes Gail with a determined stare, “have so not finished this conversation, got it? Not even close…”
The shit hits the proverbial fan not even seven hours later. It's weeks before they remember to finish what they'd started.
And by the time they do, it's all irrelevant anyway...
PART TWO
The angels never arrived…
In the aftermath, she realises she can’t exactly remember how it all started. And the fact she was unconscious by the end isn’t really helping with the lack of recall either.
There are bright lights, skull-splitting white as they flash overhead. And her right hand feels achingly empty though she can't begin to fathom why. She can't see out her left eye and the view through the other is blurry at best. A hazy swath of colours and black and nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Until, suddenly...
“Luke?”
If she's heard over the cacophony of other sounds, she certainly isn't answered and she panics in the silence that isn't really silence at all. “Luke!”
A mask is pressed over her nose and mouth then; effectively mutes her desperate pleas. But the salt-water veil shifts just enough for Oliver to come into focus and his lips are moving, speaking words she can't disentangle from the screaming inside her bones. Moving and moving and not making any sense. She reaches blindly for his hand, his shirt, something. Latches on and drags him forward.
Does not need to speak to get her message through. Loud, and crystal clear.
“We've got him, Gail. He's going to be okay...” Nods hurriedly to underline his claim. To make it more real somehow. Repeats himself, just in case, “We've got him...”
Her right hand clenches again, involuntarily, tightens around nothing but cold air and ghosts.
She's in a private room when she next wakes. And she's a comfortable version of numb from her toe tips to the top of her bandaged head. It is only her raw insides that scream their perpetual agony. There's someone in the room with her, maybe several. She hears pages turning and feet shuffling from different points.
Keeping her eyes closed to delay the inevitable, she uses the space to sift through what she knows and calculate just how significant the blanks are.
She remembers being home. Making pasta for dinner with her cousin over Skype in a weird re-enactment of the time they'd shared an apartment in college. Wine and music and deliberately not thinking about... She shifts minutely, forgets for a moment to feign sleep as she remembers suddenly that the door-bell had rung. That night, in her apartment, before pasta but after wine, the door-bell had rung… twice.
But they're onto her then, before she has a chance to properly think things through.
“Gail?” Andy; tentative but not too much so. Which she takes to mean things, whatever things are, are not as pear shaped as she'd been imagining.
“Hey, you awake or what?” Dov this time, and no-where near as cautious as Andy had been. And it never was his style after all. She cracks her eyes open and finds the lot of them peering down at her. She'd grin at the stupidity of it all if she didn't think it would hurt like a bitch.
“I am now, ass-face,” she bites back, and the relief that fills the room becomes a tangible quantity she hadn't known she'd been craving. She takes a minute to properly look at them. They're wrung out, she notes. Sleep deprived and probably running on the fumes of cafeteria coffee and stale sandwiches. Chris is staring at her, and he hasn't spoken yet, she doesn't know what she wants him to say anyway and thinks it's probably just easier all round if it's nothing... She offers him a tight grin of reassurance nonetheless, a quick I get it that is the least he deserves.
Traci is the first to broach the elephant in the room.
“Luke's still in the ICU-” She raises a hand as Gail feels her insides shift once, twice. “He's going to be fine,” she continues, uses a tone she can imagine has had plenty of practice on people much younger than her, “there were some complications, that's why he's still there. But Jerry's up there with him...”
She can feel herself nodding along with Traci’s soothing voice. A paradox of sorts when compared to the hurricane burst to life within her own insides.
“I’m sure you can go see him later, if you want to.”
An exhale filled to overflowing with relief and the heady understanding that yes, yes she does want to, finds its escape.
“Gail, what happened?” And eventually it’s Andy this time who asks the question they’re all eager to hear an answer to. Like maybe they’ve predetermined an order of sorts for all the touchy subjects they need to broach.
She remembers a squeaky hinge on the back gate at wherever it was they were being held. The sound of it shifting, shifting, shifting in the breeze would send bolts of electricity down her spine at semi-regular intervals and she’d alternate between being convinced they were about to be rescued or terrified that their captor had returned to finish them off.
Luke's hand remained curled in hers the entire time, and she remembers she kept thinking that he seemed colder than he had been. But then again, so was she, and the difference between them eventually became more and more difficult to judge. His fingers kept twitching every now and then; providing for her a silent reminder that he was still alive. The aching thud of her own heart beat beneath her ribs was proof enough of her own continued existence.
She managed to catalogue her damage fairly accurately in the end. Had rationalised that her face would probably be an attractive shade of purple when all this came to its inevitable end, and that she’d have the headache to end all headaches, but, other than an intense desire for the pasta she never got to eat, she always figured she was probably doing okay.
All things considered.
“I don’t really remember,” is all the information she offers.
Once the others leave, Gail makes herself count to one hundred before tossing the thick, starched sheet back. She's not entirely sure where her end destination is, but figures she's nothing if not resourceful. She'll find her way. There's a backpack in the corner of her room that she'd not noticed arriving. Figures Traci or Andy and makes a mental note to thank them later. She drags a hoodie out from where it's wedged between other superfluous items and changes her mind; Dov. Drags the top over her head and crosses her fingers than he didn't delve too deeply into her underwear drawer. Gives herself seven seconds of naïve bliss before reconciling, of course he did.
There's a pair of pyjamas right in the bottom of the bag. The familiar material, soft and worn, and she can't remember the last time she actually wore them.
The hallways are littered with just enough people to provide her with the perfect cover and she exits her room and searches for the elevators. Figures there'll be directions inside that will point her to the right floor.
ICU is a little more difficult to navigate. Her presence not quite as inconspicuous as it had been on the other floors. She sees Jerry at the same time he looks up and spots her back. His eyebrows quirk up into a question that he doesn't need words to ask, though he offers them up all the same.
"How'd you get up here?"
She contemplates the obvious. But the journey has left her exhausted and she is beyond the point of dripping sarcasm. His expression changes then and she wonders how obvious her distress is; can't quite gather up the necessary desire to hide it.
"His sister is in there."
She stops in her tracks. "He doesn’t have a sister."
She’s sure about that fact in a manner she can’t quite comprehend. Has no idea how she knows it, just that it’s most definitely the truth.
Jerry shrugs, “Half-sister or foster sister or something. She’s been cleared anyway… And she’s in there now.”
She nods. Rolls her shoulders twice in an attempt to loosen the knots twisting up into the back of her neck.
"How are you doing?"
"I'm fine." And the words are out before she's really had time to consider the question. Figures it's safer for them both this way. She notes Jerry nod his head slowly, but he doesn't speak again and she knows that he doesn't believe her.
It's okay. She doesn't believe herself.
"So, why are you still here?"
"Frank wants me to interview him as soon as they give us access, plus, well... you know..."
She nods absently. After all, she does.
"Has Frank spoken to you yet?"
She shakes her head, feels the pressure build in her swollen face. "Nope. But Traci gave me the heads up that I'll have to make some kind of statement."
"What happened?"
There are so many answers to that question. She can't quite fathom which one it is that Jerry is asking for.
"Can I see him?"
"I'm not sure. They're being pretty strict on the whole 'family only' thing up here. But they'll probably move him out later so; then it shouldn't be a problem."
"Why's he in here?"
"There were complications." He's hesitant. She’s at the same time unsure she wants him to elaborate and absolutely convinced that she needs to know. “Look, they haven’t really told me very much, Gail. And I don’t-”
“Please?”
Jerry sighs and scrubs his hands over his face roughly. He looks about as wrung out as the other’s had; sleep deprived and missing the suit jacket he’s typically never without.
“I think his lung collapsed maybe? And I overheard them talking about some kind of infection…”
She nods along with his explanation because it’s all information she could probably have deduced for herself.
“I told him his ribs were toast,” she adds, keeps her tone intentionally victorious, as though she and Luke had been taking bets on it, and gives Jerry a reassuring smile that is as much for her own benefit as it is for his.
She pulls a chair over eventually; sits and curls her knees up beneath her chin and pretends she can’t see the ridiculous eye-roll Jerry sends in her direction. She always gets what she wants, and she figures now is as good a time as any for him to recognise that.
She has not been a Peck for almost thirty years and not learned a trick or two about getting people to see things her way.
The sister that isn’t really his sister, Gail is still sure of that, comes out again about fifteen minutes later, and it’s only Jerry’s pointedly raised index finger in her direction that keeps her seated in her chair as he pushes off the wall he’s taken to leaning against and moves towards her. Gail can see from where she’s sitting that that the woman is red-eyed and blotchy. She’s older than Luke, maybe by a couple of years, and bears no physical resemblance to him whatsoever. She needs an explanation for this sibling claim, stat.
She uses the moment Jerry appears most distracted to her advantage; he’s fishing a card from his pocket and borrowing a pen from the nurse’s station to underline the phone number that’s already printed on there in bold anyway so, what’s the point? But he’s distracted for a second, and so are the staff, and the sister that isn’t, and Gail knows an opportunity when she sees one.
Luke’s asleep; or unconscious, maybe. They look like the same thing to her. There’s a mask over his face, which is infinitely better than the tube down his throat she’d been imagining. The blanket covering him has only been pulled to waist height, and the bruises across his chest are spectacular in a way that is mostly just horrifying if she’s being honest.
She reaches for his hand at the same time she sinks into the seat beside his bed; both are warm in a way that is more than mildly disconcerting. The heat radiating from his skin is fever-induced, and she guesses that’s what the bags of fluid hanging above his head are there to rectify. The lingering warmth beneath her ass, little more than a reminder that she’s still completely in the dark about far too much of this story.
“Wake up, Luke. Please wake up. Please…”
She is not expecting a response, but a flash of disappointment burns through her insides nonetheless as she changes up her grip and twists her fingers through his, keeps one of them looping constant circles around the base of his thumb. His knuckles are bruised and bloody from where he’d first fought back against their captors, and when she closes her eyes and holds her breath, the only sound she hears is the muted echo of his agony as a steel cap collides with his ribs.
She stays that way, eyes closed and breath mostly held, until Jerry returns and threatens her with bodily removal.
She starts to remember little bits after that. Like the fact that they barely spoke initially, the people that were holding them, but that when they did, Luke seemed to know who they were; or, at least, what it was that they wanted. She remembers that he seemed angry, angry in a way that she could barely begin to fathom; like the emotion was alive within him, a living thing that had settled itself deep in his bones.
The initial spike of fear had faded early, almost immediately, but the anger? Gail thinks it’s probably what kept him conscious as long as he’d managed. His fingernails tearing at its seams as he fought and fought and fought…
She’s been told, since, that they were eventually missing for almost four days; and that the sister who isn’t really the sister had been the person to raise the initial alarm. She tries not to think too hard about what that says with regard to her own family and friends. Tries, but mostly fails in the end anyway as she conjures up explanations for herself that include weekends and night shifts and other pitiful excuses.
Waits, instead, for Luke to wake up. Waits and remembers, and waits and waits and waits…
In the end, she fakes sleep every time someone comes near her room; doesn’t allow herself to open her eyes before she’s managed to calculate exactly who it is that’s entered. Nurses, Gail’s discovered, are relatively safe. They poke and prod and tell her she should eat, but they ask her comparatively few ridiculous questions and that, right now, is all she can hope for.
Everyone else is on her To Be Avoided At All Costs list. At least, they are until she’s had a chance to talk to Luke.
Because she remembers now; most of it anyway, she thinks. And she really needs to know what he has said, or is planning to say, or is absolutely refusing to divulge at all costs, before she can concoct her own statement.
For this is not her story to tell.
And she remembers now.
PART THREE
All the holes in my apologies…
It’s just before lunch on day two of her hospital stay when one of the nurses she remembers from that morning’s poking and prodding session pops her head into the doorway and interrupts the ‘Ellen’ re-run she’s busy staring at blankly.
“I’ve heard a rumour that your boyfriend’s been moved to four ten and that he’s awake,” she semi-whispers, like maybe it’s some big secret, and Gail’s lips form automatically around the rebuttal that ‘he’s not my boyfriend...’ only for the words to fade and disappear before she manages to offer them out loud.
“Thanks for letting me know...”
The nurse disappears as quickly as she’d arrived and Gail spends the next twenty minutes desperately not thinking about why she hadn’t corrected her boyfriend/girlfriend belief and what that might mean...
And by desperately not thinking about she means overanalysing to the nth degree...
In the end she pokes absently at her tray of food for another good fifteen minutes before grabbing up a spoon and the cup of pudding that actually looks mostly edible, and heading for the door. She only has to backtrack twice before she finds the right room.
He’s sitting up partially when she walks in, a hospital gown now covering the damage she knows must still paint his chest a vibrant purple. There’s a tray of food that’s been pushed aside, untouched, and his eyes are closed. But as she leans against the doorframe for a beat and tilts her head to take him in, Gail can see that his fingers are tapping insistently against the blankets.
“Hey, you,” she says gently, trying but mostly failing not to scare the crap out of him as his eyes snap open and do a wild lurch around the room.
“Hey, hey.” She steps forward quickly, pudding and spoon raised in submission as he sinks back against the pillows. “It’s just me...”
He grins at her slowly as one hand comes up to ghost over his ribs, “A bit of warning next time, yeah? I was recently kidnapped and held hostage, you know...”
But the intended levity in his words gets lost somewhere between the forced smile and the fact that it doesn’t even come close to reaching his eyes.
She contemplates the seat that’s been pushed up against the window on the far side of the room, but eventually forgoes the option in favour of climbing up onto the foot of his bed and making herself comfortable next to his right ankle. His eyebrows rise in lieu of the myriad questions he might have and she shrugs in response, shovels a spoonful of pudding into her mouth and savours the sweet taste as though the two of them sharing hospital lunch is the most natural thing in the world.
Reaching forward, she pointedly nudges at his untouched lunch; “Think of this as a picnic!”
“A picnic?” He makes no move towards his food.
She shrugs again, feigns calm as she calculates that nothing is quite going to plan here.
Not that she really has a plan.
And that was the plan.
To have no plan.
Perhaps a Plan B would have been a good idea.
She’s staring into the depths of her now empty cup when he finally speaks to her; and the silence had been so vast in the minutes leading up to it that she’d almost convinced herself he’d fallen asleep.
Or worse. That he’d up and died while she was too chicken shit to do anything other than contemplate the chocolate swirls she’d created on the base of the cup.
“Gail?”
She holds her breath and looks up at him through her eyelashes.
He’s crying, silently. And suddenly the worst case scenarios she’d been obsessing over seem to pale in comparison.
“I’m so sorry, I-”
She shifts then, scoots along the length of the bed a little further and wraps her fingers around his wrist.
“Hey, none of it was your fault, okay? None of it...”
He’s nodding to the same beat that she’s shaking her head, and the effect is unsettling.
“And anyway,” she continues, sitting up a little straighter, “I’m seriously fine. I promise. I have a room full of chocolates and some days off work and, yeah, my face is kinda colourful at the moment, but-” she tilts her head to the side and grins, “I’m still smokin’ hot, so...”
Gail’s still curled up by his side, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his forearm, when they’re interrupted by a knock.
And it’s Jerry, looking like he’s just walked in on something significant.
Gail’s not quite sure how far that is from the truth.
“Peck,” he starts, unsure where to look in a ridiculous way that makes her want to giggle. “I really need to grab your statement.”
She nods quickly, “Yeah, I know. Just give us two minutes, okay?”
“Gail.” The note of warning is more than clear.
“Two minutes,” she reiterates. “I promise. I’ll meet you back at my room in two minutes.”
Jerry nods around a sigh and backs back out of the room, pulling the door closed as he goes.
She turns to face Luke again, takes a deep breath and finally forces herself to voice the words she’d come to his room to say.
“Do they know who your father is, Luke?”
She calculates she’s probably closer to ten minutes than the promised two, but Jerry doesn’t say anything when she finally gets back to her room and she doesn’t bother to apologise.
“I just need-”
She cuts him off.
“You already know.” Pointed and accusing.
“Gail.”
“You already know,” she repeats, inexplicably furious all of a sudden.
“Gail, please just sit down. You know I need to get your statement. What I know or don’t know is irrelevant, you know this...”
She deflates then, feels the fight visibly leak out of her and across the floor as she runs her hands through her hair.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just-”
Jerry pushes off the wall and flips open his notepad, pen poised, “Just talk, Gail. Just tell me what you remember. Nothing else, okay?”
“Yeah,” she nods, climbing onto her bed and dragging a pillow into her lap, “okay.”
The first doorbell chime had coincided with the end of her conversation with her cousin. She’d been in the process of switching from Skype to iTunes when the sound had interrupted her and she remembers the distinctive opening chords of ‘Panic Switch’ were bleeding through the speakers as she made her way to the front door.
The song seems all kinds of prophetic in hindsight.
She’d managed to hide her confused surprise long enough to invite Luke in, had offered him some of the pasta she’d just cooked and hastily added a second wine glass to the one she’d already retrieved from the previous night’s washing up pile. He’d refused the food but nodded out a yes please when she’d raised the open bottle of pinot grigio in his direction.
She can’t remember if they actually managed to drink any, but doesn’t think so.
The doorbell had interrupted them both the second time, the chimes startling them out of the awkward silence that had descended. Luke’s eyebrows had risen, questioning, and she’d shrugged back a non-verbal, ‘I have no freaking clue...’
“It’s probably just Andy,” she’d called as she’d walked away, instantly cringing at her poor choice of guesswork considering she very much doubted it would be Andy at all and just, why would she even say that?
She can’t remember if the person on the other side of the door identified themselves, or if she’d stupidly just opened it up without asking. Jerry nods as he takes notes and doesn’t make comment. She’s glad.
Things had been a little hazy for a while after that. There’d been a punch or hit of some kind that had sent her sprawling onto her backside in the entryway as several bodies pushed past and further into her apartment. And there’d been a fight that was over almost before it had started, before they were both bound and gagged and stumbling outside under the cover of darkness, being shoved into the back of a waiting van with guns pointed at their heads.
She remembers them vividly; the guns.
Luke’s gag had been removed, though hers was kept in place for the duration of the ride. She remembers that he had blood on his face from a cut in his hairline, and that his eyes were wild; feral.
There were two people in the back of the van with them, and two more up front. All males. And one of them kept talking to Luke like he knew him. Asking him questions and making rapid-fire demands she struggled to keep up with.
He’d refused to speak until one of the kidnappers used his gun to pistol whip her, and she doesn’t think she remembers anything more about the van ride after that.
She’d woken up to cold. Dark and cold. She could hear voices again, the same ones from the van, and this time she could hear Luke talking, too. His voice, much quieter than theirs, measured. Alive. She remembers thinking that, that he’s talking which means he’s still alive.
Her relief had been palpable at the time.
They’d waiting until Luke was unconscious, a steel cap through his ribs and blood smeared across his teeth, before they’d introduced themselves; before they’d started telling their stories. She’d begged them to stop at first, her newly freed fingertips pressed into her ears. But eventually she’d relented, too shocked and too horrified by the things they were saying, initial disbelief morphing mid-speech into icy realisation.
They’d told her about Luke’s mother, called her every name under the sun and then some, before ending with the fact that she’d died when his dad had put a bullet between her eyes, “deserving bitch...”
He’d reared up at that, Luke had, staggered to his feet with a growl and launched himself at the closest of the men; wrapped his hands around a thick neck before he disappeared beneath bodies much bigger than his as the others had reacted to the surprise attack.
There’d been screaming, high pitched and frantic, and it wasn’t until the commotion had faded again that Gail had realised it was coming from her. Luke had been on all fours when she finally got to him, coughing ropey blood and saliva onto the chipped cement floor, barely breathing. She remembers her hands on his shoulders, keeping his head up as best she could while their captors laughed and licked their own superficial wounds.
“You’re as fucking pathetic as she always was...”
Luke’s only response, the ragged sawing of wet breaths between clenched teeth.
After that, the stories got even more vivid. And she’d sat there, numb, with her fingers in her mouth, as Luke shook and shook and shook.
“You know he drove them into a lake, right? Back in BC? Took their whore of a mother out with a bullet first and then drove her spawn into a lake and left them there.”
“Hey, Lukey, maybe when he’s released, he’ll take you for another spin. Try again. Second time lucky and all that shit...”
There’d been another period of endless black then. And she’s doesn’t know, now, whether they hit her again or if she’d simply shut down. Climbed inside herself for a while and pretended to be somewhere else. She has no idea how long it lasted or what the men were doing during this time. Maybe they left straight away. Maybe they used Luke as a punching bag again. Maybe they forced more of their horror stories on him before laughing and driving off.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t think she wants to know.
He was squeezing her hand when she woke up, and she remembers having no idea how he could be conscious, let alone alert enough to realise that she wasn’t. He’d been calling her name, fresh blood on his tongue with every attempt, and she remembers practically climbing into his lap with relief when he’d told her they’d gone, the men.
She remembers he’d said something she hadn’t initially understood then, that they’d got what wanted. It wasn’t until much later that the pieces had fallen into place and she’d figured out what he meant.
He’d rambled at her for a while then, an unsteadying mixture of desperate apology, unhinged fury, and a fear that withered her edges.
She doesn’t bother to tell this part to Jerry.
About how he’d told her that when the car had gone into the lake, he’d been in the backseat with his sister, and she had really long blonde hair that kept tangling and covering her face as the water spilled over them and filled the interior.
About how she looked like she was swimming; even though he knew that she wasn’t.
And about how he was four years old at the time, and that this is the only memory he has left of her. His big sister.
Later, as the fog had cleared, and a deep resignation had seemed to settle over him, he’d told her how his father had been in Kent since ‘my mom and thing at the lake happened’, and that there was a hearing coming up where he, Luke, was meant to be providing a victim impact statement in the hopes of getting a recent parole grant overturned. And that this whole abduction stunt had been a ‘request’ for him to reconsider.
Delivered by his uncle.
Gail remembers nodding into the dark, pleased in that moment that she couldn’t see his face. That he couldn’t see hers.
She’d wrapped her fingers through his, life-line like, and she remembers that they’d stayed that way from then until the rescue had come, hours, minutes, days later.
And she thinks it’s why they feel perpetually empty now.
She doesn’t bother telling Jerry this part, either.
Gail sleeps after he leaves, exhausted beyond all comprehension; and when she wakes, Traci is curled in a chair on her left, feet beneath her and chin on her knees, reading. The winter sun is well on its way out for the day she notes, the last bit of thin warmth it has to offer bleeding through the horizontal blinds and spilling across the black of Traci’s hair.
“Hey,” she says, reaching up to rub tentatively at her eyes as Traci shifts and sets her book aside.
“Hey, yourself.”
“What are you doing here?”
Traci shrugs, smiles, “Jerry said you might like a visitor that wasn’t him for a change.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
Traci nods and stretches one leg out, uses her sock covered toes to nudge Gail’s leg.
“Are you okay?”
“Why? What did he tell you?” She’s instantly defensive and wonders how much of her response is grounded in a sudden need to protect Luke.
“Hey, it’s okay. He didn’t tell me anything, I promise. Just that you might like to see a friendly face and yeah, so, here I am. I promise that’s it.”
Gail sighs and tilts her head back before realigning herself and looking over at Traci.
“Sorry. It’s just-”
“You don’t have to explain, honestly. It’s all good. Jerry’s down with Luke, they’re having a boy’s night that we’re not invited to apparently, which I’m pretty sure just translates to playing computer games on Jerry’s laptop so, we don’t really want to be there anyway...”
Gail grins, eyebrows raised; “Speak for yourself, I am aces at computer games... Ask Dov.”
EPILOGUE
I found someone to carry me home…
She’s discharged early the next morning, and she tells herself that the detour she does via Luke’s room on the way out has nothing to do with the fact that the idea of going back to her apartment alone is all levels of horrifying.
He’s in the bathroom when she arrives; she can hear him moving about in there and she uses the moments reprieve to sneak a peek at the couple of Get Well cards that have been propped on his window sill. They’re all from people at the station, or people connected to the station. And she thinks about her own small bag of cards and chocolates and magazines, the bag of clothes that had been delivered and the friend’s she’d had come for visits.
She makes a mental note to thank Jerry for being there for him later.
She’s propped up on his bed when he comes back out. Legs crossed at the ankles and casually flipping through a magazine she’d found on his bedside table. Like maybe she belongs there.
“Hey, you.”
She lowers the magazine and leans it against her nose, peers out at him from over the top of the well-worn pages.
“Hey, yourself.”
He still looks hospital level sick, she notes. That perpetual look of exhaustion she knows she’d sported for a day or two still painted all over his face. But he no longer looks just the right side of dead either so she’ll take what she can get.
“They officially springing you?” he asks, his voice rough, like he hasn’t long ago woken up, and she nods back a yes as she swings her legs to the ground. Prepares to vacate the spot on the bed and insist he lay back down.
But he’s in front of her then, one hand raised, reaching out to ghost fingertips over the still fairly spectacular bruising she’s sporting.
“Hey,” she says, reaching up to catch his hand in hers and drag it down to chest level as she steps closer and locks it tightly between them, makes him look her in the eye just so he’ll stop calculating how much of the damage is his fault.
Their complete nearness reminds her of the last time they were this close, and the giddy lightness that had quickly given way to confusion and worry. She wonders, maybe, if she could do it right this time.
Doesn’t give herself too long to ponder the possible outcomes.
She lifts up onto her toes and brushes her lips against his. Pulls away again and looks up at him through her eyelashes in order to gauge his reaction.
Or non-reaction.
Whatever the case may be.
He’s staring back at her, blinking. His chin lowered, she can feel his breath in her hair as he exhales shakily.
“Gail,” he says, but she cuts off whatever words he’d planned to say next with her finger pressed lightly against his lips.
“Shhhh,” she whispers. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to say anything.” She raises her eyebrows as though requesting some kind of confirmation that he’s understood and when he nods back she removes her finger again. Runs her hand down the side of his face instead.
“If you’re not ready for this, then I more than understand, okay?”
Again, she waits for a nod. Gets it.
“But I am. I am ready. I have been ready for weeks. Probably even longer than that if I’m being honest.”
She drops her hands down to his, laces their fingers tightly with a squeeze.
“And I’ll wait until you are. I will wait for you, Luke, okay? I want to wait for you.” She lifts her gaze back up to meet his, almost too scared of what she might find. Waits and waits and waits for the nod that will make laying herself on the line like this totally worth it. “If you want me to.”
He leans forward instead of replying, shakes his hands loose and wraps his arms around her before kissing her forehead softly.
“Yeah, okay, if you’re sure then…”
She giggles quietly at his obvious fluster, smiles against his chest and shuts her eyes finally.
“… then I think I’d like that.”
Fandom | Rookie Blue
Characters/Pairing | Gail/Luke [Traci/Jerry, Andy]
Word Count | 8500
Rating | MA
Summary | The ABC character bio for Luke Callaghan includes this phrase, he experienced a grotesque family tragedy as a child. This is an end of season two AU exploration of that fact. Andy and Sam are still a thing, Jerry’s alive, and Nick does not exist. Poor Nick.
Warnings | Implied non-canon character death and past severe domestic violence
Author’s Note | Written for catteo for yuletide 2012
PART ONE
Between the drinks and subtle things…
She’d like to say it comes as something of a shock, Traci’s accusation that she’s ‘practically stalking him’, and, in fact, that’s exactly how she reacts initially.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, please. Don’t act all indignant.”
Traci is carefully pouring a line of coffees as she speaks; one holstered hip pressed up against the counter and devoting more of her attention to the filling of mugs than she is to Gail’s sudden panic; at least, so she hopes. Gail is almost convinced she manages to tone down the horrified expression she’s sure she’s sporting before Traci looks back up again.
“I don’t have to ‘act all indignant’,” she retaliates vehemently, eyes wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Traci’s reply is all sarcastic eye roll and impatiently sighed ‘Whatever,’ as she hands Gail two mugs of coffee, collects the third she’s just stirred milk into and brings the drink to her own lips. Gail stares back at her for a beat, torn between repeated denials and desperately wanting a second opinion on what she’s sure is Detective Callaghan’s imminent descent into un-shaven, un-showered, un-fed, career suicide.
Traci just stares back. One eyebrow cocked in a manner that Gail doesn’t particularly appreciate. She’s not used to being figured out before she’s managed to figure herself out after all, and she wonders, fleetingly, if this is what having actual friends might feel like; can’t decide in that moment whether she’s pleased or disappointed by the revelation.
The stalemate breaks when Traci’s cell phone bursts to life in her pocket. She shrugs nonchalantly at Gail as she squints at the screen, lifts her gaze over it eventually with a look that clearly says, well, something. Gail’s just not entirely sure what…
“Off you go then…”
“Can you please speak to me in full sentences? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She’s still balancing the two cups of coffee she’d been handed, her fists wrapped securely around a handle, each. “Again.”
Traci’s knowing grin splits her face victoriously. And Gail’s still not entirely sure what game it is that they’re currently playing, just knows beyond doubt that she’s losing. Badly.
An unfamiliar sensation if ever she’s had one.
“Take. Him. The. Coffee.” Traci emphasises the pronunciation of each word like she’s speaking to an idiot. Tilts her chin in the direction of the second mug she’d handed her as though the answer had been blinking neon-light obvious all along. Gail feels the moment her jaw drops open, ready and willing to fight back. She inhales and prepares her barrage and is met only with a turned back as Traci walks away, leaves behind little more than a trail of mocking laughter.
Gail’s teeth come back together with an audible clink as Traci raises her left hand over her shoulder with a dismissive wave. She pokes her tongue out at her retreating back, just because she can. Gives herself three seconds to deny that she has any plans to deliver coffee to anyone, let alone Detective Callaghan, before she sighs to herself, concedes inevitable defeat and lets her feet carry her in the direction they’d always intended to take.
The door separating his office from the chaos that is the rest of the station is ajar slightly, she wonders if he thinks about suffocating in there if it’s closed, shut tight.
Knows she would.
She knocks but doesn’t really bother to wait for his response. Clings to the heady illusion of control with the barest tips of her fingernails as she grins widely and proffers coffee in his direction like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like she isn’t suddenly sixteen years old and swallowing back her own thudding heart beat with every ticking second.
“Traci made it for you.” Which is only the truth, after all.
He blinks back at her, confused. Pauses before dropping the pen he’d been using and leaning forward to accept the mug. “Uh, thanks?” A question, she notes. Chooses to ignore it.
“So, Andy and Sam, huh? That-” She trails off as his eyes widen and it’s not until she’s fallen back to silence that she registers what she’s just said. “Uh, wow. I’m sorry. That’s none of my--”
“Peck?”
“Yes?” Too quickly. She’s sure she says it too quickly.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Right, ah, like I said,” She shrugs like she couldn’t care less, “Traci made it.”
“Well, thanks Traci.” He grins and she thinks it might be genuine. “Hey, you busy?”
She is, kind of, but suddenly, she’s also really not. “Mm mmm…” she offers, shakes her head along with it as she slurps noisily from her own drink.
He pushes a pile of paperwork towards her, files stacked on files with photos and evidence tags and sticky notes providing haphazard splashes of colour. “Do me a favour and take a look through these. Seriously, if I read the ME’s report one more time I’m going to jam this pen into my own eye socket just so something different happens.”
She flicks open the cover of the first file; William Crombie, aka: Will-C, twenty five years old, dead. Murdered. Lets the familiar terms fill the white noise inside her head that had been threatening to overwhelm her; looks up at Luke briefly with a grin and a nod, “Sure. No problem.” Reaches across him on a whim and swipes the still discarded ball point from his desk, “But I think I’ll take this with me too, yeah? Just in case you get the urge to do something stupid.”
She’s only half teasing.
It’s late when they finish. Her friends having all departed for the day, long since abandoned shifts that should have ended hours ago. He thanks her for her help, for the change in perspective she brought, for the coffee she didn’t make, for saving him from self-inflicted mortal harm. She thinks his exhaustion has worked to chip away any insincerity he might usually hide behind. Sarcasm; a tool only for the wide-awake and fully functioning.
She contemplates suggesting The Penny but can already guess who’s filling up its beer-tacky tables and the thought of subjecting him to more of that stops her from saying anything further. Relief at the re-engagement of her vocal filter is almost tangible.
“Do you need a ride?” he offers, has his own keys looped around fingers curled loosely by his side. She contemplates lying that she does but refuses in that moment to be the girl Traci accused of her being earlier that afternoon.
“Nah, I’m good,” she counters, tilts her chin in the direction of the sidewalk. “I’m just going to walk. I live like, two minutes away, and, to be honest, I could use the air…” Doesn’t think she’s quite managed to rid her mind of the grisly post-mortem photographs she’d spent the better part of her day examining. Figures there’s nothing like mid-December temperatures to evaporate all clear thought.
“You sure?”
She’s not. But nods that she is anyway. “Night…” Turns then, shoves her fists deeper into the pockets of her winter jacket and hunches her shoulders up around her ears.
She counts to twelve steps before she stops, raises her face with a grin towards the soft snowflakes that have started to pepper the road ahead of her, turns again, “Hey, Luke?”
She doesn’t think he’s moved from where she left him, looking somewhat lost outside the main entrance to 15. She can see him raise his head a little in response to her call but if he speaks she doesn’t hear him over the sudden rush of a vehicle making its way cautiously down the street beside them.
“See you tomorrow?”
His coat is undone, barely covering the striped dress shirt she’d been carefully imagining removing when Traci had first called her out. She fights back the urge to leap across the pavement towards him and forcibly zip him up. To point out that it’s snowing, snowing! and if his goal is to catch pneumonia and die then he’s three steps towards achieving it. She doesn’t, but only just. And the realisation that suddenly, inexplicably, she does not recognise herself when she’s around him is equilibrium shifting.
He steps towards her, tentative; just his right foot and only several inches.
It feels like miles and oceans and mountain ranges.
She grins. Has no idea what his intention was to portray with that movement, but decides, suddenly, that she doesn’t particularly care either. She stalks back towards him and doesn’t stop. Wraps her mittened fists around the back of his head forcefully as she presses her numb lips against his. Notes the heady contrast of her cold skin against the heat suddenly ignited in every other cell in her body; a paradox of sorts.
He gives in initially, acquiesces completely to her commands and delivers with it a sense of levelling familiarity that had so far failed her. She knows how to be in control. She just had to find it again…
But he stops then, stiffens under her hold and pulls back. Murmurs something she can’t quite fathom over all the static buzzing noisily in her chest.
“Luke…” More an expulsion of air than anything else. Her breath hot in the space between them.
“No, stop.”
She does. Feels her blood run cold in the process.
“You don’t want to do this.”
She laughs, relieved. Of course she does… Prepares to tell him exactly that-
“Not with me.”
He’s trying to take steps backwards now, but the zipper of his coat is caught in the tail of her scarf and he’s fighting a losing battle. The sudden panic that ghosts across his face fills her insides with cement and lead.
“Luke.”
She’s desperately trying to get him to stop moving. To stay still for long enough that he can listen to her. She uses her teeth to pull her mitten from one hand. Closes her fingers over where his are working frantically to disentangle the fraying wool of her scarf.
“Luke, stop.”
The words are sharper than they probably need to be, but have the desired effect nonetheless. He stills to stone in front of her, the harsh sawing of his breath, of hers, in and out and in, the only sound that matters as she separates the caught strand of fabric from his zipper and he all but falls back in his haste to step away.
“Luke? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry.” He looks like he’s about to be sick; all wild eyes and raw edges.
Her confusion could not be more profound.
“That’s not what I asked. I said, what’s going on? I thought-”
“I should go.” He’s nodding to himself now. Like the added movement will somehow serve to convince him of the fact.
“What? No.”
But he’s still nodding. Still taking steps towards his car. Still wearing the same ghost of an expression that makes her think of trauma victims and shock and countless other emergencies that never fail to ice her veins.
“I’m sorry…” He continues muttering the phrase like some kind of mantra. Like it won’t be true until he’s convinced her of the fact.
She doesn’t even know what it is he’s sorry for…
She trades with Chris the following day. Rides with Oliver and fills the hours with sarcasm and traffic infringements and badly belted song lyrics as they patrol the streets surrounding 15. He buys her lunch, she’s buys him three coffees, they call it even and argue over who gets to drive.
She wins.
They get called to a body dump as the late afternoon sun filters weakly through snow heavy clouds, and she falls silent in anticipation of what is coming. Lets the static from the radio echo inside her head as she prepares her game face. Fierce.
They arrive before Homicide does and she’s secretly relieved for the fact. Figures it gives her something of a home ground advantage as she works to help cordon off the area and keep inquisitive passers-by from trampling all over their prospective crime scene. She teams up with Andy because she calculates he’s even less likely to approach the two of them together, and eventually they move into preparing to interview the witnesses.
“Are you okay?”
Andy’s enquiry catches her off guard and she concentrates on the notes she’s making in an effort to disguise the fact.
“Huh?”
“You seem weird today, quiet or something…”
“I’m fine,” she counters, hopes she manages to sound convincing. “I could probably do with less snow and more, you know, beach,” she kicks her toe at the slush slowly melting in the gutters, “But other than that…”
She trails off. Lets Andy finish the sentence however she sees fit.
“If you say so.” There’s a pause, the sound of pen on paper and notebook pages being turned, before: “To be honest, everyone’s seemed kinda weird today. Maybe it’s just me…”
“Oh, yeah? So, what? We’re all normal and you’re the freak? Only just figuring that out, huh?”
She gets a not-so-playful punch to her left bicep for the comment.
“Nah, it’s just… I dunno. It’s not really any of my business now anyway, really…” Andy trails off, like she wants to say more and is waiting for an invitation to do just that.
“As if that’s ever stopped us, let’s be honest.” Gail keeps her tone light. Joking. Feels her pulse ramp up a notch in anticipation despite it.
Andy slides her notebook into her pocket and leans back against the squad car. Squints through the snow bright glare. “It’s just, like I said, it’s not my business, but…”
“But…”
“I think there’s something going on with Luke.”
She wants to scream yes and me, too and I think I traumatised him with my frozen lips last night, it could just be that…. “What do you mean, going on?”
“I don’t know really. I mean,” Andy’s gaze settles on her, “promise you won’t say anything?”
“You mean, promise I won’t say anything where Sam might overhear and find out you’re still obsessing over your ex-fiancée?”
“No. Yes.” She sighs and Gail can’t help but understand her frustration. “I don’t know. Just, don’t say anything, okay?”
She nods.
“He just seems, different. Quieter. Withdrawn or something. I mean,” she does a quick scan of their immediate surroundings, alert to the proximity of several other uniforms also preparing to take statements from the gathered crowd, “I mean, it’s not like he was ever really all that out-going anyway, so it’s probably nothing. And I’m not, like, trying to say that the fact I’m with Sam now has had any effect on him because, hey, it wasn’t me who couldn’t keep it in my pants, but I just-”
Gail lets silence fill the space between them. Contemplates her next move carefully as Oliver indicates for them to join him.
They’re crossing the street when she finally speaks. “I’m going to say something but you have to promise not to be mad.”
Andy slides her gaze sideways, quirks her lips as if to say, oh, really?
“I…” She swallows, thickly. Starts again, “I kissed him last night.”
To Andy’s credit, she barely breaks stride. Gail rushes to get to the important part. “But he completely freaked out. Like, I thought he was going to have a panic attack and die right there on the sidewalk…”
“You kissed him on the sidewalk?! Where?!” And Gail thinks Andy might have missed the point entirely.
“I am a good kisser, alright. People do not have panic attacks when I kiss them.” Andy’s incredulous snort is insulting to say the least as Oliver signals for them to hurry up.
“We,” she motions her finger back and forth between the two of them, fixes Gail with a determined stare, “have so not finished this conversation, got it? Not even close…”
The shit hits the proverbial fan not even seven hours later. It's weeks before they remember to finish what they'd started.
And by the time they do, it's all irrelevant anyway...
PART TWO
The angels never arrived…
In the aftermath, she realises she can’t exactly remember how it all started. And the fact she was unconscious by the end isn’t really helping with the lack of recall either.
There are bright lights, skull-splitting white as they flash overhead. And her right hand feels achingly empty though she can't begin to fathom why. She can't see out her left eye and the view through the other is blurry at best. A hazy swath of colours and black and nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Until, suddenly...
“Luke?”
If she's heard over the cacophony of other sounds, she certainly isn't answered and she panics in the silence that isn't really silence at all. “Luke!”
A mask is pressed over her nose and mouth then; effectively mutes her desperate pleas. But the salt-water veil shifts just enough for Oliver to come into focus and his lips are moving, speaking words she can't disentangle from the screaming inside her bones. Moving and moving and not making any sense. She reaches blindly for his hand, his shirt, something. Latches on and drags him forward.
Does not need to speak to get her message through. Loud, and crystal clear.
“We've got him, Gail. He's going to be okay...” Nods hurriedly to underline his claim. To make it more real somehow. Repeats himself, just in case, “We've got him...”
Her right hand clenches again, involuntarily, tightens around nothing but cold air and ghosts.
She's in a private room when she next wakes. And she's a comfortable version of numb from her toe tips to the top of her bandaged head. It is only her raw insides that scream their perpetual agony. There's someone in the room with her, maybe several. She hears pages turning and feet shuffling from different points.
Keeping her eyes closed to delay the inevitable, she uses the space to sift through what she knows and calculate just how significant the blanks are.
She remembers being home. Making pasta for dinner with her cousin over Skype in a weird re-enactment of the time they'd shared an apartment in college. Wine and music and deliberately not thinking about... She shifts minutely, forgets for a moment to feign sleep as she remembers suddenly that the door-bell had rung. That night, in her apartment, before pasta but after wine, the door-bell had rung… twice.
But they're onto her then, before she has a chance to properly think things through.
“Gail?” Andy; tentative but not too much so. Which she takes to mean things, whatever things are, are not as pear shaped as she'd been imagining.
“Hey, you awake or what?” Dov this time, and no-where near as cautious as Andy had been. And it never was his style after all. She cracks her eyes open and finds the lot of them peering down at her. She'd grin at the stupidity of it all if she didn't think it would hurt like a bitch.
“I am now, ass-face,” she bites back, and the relief that fills the room becomes a tangible quantity she hadn't known she'd been craving. She takes a minute to properly look at them. They're wrung out, she notes. Sleep deprived and probably running on the fumes of cafeteria coffee and stale sandwiches. Chris is staring at her, and he hasn't spoken yet, she doesn't know what she wants him to say anyway and thinks it's probably just easier all round if it's nothing... She offers him a tight grin of reassurance nonetheless, a quick I get it that is the least he deserves.
Traci is the first to broach the elephant in the room.
“Luke's still in the ICU-” She raises a hand as Gail feels her insides shift once, twice. “He's going to be fine,” she continues, uses a tone she can imagine has had plenty of practice on people much younger than her, “there were some complications, that's why he's still there. But Jerry's up there with him...”
She can feel herself nodding along with Traci’s soothing voice. A paradox of sorts when compared to the hurricane burst to life within her own insides.
“I’m sure you can go see him later, if you want to.”
An exhale filled to overflowing with relief and the heady understanding that yes, yes she does want to, finds its escape.
“Gail, what happened?” And eventually it’s Andy this time who asks the question they’re all eager to hear an answer to. Like maybe they’ve predetermined an order of sorts for all the touchy subjects they need to broach.
She remembers a squeaky hinge on the back gate at wherever it was they were being held. The sound of it shifting, shifting, shifting in the breeze would send bolts of electricity down her spine at semi-regular intervals and she’d alternate between being convinced they were about to be rescued or terrified that their captor had returned to finish them off.
Luke's hand remained curled in hers the entire time, and she remembers she kept thinking that he seemed colder than he had been. But then again, so was she, and the difference between them eventually became more and more difficult to judge. His fingers kept twitching every now and then; providing for her a silent reminder that he was still alive. The aching thud of her own heart beat beneath her ribs was proof enough of her own continued existence.
She managed to catalogue her damage fairly accurately in the end. Had rationalised that her face would probably be an attractive shade of purple when all this came to its inevitable end, and that she’d have the headache to end all headaches, but, other than an intense desire for the pasta she never got to eat, she always figured she was probably doing okay.
All things considered.
“I don’t really remember,” is all the information she offers.
Once the others leave, Gail makes herself count to one hundred before tossing the thick, starched sheet back. She's not entirely sure where her end destination is, but figures she's nothing if not resourceful. She'll find her way. There's a backpack in the corner of her room that she'd not noticed arriving. Figures Traci or Andy and makes a mental note to thank them later. She drags a hoodie out from where it's wedged between other superfluous items and changes her mind; Dov. Drags the top over her head and crosses her fingers than he didn't delve too deeply into her underwear drawer. Gives herself seven seconds of naïve bliss before reconciling, of course he did.
There's a pair of pyjamas right in the bottom of the bag. The familiar material, soft and worn, and she can't remember the last time she actually wore them.
The hallways are littered with just enough people to provide her with the perfect cover and she exits her room and searches for the elevators. Figures there'll be directions inside that will point her to the right floor.
ICU is a little more difficult to navigate. Her presence not quite as inconspicuous as it had been on the other floors. She sees Jerry at the same time he looks up and spots her back. His eyebrows quirk up into a question that he doesn't need words to ask, though he offers them up all the same.
"How'd you get up here?"
She contemplates the obvious. But the journey has left her exhausted and she is beyond the point of dripping sarcasm. His expression changes then and she wonders how obvious her distress is; can't quite gather up the necessary desire to hide it.
"His sister is in there."
She stops in her tracks. "He doesn’t have a sister."
She’s sure about that fact in a manner she can’t quite comprehend. Has no idea how she knows it, just that it’s most definitely the truth.
Jerry shrugs, “Half-sister or foster sister or something. She’s been cleared anyway… And she’s in there now.”
She nods. Rolls her shoulders twice in an attempt to loosen the knots twisting up into the back of her neck.
"How are you doing?"
"I'm fine." And the words are out before she's really had time to consider the question. Figures it's safer for them both this way. She notes Jerry nod his head slowly, but he doesn't speak again and she knows that he doesn't believe her.
It's okay. She doesn't believe herself.
"So, why are you still here?"
"Frank wants me to interview him as soon as they give us access, plus, well... you know..."
She nods absently. After all, she does.
"Has Frank spoken to you yet?"
She shakes her head, feels the pressure build in her swollen face. "Nope. But Traci gave me the heads up that I'll have to make some kind of statement."
"What happened?"
There are so many answers to that question. She can't quite fathom which one it is that Jerry is asking for.
"Can I see him?"
"I'm not sure. They're being pretty strict on the whole 'family only' thing up here. But they'll probably move him out later so; then it shouldn't be a problem."
"Why's he in here?"
"There were complications." He's hesitant. She’s at the same time unsure she wants him to elaborate and absolutely convinced that she needs to know. “Look, they haven’t really told me very much, Gail. And I don’t-”
“Please?”
Jerry sighs and scrubs his hands over his face roughly. He looks about as wrung out as the other’s had; sleep deprived and missing the suit jacket he’s typically never without.
“I think his lung collapsed maybe? And I overheard them talking about some kind of infection…”
She nods along with his explanation because it’s all information she could probably have deduced for herself.
“I told him his ribs were toast,” she adds, keeps her tone intentionally victorious, as though she and Luke had been taking bets on it, and gives Jerry a reassuring smile that is as much for her own benefit as it is for his.
She pulls a chair over eventually; sits and curls her knees up beneath her chin and pretends she can’t see the ridiculous eye-roll Jerry sends in her direction. She always gets what she wants, and she figures now is as good a time as any for him to recognise that.
She has not been a Peck for almost thirty years and not learned a trick or two about getting people to see things her way.
The sister that isn’t really his sister, Gail is still sure of that, comes out again about fifteen minutes later, and it’s only Jerry’s pointedly raised index finger in her direction that keeps her seated in her chair as he pushes off the wall he’s taken to leaning against and moves towards her. Gail can see from where she’s sitting that that the woman is red-eyed and blotchy. She’s older than Luke, maybe by a couple of years, and bears no physical resemblance to him whatsoever. She needs an explanation for this sibling claim, stat.
She uses the moment Jerry appears most distracted to her advantage; he’s fishing a card from his pocket and borrowing a pen from the nurse’s station to underline the phone number that’s already printed on there in bold anyway so, what’s the point? But he’s distracted for a second, and so are the staff, and the sister that isn’t, and Gail knows an opportunity when she sees one.
Luke’s asleep; or unconscious, maybe. They look like the same thing to her. There’s a mask over his face, which is infinitely better than the tube down his throat she’d been imagining. The blanket covering him has only been pulled to waist height, and the bruises across his chest are spectacular in a way that is mostly just horrifying if she’s being honest.
She reaches for his hand at the same time she sinks into the seat beside his bed; both are warm in a way that is more than mildly disconcerting. The heat radiating from his skin is fever-induced, and she guesses that’s what the bags of fluid hanging above his head are there to rectify. The lingering warmth beneath her ass, little more than a reminder that she’s still completely in the dark about far too much of this story.
“Wake up, Luke. Please wake up. Please…”
She is not expecting a response, but a flash of disappointment burns through her insides nonetheless as she changes up her grip and twists her fingers through his, keeps one of them looping constant circles around the base of his thumb. His knuckles are bruised and bloody from where he’d first fought back against their captors, and when she closes her eyes and holds her breath, the only sound she hears is the muted echo of his agony as a steel cap collides with his ribs.
She stays that way, eyes closed and breath mostly held, until Jerry returns and threatens her with bodily removal.
She starts to remember little bits after that. Like the fact that they barely spoke initially, the people that were holding them, but that when they did, Luke seemed to know who they were; or, at least, what it was that they wanted. She remembers that he seemed angry, angry in a way that she could barely begin to fathom; like the emotion was alive within him, a living thing that had settled itself deep in his bones.
The initial spike of fear had faded early, almost immediately, but the anger? Gail thinks it’s probably what kept him conscious as long as he’d managed. His fingernails tearing at its seams as he fought and fought and fought…
She’s been told, since, that they were eventually missing for almost four days; and that the sister who isn’t really the sister had been the person to raise the initial alarm. She tries not to think too hard about what that says with regard to her own family and friends. Tries, but mostly fails in the end anyway as she conjures up explanations for herself that include weekends and night shifts and other pitiful excuses.
Waits, instead, for Luke to wake up. Waits and remembers, and waits and waits and waits…
In the end, she fakes sleep every time someone comes near her room; doesn’t allow herself to open her eyes before she’s managed to calculate exactly who it is that’s entered. Nurses, Gail’s discovered, are relatively safe. They poke and prod and tell her she should eat, but they ask her comparatively few ridiculous questions and that, right now, is all she can hope for.
Everyone else is on her To Be Avoided At All Costs list. At least, they are until she’s had a chance to talk to Luke.
Because she remembers now; most of it anyway, she thinks. And she really needs to know what he has said, or is planning to say, or is absolutely refusing to divulge at all costs, before she can concoct her own statement.
For this is not her story to tell.
And she remembers now.
PART THREE
All the holes in my apologies…
It’s just before lunch on day two of her hospital stay when one of the nurses she remembers from that morning’s poking and prodding session pops her head into the doorway and interrupts the ‘Ellen’ re-run she’s busy staring at blankly.
“I’ve heard a rumour that your boyfriend’s been moved to four ten and that he’s awake,” she semi-whispers, like maybe it’s some big secret, and Gail’s lips form automatically around the rebuttal that ‘he’s not my boyfriend...’ only for the words to fade and disappear before she manages to offer them out loud.
“Thanks for letting me know...”
The nurse disappears as quickly as she’d arrived and Gail spends the next twenty minutes desperately not thinking about why she hadn’t corrected her boyfriend/girlfriend belief and what that might mean...
And by desperately not thinking about she means overanalysing to the nth degree...
In the end she pokes absently at her tray of food for another good fifteen minutes before grabbing up a spoon and the cup of pudding that actually looks mostly edible, and heading for the door. She only has to backtrack twice before she finds the right room.
He’s sitting up partially when she walks in, a hospital gown now covering the damage she knows must still paint his chest a vibrant purple. There’s a tray of food that’s been pushed aside, untouched, and his eyes are closed. But as she leans against the doorframe for a beat and tilts her head to take him in, Gail can see that his fingers are tapping insistently against the blankets.
“Hey, you,” she says gently, trying but mostly failing not to scare the crap out of him as his eyes snap open and do a wild lurch around the room.
“Hey, hey.” She steps forward quickly, pudding and spoon raised in submission as he sinks back against the pillows. “It’s just me...”
He grins at her slowly as one hand comes up to ghost over his ribs, “A bit of warning next time, yeah? I was recently kidnapped and held hostage, you know...”
But the intended levity in his words gets lost somewhere between the forced smile and the fact that it doesn’t even come close to reaching his eyes.
She contemplates the seat that’s been pushed up against the window on the far side of the room, but eventually forgoes the option in favour of climbing up onto the foot of his bed and making herself comfortable next to his right ankle. His eyebrows rise in lieu of the myriad questions he might have and she shrugs in response, shovels a spoonful of pudding into her mouth and savours the sweet taste as though the two of them sharing hospital lunch is the most natural thing in the world.
Reaching forward, she pointedly nudges at his untouched lunch; “Think of this as a picnic!”
“A picnic?” He makes no move towards his food.
She shrugs again, feigns calm as she calculates that nothing is quite going to plan here.
Not that she really has a plan.
And that was the plan.
To have no plan.
Perhaps a Plan B would have been a good idea.
She’s staring into the depths of her now empty cup when he finally speaks to her; and the silence had been so vast in the minutes leading up to it that she’d almost convinced herself he’d fallen asleep.
Or worse. That he’d up and died while she was too chicken shit to do anything other than contemplate the chocolate swirls she’d created on the base of the cup.
“Gail?”
She holds her breath and looks up at him through her eyelashes.
He’s crying, silently. And suddenly the worst case scenarios she’d been obsessing over seem to pale in comparison.
“I’m so sorry, I-”
She shifts then, scoots along the length of the bed a little further and wraps her fingers around his wrist.
“Hey, none of it was your fault, okay? None of it...”
He’s nodding to the same beat that she’s shaking her head, and the effect is unsettling.
“And anyway,” she continues, sitting up a little straighter, “I’m seriously fine. I promise. I have a room full of chocolates and some days off work and, yeah, my face is kinda colourful at the moment, but-” she tilts her head to the side and grins, “I’m still smokin’ hot, so...”
Gail’s still curled up by his side, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his forearm, when they’re interrupted by a knock.
And it’s Jerry, looking like he’s just walked in on something significant.
Gail’s not quite sure how far that is from the truth.
“Peck,” he starts, unsure where to look in a ridiculous way that makes her want to giggle. “I really need to grab your statement.”
She nods quickly, “Yeah, I know. Just give us two minutes, okay?”
“Gail.” The note of warning is more than clear.
“Two minutes,” she reiterates. “I promise. I’ll meet you back at my room in two minutes.”
Jerry nods around a sigh and backs back out of the room, pulling the door closed as he goes.
She turns to face Luke again, takes a deep breath and finally forces herself to voice the words she’d come to his room to say.
“Do they know who your father is, Luke?”
She calculates she’s probably closer to ten minutes than the promised two, but Jerry doesn’t say anything when she finally gets back to her room and she doesn’t bother to apologise.
“I just need-”
She cuts him off.
“You already know.” Pointed and accusing.
“Gail.”
“You already know,” she repeats, inexplicably furious all of a sudden.
“Gail, please just sit down. You know I need to get your statement. What I know or don’t know is irrelevant, you know this...”
She deflates then, feels the fight visibly leak out of her and across the floor as she runs her hands through her hair.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just-”
Jerry pushes off the wall and flips open his notepad, pen poised, “Just talk, Gail. Just tell me what you remember. Nothing else, okay?”
“Yeah,” she nods, climbing onto her bed and dragging a pillow into her lap, “okay.”
The first doorbell chime had coincided with the end of her conversation with her cousin. She’d been in the process of switching from Skype to iTunes when the sound had interrupted her and she remembers the distinctive opening chords of ‘Panic Switch’ were bleeding through the speakers as she made her way to the front door.
The song seems all kinds of prophetic in hindsight.
She’d managed to hide her confused surprise long enough to invite Luke in, had offered him some of the pasta she’d just cooked and hastily added a second wine glass to the one she’d already retrieved from the previous night’s washing up pile. He’d refused the food but nodded out a yes please when she’d raised the open bottle of pinot grigio in his direction.
She can’t remember if they actually managed to drink any, but doesn’t think so.
The doorbell had interrupted them both the second time, the chimes startling them out of the awkward silence that had descended. Luke’s eyebrows had risen, questioning, and she’d shrugged back a non-verbal, ‘I have no freaking clue...’
“It’s probably just Andy,” she’d called as she’d walked away, instantly cringing at her poor choice of guesswork considering she very much doubted it would be Andy at all and just, why would she even say that?
She can’t remember if the person on the other side of the door identified themselves, or if she’d stupidly just opened it up without asking. Jerry nods as he takes notes and doesn’t make comment. She’s glad.
Things had been a little hazy for a while after that. There’d been a punch or hit of some kind that had sent her sprawling onto her backside in the entryway as several bodies pushed past and further into her apartment. And there’d been a fight that was over almost before it had started, before they were both bound and gagged and stumbling outside under the cover of darkness, being shoved into the back of a waiting van with guns pointed at their heads.
She remembers them vividly; the guns.
Luke’s gag had been removed, though hers was kept in place for the duration of the ride. She remembers that he had blood on his face from a cut in his hairline, and that his eyes were wild; feral.
There were two people in the back of the van with them, and two more up front. All males. And one of them kept talking to Luke like he knew him. Asking him questions and making rapid-fire demands she struggled to keep up with.
He’d refused to speak until one of the kidnappers used his gun to pistol whip her, and she doesn’t think she remembers anything more about the van ride after that.
She’d woken up to cold. Dark and cold. She could hear voices again, the same ones from the van, and this time she could hear Luke talking, too. His voice, much quieter than theirs, measured. Alive. She remembers thinking that, that he’s talking which means he’s still alive.
Her relief had been palpable at the time.
They’d waiting until Luke was unconscious, a steel cap through his ribs and blood smeared across his teeth, before they’d introduced themselves; before they’d started telling their stories. She’d begged them to stop at first, her newly freed fingertips pressed into her ears. But eventually she’d relented, too shocked and too horrified by the things they were saying, initial disbelief morphing mid-speech into icy realisation.
They’d told her about Luke’s mother, called her every name under the sun and then some, before ending with the fact that she’d died when his dad had put a bullet between her eyes, “deserving bitch...”
He’d reared up at that, Luke had, staggered to his feet with a growl and launched himself at the closest of the men; wrapped his hands around a thick neck before he disappeared beneath bodies much bigger than his as the others had reacted to the surprise attack.
There’d been screaming, high pitched and frantic, and it wasn’t until the commotion had faded again that Gail had realised it was coming from her. Luke had been on all fours when she finally got to him, coughing ropey blood and saliva onto the chipped cement floor, barely breathing. She remembers her hands on his shoulders, keeping his head up as best she could while their captors laughed and licked their own superficial wounds.
“You’re as fucking pathetic as she always was...”
Luke’s only response, the ragged sawing of wet breaths between clenched teeth.
After that, the stories got even more vivid. And she’d sat there, numb, with her fingers in her mouth, as Luke shook and shook and shook.
“You know he drove them into a lake, right? Back in BC? Took their whore of a mother out with a bullet first and then drove her spawn into a lake and left them there.”
“Hey, Lukey, maybe when he’s released, he’ll take you for another spin. Try again. Second time lucky and all that shit...”
There’d been another period of endless black then. And she’s doesn’t know, now, whether they hit her again or if she’d simply shut down. Climbed inside herself for a while and pretended to be somewhere else. She has no idea how long it lasted or what the men were doing during this time. Maybe they left straight away. Maybe they used Luke as a punching bag again. Maybe they forced more of their horror stories on him before laughing and driving off.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t think she wants to know.
He was squeezing her hand when she woke up, and she remembers having no idea how he could be conscious, let alone alert enough to realise that she wasn’t. He’d been calling her name, fresh blood on his tongue with every attempt, and she remembers practically climbing into his lap with relief when he’d told her they’d gone, the men.
She remembers he’d said something she hadn’t initially understood then, that they’d got what wanted. It wasn’t until much later that the pieces had fallen into place and she’d figured out what he meant.
He’d rambled at her for a while then, an unsteadying mixture of desperate apology, unhinged fury, and a fear that withered her edges.
She doesn’t bother to tell this part to Jerry.
About how he’d told her that when the car had gone into the lake, he’d been in the backseat with his sister, and she had really long blonde hair that kept tangling and covering her face as the water spilled over them and filled the interior.
About how she looked like she was swimming; even though he knew that she wasn’t.
And about how he was four years old at the time, and that this is the only memory he has left of her. His big sister.
Later, as the fog had cleared, and a deep resignation had seemed to settle over him, he’d told her how his father had been in Kent since ‘my mom and thing at the lake happened’, and that there was a hearing coming up where he, Luke, was meant to be providing a victim impact statement in the hopes of getting a recent parole grant overturned. And that this whole abduction stunt had been a ‘request’ for him to reconsider.
Delivered by his uncle.
Gail remembers nodding into the dark, pleased in that moment that she couldn’t see his face. That he couldn’t see hers.
She’d wrapped her fingers through his, life-line like, and she remembers that they’d stayed that way from then until the rescue had come, hours, minutes, days later.
And she thinks it’s why they feel perpetually empty now.
She doesn’t bother telling Jerry this part, either.
Gail sleeps after he leaves, exhausted beyond all comprehension; and when she wakes, Traci is curled in a chair on her left, feet beneath her and chin on her knees, reading. The winter sun is well on its way out for the day she notes, the last bit of thin warmth it has to offer bleeding through the horizontal blinds and spilling across the black of Traci’s hair.
“Hey,” she says, reaching up to rub tentatively at her eyes as Traci shifts and sets her book aside.
“Hey, yourself.”
“What are you doing here?”
Traci shrugs, smiles, “Jerry said you might like a visitor that wasn’t him for a change.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
Traci nods and stretches one leg out, uses her sock covered toes to nudge Gail’s leg.
“Are you okay?”
“Why? What did he tell you?” She’s instantly defensive and wonders how much of her response is grounded in a sudden need to protect Luke.
“Hey, it’s okay. He didn’t tell me anything, I promise. Just that you might like to see a friendly face and yeah, so, here I am. I promise that’s it.”
Gail sighs and tilts her head back before realigning herself and looking over at Traci.
“Sorry. It’s just-”
“You don’t have to explain, honestly. It’s all good. Jerry’s down with Luke, they’re having a boy’s night that we’re not invited to apparently, which I’m pretty sure just translates to playing computer games on Jerry’s laptop so, we don’t really want to be there anyway...”
Gail grins, eyebrows raised; “Speak for yourself, I am aces at computer games... Ask Dov.”
EPILOGUE
I found someone to carry me home…
She’s discharged early the next morning, and she tells herself that the detour she does via Luke’s room on the way out has nothing to do with the fact that the idea of going back to her apartment alone is all levels of horrifying.
He’s in the bathroom when she arrives; she can hear him moving about in there and she uses the moments reprieve to sneak a peek at the couple of Get Well cards that have been propped on his window sill. They’re all from people at the station, or people connected to the station. And she thinks about her own small bag of cards and chocolates and magazines, the bag of clothes that had been delivered and the friend’s she’d had come for visits.
She makes a mental note to thank Jerry for being there for him later.
She’s propped up on his bed when he comes back out. Legs crossed at the ankles and casually flipping through a magazine she’d found on his bedside table. Like maybe she belongs there.
“Hey, you.”
She lowers the magazine and leans it against her nose, peers out at him from over the top of the well-worn pages.
“Hey, yourself.”
He still looks hospital level sick, she notes. That perpetual look of exhaustion she knows she’d sported for a day or two still painted all over his face. But he no longer looks just the right side of dead either so she’ll take what she can get.
“They officially springing you?” he asks, his voice rough, like he hasn’t long ago woken up, and she nods back a yes as she swings her legs to the ground. Prepares to vacate the spot on the bed and insist he lay back down.
But he’s in front of her then, one hand raised, reaching out to ghost fingertips over the still fairly spectacular bruising she’s sporting.
“Hey,” she says, reaching up to catch his hand in hers and drag it down to chest level as she steps closer and locks it tightly between them, makes him look her in the eye just so he’ll stop calculating how much of the damage is his fault.
Their complete nearness reminds her of the last time they were this close, and the giddy lightness that had quickly given way to confusion and worry. She wonders, maybe, if she could do it right this time.
Doesn’t give herself too long to ponder the possible outcomes.
She lifts up onto her toes and brushes her lips against his. Pulls away again and looks up at him through her eyelashes in order to gauge his reaction.
Or non-reaction.
Whatever the case may be.
He’s staring back at her, blinking. His chin lowered, she can feel his breath in her hair as he exhales shakily.
“Gail,” he says, but she cuts off whatever words he’d planned to say next with her finger pressed lightly against his lips.
“Shhhh,” she whispers. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to say anything.” She raises her eyebrows as though requesting some kind of confirmation that he’s understood and when he nods back she removes her finger again. Runs her hand down the side of his face instead.
“If you’re not ready for this, then I more than understand, okay?”
Again, she waits for a nod. Gets it.
“But I am. I am ready. I have been ready for weeks. Probably even longer than that if I’m being honest.”
She drops her hands down to his, laces their fingers tightly with a squeeze.
“And I’ll wait until you are. I will wait for you, Luke, okay? I want to wait for you.” She lifts her gaze back up to meet his, almost too scared of what she might find. Waits and waits and waits for the nod that will make laying herself on the line like this totally worth it. “If you want me to.”
He leans forward instead of replying, shakes his hands loose and wraps his arms around her before kissing her forehead softly.
“Yeah, okay, if you’re sure then…”
She giggles quietly at his obvious fluster, smiles against his chest and shuts her eyes finally.
“… then I think I’d like that.”