[rookie blue/orphan black] fic | Swings and Roundabouts
Title | Swings and Roundabouts
Fandom | Rookie Blue/Orphan Black
Characters | Gail, Holly, Luke, Marlo, Chad, Alison, Cosima, Sarah and Paul (Gail/Holly, Gail+Luke, Chad/Alison)
Rating | M
Word Count | 2000
Summary | A routine door-knock takes an unexpected turn. “Officer Peck…” she recites mechanically as the latch finally releases and the heavy door swings inward on its hinges, brings the person on the other side into full view. Her sudden double take could be considered comical under different circumstances.
Author's Note | As requested by nereemac at the Rookie Blue Gift Exchange ♥
There’s a dull thump on the other side of the surprisingly ornate door, a muffled curse to match as Gail lowers her pointer finger from the bell and settles her hand close to the butt of her holstered weapon.
She’s canvassing as requested, fighting off miniature creatures determined to maul her ankles into submission and taking the odd, incoherent, ultimately useless statement from odd, incoherent, ultimately useless private citizens.
At least, that’s what she would be doing. If they’d answer the freaking door.
“Officer Peck…” she recites mechanically as the latch finally releases and the heavy door swings inward on its hinges, brings the person on the other side into full view. Her sudden double take could be considered comical under different circumstances.
Under any circumstances that are not these circumstances.
“Luke?” she says, even though she already knows it’s not.
“Excuse me?”
But it’s his voice and his eyes and his mouth and, what the actual fuck….?
Later, back at the station, she corners him, the real him, in his office.
“We need to talk,” she says. Thinks; understatement of the freaking year.
She has a photo prepped and ready on her phone. A candid she’d snapped while pretending to take notes. It’s not quite focussed, and a good quarter of his face has been chopped off where she’d accidentally moved the screen at the last minute.
None of that matters.
And the impact of the revelation is not lessened because of it.
Luke looks like he’s going to vomit.
She thinks, in hindsight, a gentler approach might have been a good idea.
His name is Chad, he’d told her. Chad Norris. Recently widowed and only just moved to the area. He’d stuttered those words out, like he wasn’t yet used to saying them aloud.
She remembers snippets of his statement only, and it’s bad policing, she’ll admit that, but she also thinks she has an A Plus excuse.
He doesn’t know anyone called Luke Callaghan, he’d said. He doesn’t have any brothers, let alone one of the identical twin variety.
And he was about to be late, “if you’ll excuse me, Officer Peck,” for his morning spin class.
Of course.
She’d already forgotten the real reason she’d knocked. The methodically put together details of the actual crime she was meant to be investigating.
She talks Luke into giving her a full twenty four hours before they drag recently-widowed-and-moved-to-the-area Chad Norris in for formal questioning.
And by that she means ‘in’ to the no-name motel room they hire for the week, and it’s not so much ‘formal questioning’ as it is a series of ever increasing exclamations of confused bewilderment.
Despite her confident claim that ‘Google knows everything,’ Google is approximately zero levels of help in this matter. And when she surreptitiously tries to gauge Holly’s knowledge on the potential whys and how the fucks, all she gets in return are smooth lips on the underside of her chin and a knee gently wedged, hot and high between her thighs.
Ahem.
She waits until morning to confess the whole story and falls in love a little more completely when Holly’s eyes light up in wonder at the potential science of it all.
“Geek,” she says. Means it as nothing but a compliment of the highest order.
For the most part, Chad spends the afternoon blatantly staring at Luke. Wide eyed and barely blinking. Every now and then his focus slides away, as though magnetically drawn to the smooth strip of denim covering Holly’s ass.
Mostly though, he just stares at Luke.
Gail doesn’t bother to call him out.
For the most part, Luke spends the afternoon blatantly staring at Chad.
In the name of data collection they swap stories about personal biology and background history. The process is the most awkward thing Gail’s ever had to document. Luke admits that his parents are dead. That, as far as he knows, he has a grandparent or two somewhere out in BC, and there was an aunt, maybe, but she’s… no longer around.
Also, he had a brother.
Once.
Gail knew about his parents.
Gail did not know about his brother.
Chad has older sisters, plural. A mother, a father, and a step-father. He had a wife until recently, too. She’d press him for details on that last part, but he looks at little frayed at the edges as he stammers out her name, Aynsley, and so she decides to instead make use of the computers at the station to pull those pieces into place.
Holly draws blood samples and secrets her way back to the path. lab. to run every test she knows. Luke gets up suddenly and it’s not until the room darkens with dusk that she realises he hasn’t come back.
She finds him in the bathroom, sitting on the tile and with his back against the far wall. There’s barely space for one person, let alone her as well, but she pushes the door closed behind her and steps back, leans against it and slides to meet him on the floor.
“Luke?”
He drags his fingers through his hair, leaves it standing on end as he looks up at her, bleary-eyed.
“What’s going on, Gail?”
She thinks he might be expecting her to have all the answers and the pressure inherent in that notion is kind of overwhelming.
She scoots across the tile until they’re shoulder to shoulder, locks her fingers through his and squeezes once in the total absence of any words that could do a better job. Drops her head sideways until it’s resting on his arm. Sits until her butt goes numb.
It’s Chad’s idea to hire a private investigator, and it’s Luke’s to contact an out of work Marlo Cruz to see if she can scout around for them, off the record.
They have these epiphanies in unison and Gail forces down an inexplicable urge to roll her eyes at the absurdity of it. Doesn’t comment on what just happened and tries not to look too hard at Chad’s amused wonder and the way it contrasts so perfectly with Luke’s absolute horror.
“I’ll give her a call now,” she says instead. Stands up and heads out onto the balcony at a jog. Forces potential explanations through her mind in an attempt to drown out everything else.
Thinks We’re pretty sure Detective Callaghan has a clone doesn’t really cut it as a viable conversation starter, but can’t really come up with anything else in that moment and so runs with it anyway.
Marlo’s reaction is not what she’d been expecting.
“Beth Childs,” Marlo says, placing an A4 print of a face on the floor at their feet. There’s a notebook on her knee, a pen twisting, twisting between her fingertips. And then Chad’s lurching from his seat and snatching at the photograph and all Gail can hear is the rumbling murmur of his panicked disbelief.
Like a rumbling hum, no, no, no, no, no.
Holly puts her hands on his shoulders and spins him forcibly to face her. The visual is kind of ground shifting.
In the end he says, “Alison Hendrix.” And it’s not a question; it’s an absolute statement of fact.
Marlo says, “I know.”
Apparently there are six of the identical women. Perhaps more.
Probably more.
Spread out over several continents and ranging in age by a year or two at least.
So far Marlo’s found no trace of more Luke lookalikes and Gail is macabrely disappointed with the news for reasons she refuses to examine.
They convince Chad to set up a meeting. To use his ties with Alison, ties he refuses to detail beyond “she was Aynsley’s friend”, to get them all together.
“Did Aynsley know about Alison?” Gail asks.
But Chad’s reply is a defeated shrug and she can’t help but think it speaks to more than just this.
Holly recites memorised lab results that Gail doesn’t fully understand, and Luke barely moves for hours on end. He coughs tightly into the crook of his elbow until she’s reaching for his forehead and pushing carefully measured syrup across the coffee table pointedly in his direction.
And she has to clamp down on the rising fear that things are about to fall apart for real this time.
“I’m fine,” he says.
Two syllables. Neither of which even remotely constitute the truth.
She goes to work as rostered and does her job as she’s been trained. Pulls her weapon and covers her partner and fills out reports and guards the property room like there’s nothing else on her mind.
Like she’s not in the middle of a scientific conspiracy that may or may not involve the actual cloning of her best friend.
Three of the half dozen or so women that they know of turn up at the arranged time and place. Three identical women plus one random guy who reeks of military. And she would know, after all. Gail watches Chad and Alison so that she doesn’t have to watch Luke.
It works for a while, until;
“How long has that been happening?”
The one with the dreads, Gail’s already forgotten her name and she can’t help but hate herself a little bit for it because… isn’t that the whole point right there? But the one with the dreads, she’s watching Luke, concern creasing her forehead as he excuses himself from the room, wet coughs echoing as he heads down the darkened hall towards the bathroom.
“A few days, maybe four, I guess,” she answers, “Why?”
There’s a pause before, “No reason.”
But Gail only breathes twice before the other girl is disappearing out the same door Luke just exited.
She spends the twenty minutes that they’re gone memorising everyone’s names.
It’s well past midnight when the crowd thins out again. Marlo leaves when the others do, makes plans to meet up again and jots notes in a spiral bound book she then slots into a small pocket on the inside of her coat.
They haven’t been able to agree on much over the course of the last several hours, but the need for secrecy is definitely one of the rare exceptions.
At least, for now.
Chad and Alison have some kind of manic ‘moment’ just outside the front door, and they seem familiar in a way that speaks of more than just barbeques and pot lucks.
Holly’s eyebrows raise over the solid rims of her glasses and Gail doesn’t so much as have to move a muscle to portray her bewildered agreement.
Luke gets pushed to sick leave the very next day. They’re calling it bronchitis for lack of an actual doctor’s opinion and Gail appropriates a squad car to pay him a late afternoon visit.
That she’s woken him up is immediately clear, but she has questions that can’t wait, won’t wait, and so she tells herself she doesn’t really care.
“What did Cosima say?”
His front door is barely open.
He speaks in stops and starts. She doesn’t know how many details he carefully leaves out of the story. Just knows that if their roles were reversed she’d definitely pick and choose how much she could admit: to him, to herself.
“We’ll fix this,” she says, fierce.
Means it.
Even as she recognises how utterly out of her depth she is.
Luke laughs suddenly, drops his head into his hands for a beat before looking back up at her, eyes fever-bright.
“They’re pretty awesome,” he says finally, “The girls. I can see why someone’d want to make copies of them.”
She stretches her hands across his kitchen table and loops her fingers loosely through his.
“You’re pretty awesome, too,” she adds. “And I don’t say that about very many people so…”
She trails off and he smiles at her, just like she’d planned.
“And then there’s Chad,” he says, and it’s her turn to grin because, yeah.
“And then there’s Chad.”
Fandom | Rookie Blue/Orphan Black
Characters | Gail, Holly, Luke, Marlo, Chad, Alison, Cosima, Sarah and Paul (Gail/Holly, Gail+Luke, Chad/Alison)
Rating | M
Word Count | 2000
Summary | A routine door-knock takes an unexpected turn. “Officer Peck…” she recites mechanically as the latch finally releases and the heavy door swings inward on its hinges, brings the person on the other side into full view. Her sudden double take could be considered comical under different circumstances.
Author's Note | As requested by nereemac at the Rookie Blue Gift Exchange ♥
There’s a dull thump on the other side of the surprisingly ornate door, a muffled curse to match as Gail lowers her pointer finger from the bell and settles her hand close to the butt of her holstered weapon.
She’s canvassing as requested, fighting off miniature creatures determined to maul her ankles into submission and taking the odd, incoherent, ultimately useless statement from odd, incoherent, ultimately useless private citizens.
At least, that’s what she would be doing. If they’d answer the freaking door.
“Officer Peck…” she recites mechanically as the latch finally releases and the heavy door swings inward on its hinges, brings the person on the other side into full view. Her sudden double take could be considered comical under different circumstances.
Under any circumstances that are not these circumstances.
“Luke?” she says, even though she already knows it’s not.
“Excuse me?”
But it’s his voice and his eyes and his mouth and, what the actual fuck….?
Later, back at the station, she corners him, the real him, in his office.
“We need to talk,” she says. Thinks; understatement of the freaking year.
She has a photo prepped and ready on her phone. A candid she’d snapped while pretending to take notes. It’s not quite focussed, and a good quarter of his face has been chopped off where she’d accidentally moved the screen at the last minute.
None of that matters.
And the impact of the revelation is not lessened because of it.
Luke looks like he’s going to vomit.
She thinks, in hindsight, a gentler approach might have been a good idea.
His name is Chad, he’d told her. Chad Norris. Recently widowed and only just moved to the area. He’d stuttered those words out, like he wasn’t yet used to saying them aloud.
She remembers snippets of his statement only, and it’s bad policing, she’ll admit that, but she also thinks she has an A Plus excuse.
He doesn’t know anyone called Luke Callaghan, he’d said. He doesn’t have any brothers, let alone one of the identical twin variety.
And he was about to be late, “if you’ll excuse me, Officer Peck,” for his morning spin class.
Of course.
She’d already forgotten the real reason she’d knocked. The methodically put together details of the actual crime she was meant to be investigating.
She talks Luke into giving her a full twenty four hours before they drag recently-widowed-and-moved-to-the-area Chad Norris in for formal questioning.
And by that she means ‘in’ to the no-name motel room they hire for the week, and it’s not so much ‘formal questioning’ as it is a series of ever increasing exclamations of confused bewilderment.
Despite her confident claim that ‘Google knows everything,’ Google is approximately zero levels of help in this matter. And when she surreptitiously tries to gauge Holly’s knowledge on the potential whys and how the fucks, all she gets in return are smooth lips on the underside of her chin and a knee gently wedged, hot and high between her thighs.
Ahem.
She waits until morning to confess the whole story and falls in love a little more completely when Holly’s eyes light up in wonder at the potential science of it all.
“Geek,” she says. Means it as nothing but a compliment of the highest order.
For the most part, Chad spends the afternoon blatantly staring at Luke. Wide eyed and barely blinking. Every now and then his focus slides away, as though magnetically drawn to the smooth strip of denim covering Holly’s ass.
Mostly though, he just stares at Luke.
Gail doesn’t bother to call him out.
For the most part, Luke spends the afternoon blatantly staring at Chad.
In the name of data collection they swap stories about personal biology and background history. The process is the most awkward thing Gail’s ever had to document. Luke admits that his parents are dead. That, as far as he knows, he has a grandparent or two somewhere out in BC, and there was an aunt, maybe, but she’s… no longer around.
Also, he had a brother.
Once.
Gail knew about his parents.
Gail did not know about his brother.
Chad has older sisters, plural. A mother, a father, and a step-father. He had a wife until recently, too. She’d press him for details on that last part, but he looks at little frayed at the edges as he stammers out her name, Aynsley, and so she decides to instead make use of the computers at the station to pull those pieces into place.
Holly draws blood samples and secrets her way back to the path. lab. to run every test she knows. Luke gets up suddenly and it’s not until the room darkens with dusk that she realises he hasn’t come back.
She finds him in the bathroom, sitting on the tile and with his back against the far wall. There’s barely space for one person, let alone her as well, but she pushes the door closed behind her and steps back, leans against it and slides to meet him on the floor.
“Luke?”
He drags his fingers through his hair, leaves it standing on end as he looks up at her, bleary-eyed.
“What’s going on, Gail?”
She thinks he might be expecting her to have all the answers and the pressure inherent in that notion is kind of overwhelming.
She scoots across the tile until they’re shoulder to shoulder, locks her fingers through his and squeezes once in the total absence of any words that could do a better job. Drops her head sideways until it’s resting on his arm. Sits until her butt goes numb.
It’s Chad’s idea to hire a private investigator, and it’s Luke’s to contact an out of work Marlo Cruz to see if she can scout around for them, off the record.
They have these epiphanies in unison and Gail forces down an inexplicable urge to roll her eyes at the absurdity of it. Doesn’t comment on what just happened and tries not to look too hard at Chad’s amused wonder and the way it contrasts so perfectly with Luke’s absolute horror.
“I’ll give her a call now,” she says instead. Stands up and heads out onto the balcony at a jog. Forces potential explanations through her mind in an attempt to drown out everything else.
Thinks We’re pretty sure Detective Callaghan has a clone doesn’t really cut it as a viable conversation starter, but can’t really come up with anything else in that moment and so runs with it anyway.
Marlo’s reaction is not what she’d been expecting.
“Beth Childs,” Marlo says, placing an A4 print of a face on the floor at their feet. There’s a notebook on her knee, a pen twisting, twisting between her fingertips. And then Chad’s lurching from his seat and snatching at the photograph and all Gail can hear is the rumbling murmur of his panicked disbelief.
Like a rumbling hum, no, no, no, no, no.
Holly puts her hands on his shoulders and spins him forcibly to face her. The visual is kind of ground shifting.
In the end he says, “Alison Hendrix.” And it’s not a question; it’s an absolute statement of fact.
Marlo says, “I know.”
Apparently there are six of the identical women. Perhaps more.
Probably more.
Spread out over several continents and ranging in age by a year or two at least.
So far Marlo’s found no trace of more Luke lookalikes and Gail is macabrely disappointed with the news for reasons she refuses to examine.
They convince Chad to set up a meeting. To use his ties with Alison, ties he refuses to detail beyond “she was Aynsley’s friend”, to get them all together.
“Did Aynsley know about Alison?” Gail asks.
But Chad’s reply is a defeated shrug and she can’t help but think it speaks to more than just this.
Holly recites memorised lab results that Gail doesn’t fully understand, and Luke barely moves for hours on end. He coughs tightly into the crook of his elbow until she’s reaching for his forehead and pushing carefully measured syrup across the coffee table pointedly in his direction.
And she has to clamp down on the rising fear that things are about to fall apart for real this time.
“I’m fine,” he says.
Two syllables. Neither of which even remotely constitute the truth.
She goes to work as rostered and does her job as she’s been trained. Pulls her weapon and covers her partner and fills out reports and guards the property room like there’s nothing else on her mind.
Like she’s not in the middle of a scientific conspiracy that may or may not involve the actual cloning of her best friend.
Three of the half dozen or so women that they know of turn up at the arranged time and place. Three identical women plus one random guy who reeks of military. And she would know, after all. Gail watches Chad and Alison so that she doesn’t have to watch Luke.
It works for a while, until;
“How long has that been happening?”
The one with the dreads, Gail’s already forgotten her name and she can’t help but hate herself a little bit for it because… isn’t that the whole point right there? But the one with the dreads, she’s watching Luke, concern creasing her forehead as he excuses himself from the room, wet coughs echoing as he heads down the darkened hall towards the bathroom.
“A few days, maybe four, I guess,” she answers, “Why?”
There’s a pause before, “No reason.”
But Gail only breathes twice before the other girl is disappearing out the same door Luke just exited.
She spends the twenty minutes that they’re gone memorising everyone’s names.
It’s well past midnight when the crowd thins out again. Marlo leaves when the others do, makes plans to meet up again and jots notes in a spiral bound book she then slots into a small pocket on the inside of her coat.
They haven’t been able to agree on much over the course of the last several hours, but the need for secrecy is definitely one of the rare exceptions.
At least, for now.
Chad and Alison have some kind of manic ‘moment’ just outside the front door, and they seem familiar in a way that speaks of more than just barbeques and pot lucks.
Holly’s eyebrows raise over the solid rims of her glasses and Gail doesn’t so much as have to move a muscle to portray her bewildered agreement.
Luke gets pushed to sick leave the very next day. They’re calling it bronchitis for lack of an actual doctor’s opinion and Gail appropriates a squad car to pay him a late afternoon visit.
That she’s woken him up is immediately clear, but she has questions that can’t wait, won’t wait, and so she tells herself she doesn’t really care.
“What did Cosima say?”
His front door is barely open.
He speaks in stops and starts. She doesn’t know how many details he carefully leaves out of the story. Just knows that if their roles were reversed she’d definitely pick and choose how much she could admit: to him, to herself.
“We’ll fix this,” she says, fierce.
Means it.
Even as she recognises how utterly out of her depth she is.
Luke laughs suddenly, drops his head into his hands for a beat before looking back up at her, eyes fever-bright.
“They’re pretty awesome,” he says finally, “The girls. I can see why someone’d want to make copies of them.”
She stretches her hands across his kitchen table and loops her fingers loosely through his.
“You’re pretty awesome, too,” she adds. “And I don’t say that about very many people so…”
She trails off and he smiles at her, just like she’d planned.
“And then there’s Chad,” he says, and it’s her turn to grin because, yeah.
“And then there’s Chad.”