The Delicate Brothers - ACT 1 (1/17)
Title: The Delicate Brothers - ACT 1
Author: ladygray99
Rating: NC17
Chapter 1/17
Series: Whitman
Characters/Pairings:Charlie/Colby, Don/OFC, Alan/OFC, Ian/OMC/OFC, Megan/Larry, Tarry Lake, David Sinclair, Matt Li.
Word count: 5,011 (62,941 total)
Warnings/Spoilers: Threeways, spankings, shaving, sexual discipline, gross descriptions of crime scenes, masturbation, medical stuff related to pregnancy and childbirth, original characters.
Summary: Life progresses, life happens, life perseveres, and life is better with someone by your side.
Notes: PLEASE READ BEFORE BEGINNING - Back in 2008 I finished A Woman Waits for Me, the fourth in the Whitman Series. And I promised part 5 would come. I started writing. I got to about 60,000 words and still had lots of ideas so I decided to outline everything else I wanted in the story. It hit five pages. Five pages. I panicked. A Woman Waits for Me was 119,209 words. This was going to be longer. I saw years of my life and hundreds of thousands of words in front of me. I decided to take a deep breath and just put it aside for a couple of months.
Then I got a new job. I ended up writing Who We Are which was 130k. I wrote an original novel which went longer than I should. Then I wrote another original novel which I'm now trying to sell. I got pregnant which ate my brain. Then I had a baby, bought a house, and every time I opened the file for this I looked at that five pages of outline and panicked.
Then I saw a little post under the numb3rs tag on tumblr, it was from no one I knew, not directed at me, and didn't even mention the name of the story but it was obvious that it was about Whitman and they were sad it was never updated. I guess that was a last straw or something. Back when I was outlining I broke up the story into 4 acts, places where major arcs ended. I should have probably made it 4 different stories. I realized I had act 1 finished and it was pretty solid. So this is it, Act 1 of Whitman 5 for people to read. But here's the thing, I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN ACTS 2, 3, AND 4 MIGHT HAPPEN. So before you decide if you want to read this you might want to keep that fact in mind.
And I would love feedback.
Beta: None, feel free to point out typos of which there are many I am sure.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And night at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades.
-216. On the Beach at Night, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman.
Chapter 1
Don had figured that having a wife and kid, and his dad having a girlfriend would mean he'd be mooching fewer meals off his father. Instead his dad just started putting a couple of extra plates at the table; one for Anne and one for Kathryn, plus a highchair for Mattie.
Don was working his way through a second helping of meatloaf as he looked around the table. Things felt a little off. His dad and Kathryn seemed oddly quiet, as did Charlie and Colby.
Colby had been a little quiet in general since his family had put in an uninvited and unwelcome appearance a few weeks earlier. When Don had gotten the details off his father he tried to talk Colby into pressing charges, but Colby had refused and insisted it wouldn't happen again. Not that it was easy to talk to Colby alone the past few weeks. Charlie had been mother henning him non stop.
Suddenly Alan let out a large sigh and put down his fork.
"Charlie, I have something I need to tell you."
"Yeah, Dad. So do I." There was a moment of silence. "You go first."
Alan took a breath. "I'm moving out, I bought a condo." Charlie face froze. "Not far, just that new little development around the corner. It's five minutes away. It's just this set up is ridiculous. Colby is still paying rent on that little apartment when you have this house and Kathryn and I really should have our own space and it's just past time we started living like adults in our own relationships and stopped traumatizing each other."
Don looked at Charlie whose face was unreadable. Colby, on the other hand, had that blank face that meant he was trying not to crack up. "Well Charlie, say something."
Charlie blinked a few times. "Dad," Charlie started slowly. "I have something I need to tell you. I'm moving out. I bought a condo." Colby cracked up and Don followed with the rest of the table. Alan's jaw dropped. "Not that far. Just that new development around the corner. It's just this set up is stupid and Colby and I need our own space where you and I won't traumatize each other and you have Kathryn now so I'm not worried about you living alone and...yeah."
Alan turned to Don and Colby. "Did you two know about this?"
Don raised his hands. "No, I swear."
"Well we can't both move out." Alan stated firmly.
"Mine's already gone through escrow."
"Mine to."
"Look, Dad. You've lived here most of your life..."
"It's your house Charlie. You bought it."
"Yes but it's your home."
"Okay, Okay, let's make this easy." Don quickly pulled a quarter out of his pocket. "Heads dad moves, tails Charlie moves." Don flipped it. "Heads." Charlie put his face in his hands.
"Great, what am I supposed to do with the condo?"
"Plenty of money to be made in the high end rental market. Just find a property management company to handle the details for you."
Charlie looked over at Colby.
"Told you, you should have talked to your dad," he said.
~
Martin pulled his shirt over his shoulders trying to minimize the wrinkles.
"I trust everything is satisfactory?" Martin asked as his doctor made notes in Martin's file.
"No, everything is not satisfactory," Doctor McNab snapped. "You are too thin."
"I am within the acceptable weight range for my height and position." Martin replied coolly as he began to button his shirt.
"You are one pound within range. You have been exactly one pound in range since your first training physical. That's not normal."
"But it is within the bounds of official guide lines." Martin repeated. He'd been having this argument with Dr. McNab every year for years.
Dr. McNab grinned. "But not next year." Martin looped his black tie around his neck as if his doctor had said nothing. "Next year the NSA is changing its standard to Body Mass Index. Next year I will stick you in a full sized dunk tank if I need to, to prove you are too thin. What's more I am going to get you diagnosed anorexic."
That was a new tactic on Dr. McNab's part, Martin thought as he adjusted his tie. "If I were anorexic I would be far thinner than this."
"It's not about being thin, it's about being in control. You want to be in perfect control of your body and god knows how but you are. You're smart. You're like a nail biter who doesn't bite their nails to the quick and doesn't do it in public so no one knows. You, Agent Sherwood, keep yourself at just the point where no one can call you on it but I'm calling you on it and next year if I don't see ten more pounds on you I'm strapping you to a bed and shoving a feeding tube up your nose!"
Martin shrugged on his jacket. "Will that be all Dr. McNab?"
Martin watched as his doctor pointed to the door with a roll of his eyes. "Get out of my office and go eat something."
"As always, it was a pleasure." Martin gave a slight smirk and headed out the door.
~
Colby looked around his apartment. It looked bizarrely large, devoid of all furniture. He had known this day would come but it was still odd.
They were calling it the great Chinese fire drill. Kathryn was moving out of her tiny place and into Alan's new condo. Alan was moving his bed and personal belongings out of the master bedroom to his new place. Charlie's bed and things were getting moved into the master bedroom. Colby's bed was getting donated since it was second hand to begin with. Colby's couch and sound system were moving into Charlie's old room to make a sort of study/math free zone for Colby to hide out in, and it was all happening in one weekend while Charlie was out of town.
Colby ran his fingers across a tiny dent in the drywall the landlord had missed. Charlie had put it there with his fist a moment after Colby offered to release him from their Arrangement. Colby closed his eyes and breathed. He didn't consider himself the nostalgic type but the room, the whole apartment had more memories of him and Charlie than he could count. Many good and more than a few, hellish.
He wandered through the other rooms looking for anything missed. He paused at the bathroom and smiled to himself. The night before he'd committed a small act of graffiti. There was a tile by the sink that was always loose. He'd pulled it off and written his and Charlie's name on the back like a stupid teenaged girl or something. But a great romance had, in an odd way, started in that bathroom and Colby had felt a need to mark it.
Colby took one last look and headed out the front door.
In the hall his neighbor, Sara was waiting.
"Good morning, Sara." He carefully signed.
Sara and her husband Eric where both deaf and over the years had taught Colby a smattering of sign language, including useful phrases such as 'You're under arrest' and 'Sorry, I'm gay and taken.'
"Morning." Sara spoke carefully. "You're leaving us."
"Yes. Sorry." Colby signed.
"We'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too."
"We'll miss you and Charlie. You two were very inspirational some nights."
Colby froze, a combination of confusion and fear suddenly creeping up.
Sara grinned. "Vibrations through the walls."
He closed his eyes. He was pretty sure he'd never blushed as hard as he was at that moment. All these years he thought he and Charlie were getting away with screaming the place down since his neighbors couldn't hear.
"You're welcome." Colby signed.
"Don't be a stranger." Sara signed before heading back to her own apartment.
~
Megan sighed in extreme contentment. She was very close to purring if she could. Larry's thumbs were doing amazing things to her arches. Tension she didn't even know was there was melting away. And it wasn't just Larry's hands. The smell of white roses filled the room and the taste of high grade chocolate was still on her lips.
"Not that I'm complaining, or asking you to stop in any way, shape, or form but what's brought this on?" Megan asked.
"I thought it an appropriate way to celebrate the day." Larry stated from his place at her feet.
"Saturday?"
"Well, yes, that is a reason to celebrate, but I was thinking of a greater milestone than simply the ending of a week."
Megan wracked her brain then something popped up. "Oh, wow. That had slipped my mind somehow."
"I'm sure it would have come back to you."
Megan nodded. It would have because it was three months. She was now officially past her first trimester. A little knot of worry twisted around her stomach. She had spent the last six weeks sort of pretending it wasn't happening as best as she could. After seeing what Anne and Don had been through, and all the warnings the doctors had given her, she had decided to not get too emotionally attached to the idea of a child until the pregnancy was further along. Larry was right. Getting past the first trimester was a big milestone.
"This is going to happen, isn't it?" she asked Larry.
"Well nothing in the universe is a certainty including the existence of the universe itself however the possibility of a child possessing our combined genetic code is certainly a little closer to happening, yes."
Megan smiled. She knew with a rambling answer like that Larry was just a nervous as she was, but she could also see the light shining in his eyes at the very thought and knew that he was going to be with her though this no mater what.
~
David lifted the end of Colby's couch with a bit of a grunt. "Now I am getting rib eye out of this?"
"I've seen it marinating in the fridge with my own eyes," Colby replied. "Besides this is the last of the heavy stuff."
"And why isn't Charlie here helping?" David grunted out as they headed up the steps of the craftsmen.
"Charlie. Multiple people moving. Think about it."
He suddenly had a flash of, equations, diagrams, and flow charts. "Got it."
They set the couch down for a second on the landing. "Besides, Charlie is still a little weirded out at the thought of moving into his parent's bedroom. I figured the best thing I could do would be to move around the furniture and get both our stuff in there while he's out of town."
"Yeah, I sneaked a girl into my parents room a couple of times but I don't think I could actually live in it, at least without completely redoing it. It would just be weird."
"Exactly."
David lifted his end of the couch again and he and Colby carefully shifted it into Charlie's old room. There were still boxes of stuff but a space had been cleared.
"Help me move a couple of these boxes into the other room?" Colby asked picking up a box that was labeled 'non-math books'. David chuckled and picked up a box labeled 'Stuff'.
In the other bedroom Alan was still packing up a couple of boxes. "I'll be out of your way in just a minute, boys."
Colby put down his box. "No rush."
David picked up a framed photo sitting on top of one of the boxes. A very attractive, dark haired young woman with strong eyes looked out at him.
"That was taken when Margaret passed the Bar," Alan supplied "We'd been married all of three months. She spent more time on our honeymoon studying than doing anything else."
"Well you married a very attractive woman, Mr. Eppes."
"You have no idea. I proposed to her on our first date. I took her on a picnic since I was broke but I miscalculated the Stana Ana Winds. She stood up and let her hair down and it whipped around her and she looked like a goddess and I asked her to marry me."
"What did she say?" David asked.
"Nothing. A fire plane flew overhead and she couldn't hear me." David chuckled. "It took me a year to get up the guts to ask again."
"Well you did very well in the end." David put the photo back.
Alan grinned. "You want to see well?" Alan reached into a box, pulled out an old style photo album, and handed it to David. "Second anniversary gift."
David opened it and found a collection of black and white, very artistic, very tasteful, and very nude photos. It took a second for them to process as his boss's dearly beloved and deceased mother. David closed his eyes while at the same time admitting to himself that in her day Margaret Eppes had been seriously hot. He handed the album back and Alan flipped through it.
"Should I ask what you got her for that anniversary?"
"A blender," Alan replied.
David cringed. "Well I'm sure it was the thought that counted."
"I thought she might want to blend something one day. It was state of the art to, five speeds."
David was trying not to think of the pictures. "I'm sure she appreciated it."
"She got a diamond for her birthday two months later." David laughed. "Though in defense of that blender that thing lasted fifteen years before one of Charlie's experiments blew the motor on it."
~
Don carefully put down a cracked leather armchair in the corner of the room.
Kathryn put down a box. "Thank you for helping with this."
Don gave a smile. "No problem."
"Normally Ian helps me move but he's actually taking a couple of days off with friends and I want him to relax instead of fussing over me for once."
"He does know you're moving, right?" Don asked.
Kathryn gave a little wave. "I'll tell him in a few days." Don looked at the chair he'd just put down. "Hideous thing, I know, but I've had it for ages. I nursed Ian in that thing, I can't exactly give it up now."
Don gave a little chuckle. "It's fine. Really. In case you haven't seen the garage Eppes' are kinda bad at getting rid of things."
Kathryn ran her hand across the back of the chair. "I'm sorry Don, I guess I haven't asked, are you and Charlie okay with this. I mean me moving in with your father and all?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
"Really?" Kathryn asked again not quite sounding like she believed it.
Don nodded. "Yeah. I mean I know one of the things mom wanted was for Dad to get out of the house, meet new people, get on with his life. She didn't want him to just...wither away without her. That was one of the reasons I didn't go back to Albuquerque. I mean I had to keep Charlie going for a few months but, yeah, I wanted to make sure dad kept going too. And for what it's worth I think mom would have liked you."
Kathryn smiled, a tension seemed to lift from the room. "Thank you Don, that actually means a lot."
"Plus, hey, I've now got dirt on the scariest dude in the FBI. That's worth plenty."
~
David picked up some blueprints that had been spread across the dinning room table. "Alan, do you want these boxed up?" he asked.
"No, no, no." Alan quickly rushed over. "I can't afford to lose those. Just leave them and I'll take them over myself with the last load."
David flipped some of them around. He'd never been good with blueprints but it looked like some sort of hotel or something. "What are you building, Alan?" he asked. It looked a little grand for Alan's part time planning firm.
"Right now, nothing. It's a proposal to the city. They're looking at proposals for new blocks of subsidized housing."
David gave Alan a serious look. "You want to build projects?"
"Well, no, that's the thing. I've built projects, back in the 70's and 80's. I knew they were crap, I knew they were being built substandard, with the contractors getting kickbacks, I knew that if you let kids grow up in buildings that looked like prisons they were just going to end up in prison and I was told that if I wanted to pay my mortgage and send my kids to good schools that I'd sit down and shut up about it and I sat down and I shut up and I've never been happy about that fact. I was told to sign off on some of the biggest, ugliest dumps in this city. This," Alan rolled out a large artists concept "is not just some project."
"Wow," was David's simple response to the drawing.
"Room for 100 families of four and 50 more places for families up to eight. Each unit has open plan living space, full height windows situated north east. Cooler in the summer but shouldn't need heat in the winter, rooftop garden to treat grey water for surrounding landscaping, lots of grass and trees, onsite child care and youth center, underground parking. Top of the line security, but subtle like a good apartment building instead of a prison..."
"And lots of wood." David interjected as he looked though the drawings.
"Yeah, well, there's this firm in Denmark that can make formed plywood as big as you want in any shape that you want. Bigger than any tree, you can hold up a whole building with their stuff. All from farmed forests, carbon neutral. Bolts onto steel beautifully, holds up in an earthquake, good looking."
"Alan, you're building a project."
"Why should subsidized housing have to mean architecturally unappealing or unnatural? Why should functional have to be unattractive?"
David ran his hand over the main drawing. A building for 150 families with secondary support beams visual and made of wood. David turned his head and squinted.
"You want to build a craftsmen. A craftsmen for 500 people."
Alan rolled up his blueprints. "Well what's wrong with that?"
"Not a thing. Hey, I love this house, but do you really think the city is going to give you the money?"
Alan gave a long sigh. "Sadly no. Every other firm in the city is going to be presenting the usual steel and cinder-block monstrosities and even with kick backs they'll claim they can do it for a half million less than us. Our best hope is a statement from a UCLA sociology professor explaining the connection between the health of living environments and future crime rates and a couple of guys from CalSci talking about greater environmental impact. It's basically all a giant Hail Mary play hoping the city council will vote ethically instead of with their wallets."
David snorted. "Yeah, good luck with that."
Alan shrugged. "I've got to try, David. I don't know how many how many times I've turned on the news and there's been a story about a triple murder or a drive by or drug bust and in the background is some nightmare I oversaw the building of. I can't help feel somehow culpable for all of it and at my age I don't have a lot of time to try to make up for it."
"You were doing you job, Alan."
"You really think I'm going to use that as a defense?" Alan asked dryly.
David cringed. "No, but if you want a statement from someone in law enforcement I'll step up for you."
"I will keep that in mind."
~
Charlie's face hurt. If he had to smile for one more minute he was going to scream. He knew once upon a time he enjoyed this but now it seemed oddly fake. He knew these people were his peers. He respected them, respected their work, just as he had the respect of most of them.
He grabbed a nibble from a passing tray. At least he could get away with not smiling while he chewed. What he really wanted to do was get drunk. Completely shit faced drunk. Or better yet get high. He hadn't touched coke since his mother and Larry had dragged him kicking and screaming out of a private firm that made luxury racing yachts, and he knew Colby would absolutely kill him if he went back now, but still, there was a serious craving. The sad thing was, he realized, that a conference of applied mathematicians was probably the only conference on Earth where he wouldn't be able to score a hit if he really wanted one.
And to make matters worse Penfield had bailed at the last moment. He had, at the very least, been looking forward to goading his old nemesis into a fight. He'd even put a benign error his new expression just to see if Penfield would catch it.
Charlie checked his phone again hoping someone, somewhere needed him. His phone was annoyingly silent. All the problems on Earth at the moment and no one wanted his help in solving one of them. Colby had sent him a text earlier telling him the move had gone well but that was it.
He looked over to the bar. There was a kid sitting there looking like he was trying to get up the guts to talk to him. He'd been trying to get up the guts for the last thirty minutes. Charlie just hoped the kid wanted to network or maybe get an autograph. Thanks to some incredibly weird rumors about his sex life going around the mathematics world he had already turned down three propositions, and if Colby wasn't waiting at home he would have been in some random hotel room with his pants off by the first one.
The kid chugged down his drink and approached. "Excuse me?" The kid had a quiver in his voice. "Are you Dr. Eppes?"
Charlie though about saying no. "Yes I am."
The kid held out his hand. "Hi, I'm Ricky Spender, sorry," the kid stumbled. "Doctor Richard Spender."
Charlie took his hand. "Nice to meet you Dr. Spender."
"I just wanted to say I'm a big fan of your work."
Charlie made sure his smile was properly frozen in place. "Well thank you very much."
"I mean so much of it is just ground breaking." The kid hadn't let go of Charlie's hand and his palms were sweaty.
"Well I do try."
"I mean, even some of your basic stuff, like for hot zones in urban environments."
Charlie's attention picked up a bit. "That was harder to put together than you'd think."
"Oh, I'm sure. I mean I had the worst time trying to explain it to my cousin. And the only reason he even let me try to use it wast that our grandmother guilted him into it."
"What kind of case?" Charlie asked still trying to extract his hand from Dr. Spender who seemed to have the eagerness of a puppy.
"Home invasions, in Philadelphia. I mean I don't think I got it quite right on but it still narrowed the suspect list by like 83.3%"
Charlie felt his smile unfreeze into a proper grin. "Did you consider looking at patterns in the timing of the robberies?"
Dr. Spender's eyes got wide. "No. No I didn't. God, how could I have missed that?"
Charlie extracted his hand at long last. "Let me buy you a drink kid and I'll tell you some war stories so you can really impress your cousin next time around."
~
Don stepped into the loft and took a deep breath. It smelled a little of paint. It was a smell Don was starting to associate with home. What it didn't smell like was work dust. The great renovation was finally over and the place was starting to air out. Gone was the giant drafty brick box. In its place was a split level three bed, two bath, condo with open plan living space. The second level was Anne's studio and a little office for Don where he could hide his crime scene photos once Mattie got old enough to get into things.
Don had to admit on some level he missed the box with its cold echo and fourth hand furniture but that was no place to raise a child in. Some would argue that even a nicely renovated warehouse was no place to raise a child, but it was closer to the office than his old apartment or Charlie's place and it would be impossible to find a place big enough in the suburbs for Anne to work.
He climbed the stairs and poked his head into the studio. Now most men upon finding their wife with a couple of mostly naked, muscular guys, wrapped only in sheets would be upset or at least intensely curious. For Don it just meant his wife was working.
He tiptoed over to the playpen and lifted Mattie out then gave Anne a kiss on the back of her head.
"Hey there," she said, not turning around from her canvass but with a smile in her voice.
"Hello, Agent Eppes," Anne's models greeted in singsong voices with much fluttering of eye lashes and coy little finger waves.
Don rolled his eyes but couldn't help smiling. "Hello Mickey, hello Bob." Mickey and Bob were two of Anne's regular models, and the first time he had met them the two had flirted so outrageously with Don he actually blushed and had to flee to preserve his reputation.
"How'd the Chinese Fire Drill go?" Anne asked.
"Not bad. Got Colby and Kathryn moved out. Now it's just a matter Dad and Charlie fighting over little things once Charlie gets back."
"Oh good. Put Mattie on his stomach," Anne directed. "We've got a new trick."
Don peered at his son. "Okay." Don put Mattie on his stomach in the playpen. After a minute Mattie pushed himself up with his arms, then, slowly, with extreme concentration got his knees under him as well. Don grinned. "Hey, look at that." Mattie started rocking back and fourth like he was winding up for something. Don's smile got bigger. Mattie's gross motor coordination was still a little behind the curve, luckily, and somewhat surprisingly, his mental development seemed to be on track. He was sitting up on his own, reaching for things, babbling, trying to feed himself a bit, and was already working on the self-righting sippy cup.
Don plucked one of the said sippy cups out of the playpen. He had been a little suspicious of the things at first but after the last time he spilled coffee on a clean shirt he decided that thermal proof, self-righting, sippy cups for adults could possibly make him a fortune, if he could figure out how to market them.
Don picked Mattie back up.
"I'll go put dinner on?" he asked.
"Sure, I should be about half an hour."
"Okay. Come on," Don said to Mattie. "You can help me with dinner."
Don left Anne to her work, headed down stairs and plopped Mattie in his highchair.
"Dinner, dinner, dinner, what shall we make mommy for dinner?"
Mattie shrieked and babbled. "Yeah, I think that chicken's been in the fridge a little too long."
He rummaged through the fridge. Mattie banged the sippy cup on his tray.
"Tacos? I think we have stuff for tacos."
Don was frying up taco meat as Mickey and Bob came downstairs, fully dressed, and waved goodbye with flirtatious little winks.
A little while later Anne came down and joined Don in the kitchen. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"So," Anne started with an odd forced chipperness. "I got a letter today."
"Yeah?"
"I'm cleared for surgery if I want. Just have to call and make an appointment on Monday."
Don quickly shifted dinner off the heat and turned to Anne. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"Do you want to?" he asked. They'd been going back and forth.
Anne took a deep breath. "I... don't ever want to spend another day of my life in a NICU ward. And I know we haven't made any decisions about trying for another kid and I know we agreed to get the first one up walking and talking first but if we do decide to go through it all again I think I'd rather go through waddling and peeing every five minutes then sitting next to a plastic box for two months, and that means getting surgery now."
Don carefully wrapped his arms around Anne and held her close.
"It's your decision," he said carefully. "I can live with Mattie being an only child. We are so lucky to have him to begin with I don't need to push that luck."
"But you'd like another one?"
He shrugged. "Sure, but I'm a guy, lots of kids is a sort of lower brainstem primal thing. In the end my half is just a bit of grunting and sweating. You've got the hard part." Anne chuckled softly against Don's chest. "It's up to you hun and I'll stand by whatever decision you make."
Anne nodded. "I'll make the appointment on Monday."
He kissed her softly on the forehead. "Okay, I'll request a couple of days off and I'm sure Dad'll watch Mattie."
"Okay."
Don gave Anne a long hug. "I love you."
"Love you, too."
Next
Author: ladygray99
Rating: NC17
Chapter 1/17
Series: Whitman
Characters/Pairings:Charlie/Colby, Don/OFC, Alan/OFC, Ian/OMC/OFC, Megan/Larry, Tarry Lake, David Sinclair, Matt Li.
Word count: 5,011 (62,941 total)
Warnings/Spoilers: Threeways, spankings, shaving, sexual discipline, gross descriptions of crime scenes, masturbation, medical stuff related to pregnancy and childbirth, original characters.
Summary: Life progresses, life happens, life perseveres, and life is better with someone by your side.
Notes: PLEASE READ BEFORE BEGINNING - Back in 2008 I finished A Woman Waits for Me, the fourth in the Whitman Series. And I promised part 5 would come. I started writing. I got to about 60,000 words and still had lots of ideas so I decided to outline everything else I wanted in the story. It hit five pages. Five pages. I panicked. A Woman Waits for Me was 119,209 words. This was going to be longer. I saw years of my life and hundreds of thousands of words in front of me. I decided to take a deep breath and just put it aside for a couple of months.
Then I got a new job. I ended up writing Who We Are which was 130k. I wrote an original novel which went longer than I should. Then I wrote another original novel which I'm now trying to sell. I got pregnant which ate my brain. Then I had a baby, bought a house, and every time I opened the file for this I looked at that five pages of outline and panicked.
Then I saw a little post under the numb3rs tag on tumblr, it was from no one I knew, not directed at me, and didn't even mention the name of the story but it was obvious that it was about Whitman and they were sad it was never updated. I guess that was a last straw or something. Back when I was outlining I broke up the story into 4 acts, places where major arcs ended. I should have probably made it 4 different stories. I realized I had act 1 finished and it was pretty solid. So this is it, Act 1 of Whitman 5 for people to read. But here's the thing, I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN ACTS 2, 3, AND 4 MIGHT HAPPEN. So before you decide if you want to read this you might want to keep that fact in mind.
And I would love feedback.
Beta: None, feel free to point out typos of which there are many I am sure.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And night at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades.
-216. On the Beach at Night, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman.
Chapter 1
Don had figured that having a wife and kid, and his dad having a girlfriend would mean he'd be mooching fewer meals off his father. Instead his dad just started putting a couple of extra plates at the table; one for Anne and one for Kathryn, plus a highchair for Mattie.
Don was working his way through a second helping of meatloaf as he looked around the table. Things felt a little off. His dad and Kathryn seemed oddly quiet, as did Charlie and Colby.
Colby had been a little quiet in general since his family had put in an uninvited and unwelcome appearance a few weeks earlier. When Don had gotten the details off his father he tried to talk Colby into pressing charges, but Colby had refused and insisted it wouldn't happen again. Not that it was easy to talk to Colby alone the past few weeks. Charlie had been mother henning him non stop.
Suddenly Alan let out a large sigh and put down his fork.
"Charlie, I have something I need to tell you."
"Yeah, Dad. So do I." There was a moment of silence. "You go first."
Alan took a breath. "I'm moving out, I bought a condo." Charlie face froze. "Not far, just that new little development around the corner. It's five minutes away. It's just this set up is ridiculous. Colby is still paying rent on that little apartment when you have this house and Kathryn and I really should have our own space and it's just past time we started living like adults in our own relationships and stopped traumatizing each other."
Don looked at Charlie whose face was unreadable. Colby, on the other hand, had that blank face that meant he was trying not to crack up. "Well Charlie, say something."
Charlie blinked a few times. "Dad," Charlie started slowly. "I have something I need to tell you. I'm moving out. I bought a condo." Colby cracked up and Don followed with the rest of the table. Alan's jaw dropped. "Not that far. Just that new development around the corner. It's just this set up is stupid and Colby and I need our own space where you and I won't traumatize each other and you have Kathryn now so I'm not worried about you living alone and...yeah."
Alan turned to Don and Colby. "Did you two know about this?"
Don raised his hands. "No, I swear."
"Well we can't both move out." Alan stated firmly.
"Mine's already gone through escrow."
"Mine to."
"Look, Dad. You've lived here most of your life..."
"It's your house Charlie. You bought it."
"Yes but it's your home."
"Okay, Okay, let's make this easy." Don quickly pulled a quarter out of his pocket. "Heads dad moves, tails Charlie moves." Don flipped it. "Heads." Charlie put his face in his hands.
"Great, what am I supposed to do with the condo?"
"Plenty of money to be made in the high end rental market. Just find a property management company to handle the details for you."
Charlie looked over at Colby.
"Told you, you should have talked to your dad," he said.
~
Martin pulled his shirt over his shoulders trying to minimize the wrinkles.
"I trust everything is satisfactory?" Martin asked as his doctor made notes in Martin's file.
"No, everything is not satisfactory," Doctor McNab snapped. "You are too thin."
"I am within the acceptable weight range for my height and position." Martin replied coolly as he began to button his shirt.
"You are one pound within range. You have been exactly one pound in range since your first training physical. That's not normal."
"But it is within the bounds of official guide lines." Martin repeated. He'd been having this argument with Dr. McNab every year for years.
Dr. McNab grinned. "But not next year." Martin looped his black tie around his neck as if his doctor had said nothing. "Next year the NSA is changing its standard to Body Mass Index. Next year I will stick you in a full sized dunk tank if I need to, to prove you are too thin. What's more I am going to get you diagnosed anorexic."
That was a new tactic on Dr. McNab's part, Martin thought as he adjusted his tie. "If I were anorexic I would be far thinner than this."
"It's not about being thin, it's about being in control. You want to be in perfect control of your body and god knows how but you are. You're smart. You're like a nail biter who doesn't bite their nails to the quick and doesn't do it in public so no one knows. You, Agent Sherwood, keep yourself at just the point where no one can call you on it but I'm calling you on it and next year if I don't see ten more pounds on you I'm strapping you to a bed and shoving a feeding tube up your nose!"
Martin shrugged on his jacket. "Will that be all Dr. McNab?"
Martin watched as his doctor pointed to the door with a roll of his eyes. "Get out of my office and go eat something."
"As always, it was a pleasure." Martin gave a slight smirk and headed out the door.
~
Colby looked around his apartment. It looked bizarrely large, devoid of all furniture. He had known this day would come but it was still odd.
They were calling it the great Chinese fire drill. Kathryn was moving out of her tiny place and into Alan's new condo. Alan was moving his bed and personal belongings out of the master bedroom to his new place. Charlie's bed and things were getting moved into the master bedroom. Colby's bed was getting donated since it was second hand to begin with. Colby's couch and sound system were moving into Charlie's old room to make a sort of study/math free zone for Colby to hide out in, and it was all happening in one weekend while Charlie was out of town.
Colby ran his fingers across a tiny dent in the drywall the landlord had missed. Charlie had put it there with his fist a moment after Colby offered to release him from their Arrangement. Colby closed his eyes and breathed. He didn't consider himself the nostalgic type but the room, the whole apartment had more memories of him and Charlie than he could count. Many good and more than a few, hellish.
He wandered through the other rooms looking for anything missed. He paused at the bathroom and smiled to himself. The night before he'd committed a small act of graffiti. There was a tile by the sink that was always loose. He'd pulled it off and written his and Charlie's name on the back like a stupid teenaged girl or something. But a great romance had, in an odd way, started in that bathroom and Colby had felt a need to mark it.
Colby took one last look and headed out the front door.
In the hall his neighbor, Sara was waiting.
"Good morning, Sara." He carefully signed.
Sara and her husband Eric where both deaf and over the years had taught Colby a smattering of sign language, including useful phrases such as 'You're under arrest' and 'Sorry, I'm gay and taken.'
"Morning." Sara spoke carefully. "You're leaving us."
"Yes. Sorry." Colby signed.
"We'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too."
"We'll miss you and Charlie. You two were very inspirational some nights."
Colby froze, a combination of confusion and fear suddenly creeping up.
Sara grinned. "Vibrations through the walls."
He closed his eyes. He was pretty sure he'd never blushed as hard as he was at that moment. All these years he thought he and Charlie were getting away with screaming the place down since his neighbors couldn't hear.
"You're welcome." Colby signed.
"Don't be a stranger." Sara signed before heading back to her own apartment.
~
Megan sighed in extreme contentment. She was very close to purring if she could. Larry's thumbs were doing amazing things to her arches. Tension she didn't even know was there was melting away. And it wasn't just Larry's hands. The smell of white roses filled the room and the taste of high grade chocolate was still on her lips.
"Not that I'm complaining, or asking you to stop in any way, shape, or form but what's brought this on?" Megan asked.
"I thought it an appropriate way to celebrate the day." Larry stated from his place at her feet.
"Saturday?"
"Well, yes, that is a reason to celebrate, but I was thinking of a greater milestone than simply the ending of a week."
Megan wracked her brain then something popped up. "Oh, wow. That had slipped my mind somehow."
"I'm sure it would have come back to you."
Megan nodded. It would have because it was three months. She was now officially past her first trimester. A little knot of worry twisted around her stomach. She had spent the last six weeks sort of pretending it wasn't happening as best as she could. After seeing what Anne and Don had been through, and all the warnings the doctors had given her, she had decided to not get too emotionally attached to the idea of a child until the pregnancy was further along. Larry was right. Getting past the first trimester was a big milestone.
"This is going to happen, isn't it?" she asked Larry.
"Well nothing in the universe is a certainty including the existence of the universe itself however the possibility of a child possessing our combined genetic code is certainly a little closer to happening, yes."
Megan smiled. She knew with a rambling answer like that Larry was just a nervous as she was, but she could also see the light shining in his eyes at the very thought and knew that he was going to be with her though this no mater what.
~
David lifted the end of Colby's couch with a bit of a grunt. "Now I am getting rib eye out of this?"
"I've seen it marinating in the fridge with my own eyes," Colby replied. "Besides this is the last of the heavy stuff."
"And why isn't Charlie here helping?" David grunted out as they headed up the steps of the craftsmen.
"Charlie. Multiple people moving. Think about it."
He suddenly had a flash of, equations, diagrams, and flow charts. "Got it."
They set the couch down for a second on the landing. "Besides, Charlie is still a little weirded out at the thought of moving into his parent's bedroom. I figured the best thing I could do would be to move around the furniture and get both our stuff in there while he's out of town."
"Yeah, I sneaked a girl into my parents room a couple of times but I don't think I could actually live in it, at least without completely redoing it. It would just be weird."
"Exactly."
David lifted his end of the couch again and he and Colby carefully shifted it into Charlie's old room. There were still boxes of stuff but a space had been cleared.
"Help me move a couple of these boxes into the other room?" Colby asked picking up a box that was labeled 'non-math books'. David chuckled and picked up a box labeled 'Stuff'.
In the other bedroom Alan was still packing up a couple of boxes. "I'll be out of your way in just a minute, boys."
Colby put down his box. "No rush."
David picked up a framed photo sitting on top of one of the boxes. A very attractive, dark haired young woman with strong eyes looked out at him.
"That was taken when Margaret passed the Bar," Alan supplied "We'd been married all of three months. She spent more time on our honeymoon studying than doing anything else."
"Well you married a very attractive woman, Mr. Eppes."
"You have no idea. I proposed to her on our first date. I took her on a picnic since I was broke but I miscalculated the Stana Ana Winds. She stood up and let her hair down and it whipped around her and she looked like a goddess and I asked her to marry me."
"What did she say?" David asked.
"Nothing. A fire plane flew overhead and she couldn't hear me." David chuckled. "It took me a year to get up the guts to ask again."
"Well you did very well in the end." David put the photo back.
Alan grinned. "You want to see well?" Alan reached into a box, pulled out an old style photo album, and handed it to David. "Second anniversary gift."
David opened it and found a collection of black and white, very artistic, very tasteful, and very nude photos. It took a second for them to process as his boss's dearly beloved and deceased mother. David closed his eyes while at the same time admitting to himself that in her day Margaret Eppes had been seriously hot. He handed the album back and Alan flipped through it.
"Should I ask what you got her for that anniversary?"
"A blender," Alan replied.
David cringed. "Well I'm sure it was the thought that counted."
"I thought she might want to blend something one day. It was state of the art to, five speeds."
David was trying not to think of the pictures. "I'm sure she appreciated it."
"She got a diamond for her birthday two months later." David laughed. "Though in defense of that blender that thing lasted fifteen years before one of Charlie's experiments blew the motor on it."
~
Don carefully put down a cracked leather armchair in the corner of the room.
Kathryn put down a box. "Thank you for helping with this."
Don gave a smile. "No problem."
"Normally Ian helps me move but he's actually taking a couple of days off with friends and I want him to relax instead of fussing over me for once."
"He does know you're moving, right?" Don asked.
Kathryn gave a little wave. "I'll tell him in a few days." Don looked at the chair he'd just put down. "Hideous thing, I know, but I've had it for ages. I nursed Ian in that thing, I can't exactly give it up now."
Don gave a little chuckle. "It's fine. Really. In case you haven't seen the garage Eppes' are kinda bad at getting rid of things."
Kathryn ran her hand across the back of the chair. "I'm sorry Don, I guess I haven't asked, are you and Charlie okay with this. I mean me moving in with your father and all?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
"Really?" Kathryn asked again not quite sounding like she believed it.
Don nodded. "Yeah. I mean I know one of the things mom wanted was for Dad to get out of the house, meet new people, get on with his life. She didn't want him to just...wither away without her. That was one of the reasons I didn't go back to Albuquerque. I mean I had to keep Charlie going for a few months but, yeah, I wanted to make sure dad kept going too. And for what it's worth I think mom would have liked you."
Kathryn smiled, a tension seemed to lift from the room. "Thank you Don, that actually means a lot."
"Plus, hey, I've now got dirt on the scariest dude in the FBI. That's worth plenty."
~
David picked up some blueprints that had been spread across the dinning room table. "Alan, do you want these boxed up?" he asked.
"No, no, no." Alan quickly rushed over. "I can't afford to lose those. Just leave them and I'll take them over myself with the last load."
David flipped some of them around. He'd never been good with blueprints but it looked like some sort of hotel or something. "What are you building, Alan?" he asked. It looked a little grand for Alan's part time planning firm.
"Right now, nothing. It's a proposal to the city. They're looking at proposals for new blocks of subsidized housing."
David gave Alan a serious look. "You want to build projects?"
"Well, no, that's the thing. I've built projects, back in the 70's and 80's. I knew they were crap, I knew they were being built substandard, with the contractors getting kickbacks, I knew that if you let kids grow up in buildings that looked like prisons they were just going to end up in prison and I was told that if I wanted to pay my mortgage and send my kids to good schools that I'd sit down and shut up about it and I sat down and I shut up and I've never been happy about that fact. I was told to sign off on some of the biggest, ugliest dumps in this city. This," Alan rolled out a large artists concept "is not just some project."
"Wow," was David's simple response to the drawing.
"Room for 100 families of four and 50 more places for families up to eight. Each unit has open plan living space, full height windows situated north east. Cooler in the summer but shouldn't need heat in the winter, rooftop garden to treat grey water for surrounding landscaping, lots of grass and trees, onsite child care and youth center, underground parking. Top of the line security, but subtle like a good apartment building instead of a prison..."
"And lots of wood." David interjected as he looked though the drawings.
"Yeah, well, there's this firm in Denmark that can make formed plywood as big as you want in any shape that you want. Bigger than any tree, you can hold up a whole building with their stuff. All from farmed forests, carbon neutral. Bolts onto steel beautifully, holds up in an earthquake, good looking."
"Alan, you're building a project."
"Why should subsidized housing have to mean architecturally unappealing or unnatural? Why should functional have to be unattractive?"
David ran his hand over the main drawing. A building for 150 families with secondary support beams visual and made of wood. David turned his head and squinted.
"You want to build a craftsmen. A craftsmen for 500 people."
Alan rolled up his blueprints. "Well what's wrong with that?"
"Not a thing. Hey, I love this house, but do you really think the city is going to give you the money?"
Alan gave a long sigh. "Sadly no. Every other firm in the city is going to be presenting the usual steel and cinder-block monstrosities and even with kick backs they'll claim they can do it for a half million less than us. Our best hope is a statement from a UCLA sociology professor explaining the connection between the health of living environments and future crime rates and a couple of guys from CalSci talking about greater environmental impact. It's basically all a giant Hail Mary play hoping the city council will vote ethically instead of with their wallets."
David snorted. "Yeah, good luck with that."
Alan shrugged. "I've got to try, David. I don't know how many how many times I've turned on the news and there's been a story about a triple murder or a drive by or drug bust and in the background is some nightmare I oversaw the building of. I can't help feel somehow culpable for all of it and at my age I don't have a lot of time to try to make up for it."
"You were doing you job, Alan."
"You really think I'm going to use that as a defense?" Alan asked dryly.
David cringed. "No, but if you want a statement from someone in law enforcement I'll step up for you."
"I will keep that in mind."
~
Charlie's face hurt. If he had to smile for one more minute he was going to scream. He knew once upon a time he enjoyed this but now it seemed oddly fake. He knew these people were his peers. He respected them, respected their work, just as he had the respect of most of them.
He grabbed a nibble from a passing tray. At least he could get away with not smiling while he chewed. What he really wanted to do was get drunk. Completely shit faced drunk. Or better yet get high. He hadn't touched coke since his mother and Larry had dragged him kicking and screaming out of a private firm that made luxury racing yachts, and he knew Colby would absolutely kill him if he went back now, but still, there was a serious craving. The sad thing was, he realized, that a conference of applied mathematicians was probably the only conference on Earth where he wouldn't be able to score a hit if he really wanted one.
And to make matters worse Penfield had bailed at the last moment. He had, at the very least, been looking forward to goading his old nemesis into a fight. He'd even put a benign error his new expression just to see if Penfield would catch it.
Charlie checked his phone again hoping someone, somewhere needed him. His phone was annoyingly silent. All the problems on Earth at the moment and no one wanted his help in solving one of them. Colby had sent him a text earlier telling him the move had gone well but that was it.
He looked over to the bar. There was a kid sitting there looking like he was trying to get up the guts to talk to him. He'd been trying to get up the guts for the last thirty minutes. Charlie just hoped the kid wanted to network or maybe get an autograph. Thanks to some incredibly weird rumors about his sex life going around the mathematics world he had already turned down three propositions, and if Colby wasn't waiting at home he would have been in some random hotel room with his pants off by the first one.
The kid chugged down his drink and approached. "Excuse me?" The kid had a quiver in his voice. "Are you Dr. Eppes?"
Charlie though about saying no. "Yes I am."
The kid held out his hand. "Hi, I'm Ricky Spender, sorry," the kid stumbled. "Doctor Richard Spender."
Charlie took his hand. "Nice to meet you Dr. Spender."
"I just wanted to say I'm a big fan of your work."
Charlie made sure his smile was properly frozen in place. "Well thank you very much."
"I mean so much of it is just ground breaking." The kid hadn't let go of Charlie's hand and his palms were sweaty.
"Well I do try."
"I mean, even some of your basic stuff, like for hot zones in urban environments."
Charlie's attention picked up a bit. "That was harder to put together than you'd think."
"Oh, I'm sure. I mean I had the worst time trying to explain it to my cousin. And the only reason he even let me try to use it wast that our grandmother guilted him into it."
"What kind of case?" Charlie asked still trying to extract his hand from Dr. Spender who seemed to have the eagerness of a puppy.
"Home invasions, in Philadelphia. I mean I don't think I got it quite right on but it still narrowed the suspect list by like 83.3%"
Charlie felt his smile unfreeze into a proper grin. "Did you consider looking at patterns in the timing of the robberies?"
Dr. Spender's eyes got wide. "No. No I didn't. God, how could I have missed that?"
Charlie extracted his hand at long last. "Let me buy you a drink kid and I'll tell you some war stories so you can really impress your cousin next time around."
~
Don stepped into the loft and took a deep breath. It smelled a little of paint. It was a smell Don was starting to associate with home. What it didn't smell like was work dust. The great renovation was finally over and the place was starting to air out. Gone was the giant drafty brick box. In its place was a split level three bed, two bath, condo with open plan living space. The second level was Anne's studio and a little office for Don where he could hide his crime scene photos once Mattie got old enough to get into things.
Don had to admit on some level he missed the box with its cold echo and fourth hand furniture but that was no place to raise a child in. Some would argue that even a nicely renovated warehouse was no place to raise a child, but it was closer to the office than his old apartment or Charlie's place and it would be impossible to find a place big enough in the suburbs for Anne to work.
He climbed the stairs and poked his head into the studio. Now most men upon finding their wife with a couple of mostly naked, muscular guys, wrapped only in sheets would be upset or at least intensely curious. For Don it just meant his wife was working.
He tiptoed over to the playpen and lifted Mattie out then gave Anne a kiss on the back of her head.
"Hey there," she said, not turning around from her canvass but with a smile in her voice.
"Hello, Agent Eppes," Anne's models greeted in singsong voices with much fluttering of eye lashes and coy little finger waves.
Don rolled his eyes but couldn't help smiling. "Hello Mickey, hello Bob." Mickey and Bob were two of Anne's regular models, and the first time he had met them the two had flirted so outrageously with Don he actually blushed and had to flee to preserve his reputation.
"How'd the Chinese Fire Drill go?" Anne asked.
"Not bad. Got Colby and Kathryn moved out. Now it's just a matter Dad and Charlie fighting over little things once Charlie gets back."
"Oh good. Put Mattie on his stomach," Anne directed. "We've got a new trick."
Don peered at his son. "Okay." Don put Mattie on his stomach in the playpen. After a minute Mattie pushed himself up with his arms, then, slowly, with extreme concentration got his knees under him as well. Don grinned. "Hey, look at that." Mattie started rocking back and fourth like he was winding up for something. Don's smile got bigger. Mattie's gross motor coordination was still a little behind the curve, luckily, and somewhat surprisingly, his mental development seemed to be on track. He was sitting up on his own, reaching for things, babbling, trying to feed himself a bit, and was already working on the self-righting sippy cup.
Don plucked one of the said sippy cups out of the playpen. He had been a little suspicious of the things at first but after the last time he spilled coffee on a clean shirt he decided that thermal proof, self-righting, sippy cups for adults could possibly make him a fortune, if he could figure out how to market them.
Don picked Mattie back up.
"I'll go put dinner on?" he asked.
"Sure, I should be about half an hour."
"Okay. Come on," Don said to Mattie. "You can help me with dinner."
Don left Anne to her work, headed down stairs and plopped Mattie in his highchair.
"Dinner, dinner, dinner, what shall we make mommy for dinner?"
Mattie shrieked and babbled. "Yeah, I think that chicken's been in the fridge a little too long."
He rummaged through the fridge. Mattie banged the sippy cup on his tray.
"Tacos? I think we have stuff for tacos."
Don was frying up taco meat as Mickey and Bob came downstairs, fully dressed, and waved goodbye with flirtatious little winks.
A little while later Anne came down and joined Don in the kitchen. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"So," Anne started with an odd forced chipperness. "I got a letter today."
"Yeah?"
"I'm cleared for surgery if I want. Just have to call and make an appointment on Monday."
Don quickly shifted dinner off the heat and turned to Anne. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"Do you want to?" he asked. They'd been going back and forth.
Anne took a deep breath. "I... don't ever want to spend another day of my life in a NICU ward. And I know we haven't made any decisions about trying for another kid and I know we agreed to get the first one up walking and talking first but if we do decide to go through it all again I think I'd rather go through waddling and peeing every five minutes then sitting next to a plastic box for two months, and that means getting surgery now."
Don carefully wrapped his arms around Anne and held her close.
"It's your decision," he said carefully. "I can live with Mattie being an only child. We are so lucky to have him to begin with I don't need to push that luck."
"But you'd like another one?"
He shrugged. "Sure, but I'm a guy, lots of kids is a sort of lower brainstem primal thing. In the end my half is just a bit of grunting and sweating. You've got the hard part." Anne chuckled softly against Don's chest. "It's up to you hun and I'll stand by whatever decision you make."
Anne nodded. "I'll make the appointment on Monday."
He kissed her softly on the forehead. "Okay, I'll request a couple of days off and I'm sure Dad'll watch Mattie."
"Okay."
Don gave Anne a long hug. "I love you."
"Love you, too."
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