“I was just thinking,” Will said, much later, in the dark. “If we’re going to be together, we probably need more protection.”
“Mmm,” Julie answered sleepily. “I have a six-pack of condoms in my bag. If we go through those and whatever you’ve got left, we can call the concierge.”
He chuckled warmly. “If we go through that many, we’re going to need I.V. Gatorade. Not saying I’m not willing to try. But I was thinking of the bodyguard kind of protection.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I mean, beyond the two guys Uncle Harold has following me around.”
Julie smiled against his chest. “You’re not supposed to know about them.”
“I know.” He ran his hand over her back. “They’re mostly invisible here in the city. In on a reservation in Minnesota, they were pretty obvious.”
“Are you mad?”
Will shook his head. “No. I get it.” He sighed. “My dad and I used to fight about it all the time, but I get it now. I just wonder if they’ve always been there. Even after he said they weren’t.”
“Hmmm.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I don’t know. But if you were my kid, they’d have been there all along.”
“Our kids are going to need serious bodyguards,” he mused.
“Definitely,” Julie answered.
“Oh,” he added thoughtfully, “and you should be warned, Uncle Harold has already threatened to spoil them rotten.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“He said something about puppies. And ponies.”
“Ponies.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he’s serious?”
Will thought about it. “I want to believe that he’s not. But … I’m not entirely sure.”
“Ponies.” She shifted, draped her leg over his under the covers. “I don’t suppose the loft with the pool also has a stable, does it?”
“No. But there’s room to put one in.”
Julie giggled. “Well. We should keep that in mind, I guess.”
He leaned down to kiss her sleepily. “Ponies,” he murmured again.
“And here I thought my mother was going to be the problem.”
***
“Random,” Christine said from the doorway, “come have pie.”
Finch looked up at her, then at the clock. It was past midnight. He had lost more than an hour.
He looked around the table. All of the smaller boxes were unpacked and sorted. The larger boxes were untouched.
He was tired and hungry. And full of joy.
He smiled and followed the young woman back to the main room.
They’d let the cat out of confinement and set up a baby gate across the doorway to let Smokey in and keep Bear, theoretically, out. The gate would not actually stop him, Finch knew, but firm instruction from Mr. Reese probably would. At the moment, the cat and the dog were curled up together in the dog’s bed. “That’s just wrong,” Finch said happily.
Bear wagged his tail.
“Your obsession with that cat is indecent, you know. An absolutely perversion of your canine nature.”
The dog lifted his head and cocked it to one side.
“And she’s supposed to be hunting.”
Smokey stretched indolently. Bear put his head down again. The cat put one gray paw over Bear’s muzzle and closed her eyes.
Reese poured Irish coffee from the Thermos. To the side, Finch noted, a cup of tea was already brewing for him. Christine served the pie; from the scent of the room, she’d warmed it up. They’d gathered three chairs around the end of the desk, pushed the keyboards back. Finch sat down. All of the monitors displayed the same image, logs in a fireplace, burning brightly.
“Festive,” he commented.
“Cheesy,” the woman countered. “We need a real one.”
Reese sat down with his plate. “No reason you couldn’t have a fireplace in that apartment,” he said. “I’d go with a gas burner, though. Way less work.”
“That’d be nice. One in every apartment.”
Finch glanced over at the other table. There was a stack of blueprints there; evidently his companions had started considering floor plans for Christine’s new home. “Ideas?” he asked.
“We thought we’d start with building out the stairways as a separate hallway, and then splitting the top floor into two apartments. Front to back. One for me, and one for you guys to use if you need it.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
She shrugged. “The idea of having a neighbor that close, on the same floor, annoys me. I’d rather leave it ready and empty.”
“We were also thinking,” John continued, “that it might not be a bad idea for you to have a separate set-up there.” He gestured to the computers. “In case this one gets compromised again.”
“You could use my system,” Christine added, “but I know it’s a pain in the ass. We have the room. You might as well have the hardware you want in place.”
Harold nodded slowly. He took a bite of the pie. It was warm, as he’d guessed, and the whipped cream melted just a little on top. It was very good. “And the other floors?”
“Two more apartments on the second floor,” she said. “Rent out the ground floor to some kind of business. Something quiet. But we’ll get to all of that.”
Finch nodded thoughtfully. “What about an elevator?”
“At the front of the stairwell,” Reese said.
“But I’m going to want to pick your brain about wiring,” she said. “I suspect you have better ideas than I do.”
“Perhaps.” Finch finished his pie, except for the crust, and put his fork down. “That was very good.”
“You’re not going to eat that?” Reese said. “It’s the best part.” He snagged the crust off the plate and took a bite.
“I …” Finch gave up; the crust was already gone. “No, I wasn’t, actually.”
Christine stood up. “I have one more thing for you. For your collection, sort of.” She went to her bag and brought him a children’s book.
“Where’s My Cow?” Finch read. It was written by Terry Prachett. The cover was bright green and purple, and prominently feature a cow’s back end. He opened the book gently. It was, indeed, a first edition. And it was signed by the author.
“You’ll like it,” Christine promised. “It has a properly citified view of farm animals. Moo cows say ‘sizzle’ on the plate. You can read it to little Ingrams.”
“Are you anticipating little Ingrams?” he asked, amused. He flipped a few pages of the book.
“Are you not anticipating little Ingrams?” she returned. “Like, by next Christmas?”
Finch considered. “I’m betting on announced but not arrived by next Christmas.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I got this in the mail yesterday,” Christine said. She showed them both a picture, 5 x 7, glossy. Elisa Hammond, in a short red dress, posed in the arms of a young man in a suit and red tie, in front of a Christmas tree backdrop. “From her high school holiday formal.”
“Very nice,” John said. “She’s gained some weight.”
“It suits her,” Finch agreed. “Except that’s not Edward Clay.”
“Nope,” Christine answered with some relish, “it’s not. Told you she’d smarten up.”
“Poor Cash.” And then, “I have brandy,” Finch remembered. “Or something. Something brewed privately by the Carson family.”
“Sounds tasty. And potent. Save it for New Year’s,” Christine advised.
“Will you join us then, too?”
“Oh, hell no. I am not setting my foot outside on Amateur Night. You can come to my place if you dare.”
“I bet Chaos is wild on New Year’s Eve,” Reese said.
“I wouldn’t know. I won’t go down there. I won’t even look.”
“So … Time Square’s out of the question, then?” he teased.
Christine cocked her head at him. “Let’s take a million people, cram them together in the streets, get them drunk and mildly hypothermic, and then blow off artillery shells over their heads. When did that ever sound like fun?”
“They’re decorative artillery shells,” Finch pointed out.
“Until one falls on the crowd. Then I’m betting they’re just not pretty anymore.”
Reese laughed. “What do you do on Fourth of July?”
“Leave the country.”
“No, you don’t.”
“She does, actually,” Finch said. “I hadn’t connected the dots, but you’re always gone in early July, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “’A man has got to know his limitations,’” she quoted. “I never liked fireworks much anyhow. And after …” She stopped.
Harold nodded, and noted that Reese did, too. They didn’t have to hear the words. After the Towers came down, overhead explosions had lost their appeal for a great many people, no matter how decorative they were.
She stood up and got another piece of pie.
“Maybe a fire ladder,” Reese said quietly.
They both looked at him. “Mr. Reese?” Finch said, puzzled.
“Sorry.” Reese straightened up. “Explosions, escape routes. I was just thinking, you could put a ladder in a corner, conceal it in a closet. Straight from the top floor all the way down to the basement.”
“Opposite the stairwell,” Christine said. “Maybe in the front corner? Both front corners, one in each apartment?”
“Between those corner windows.” Reese stood up and walked back to the blueprints. “Here.”
Christine joined him. Finch smiled quietly, stood and cleared the dishes. When he finished, his companions had moved on to discussion of Scooby doors “ swinging bookcases, trap doors and the like. There was quite a lot of laughter involved, possibly fueled by a bit too much Irish coffee. He doubted much of it was serious. But sometimes the silliest ideas spawned genuine improvements.
He paused and watched them for a moment. Christine was sitting down, both hands roaming over the blue prints. Reese was standing, half behind her. He rested one hand on the table, leaned down over her shoulder. His very dark hair, short, precise, just above the soft brown waves of hers. His large hand lightly on her back. And their voices, both soft, his gravely as always, slow and deliberate even now, hers higher, lighter, quicker. Their words fell over each other, tangled, harmonized. And the laughter, one note in two keys.
They looked good together.
They didn’t see each other yet. And that was just as well. They weren’t ready. But Christine’s revolving door of men in uniform had slowed down markedly. And Reese seemed somewhat more inclined to try non-violent means to help their people lately ”although if that approach failed, he was certainly still willing to revert to his more hands-on approach.
Moving Christine out of Chaos was a positive step. He’d keep John well involved in the renovations, Finch decided; that would help, too.
He needed to be terribly careful, Harold knew. Delicate, invisible. If either of them felt his touch, saw his prints, even sensed his wish, they’d balk and there would likely be no restarting them. They were both impossibly stubborn people. It would take time.
But for the moment they were there, together and happy. And happiness could get to be a habit, as surely as loneliness could.
More of these moments, Finch wished fervently. They deserve so many more of these moments.
Maybe I do, too. With Grace, I could …
He shrugged the thought away.
This moment. These people. His partner and his protégé. This deep night, this quiet joyful gathering while the rest of the world was already falling asleep. This was real, here and now, and he was only separate from it because …
Because …
There was no because. These were his friends, his family, and there was nothing in the world that held him separate from them. Not tonight.
Harold smiled to himself and went to join them.
The End
End notes:
Post “Prisoner’s Dilemma”, I feel like I ought to say something about Donnelly. First, I hope he’s not dead. I know that’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Second, I know they finally gave him a canon first name. But since they didn’t do so until the last three minutes of his screen life, I’m not changing mine. If he’s not dead and I get to use him again, I have an explanation for the difference. (And it’s a pretty damn good one!) And finally, most of this story was done before that ep aired, and I decided that the characters deserved one last happy Christmas before he left us.
About Les Miz the movie. If you haven’t seen it, go see it on the big screen. It is a beautiful thing. Lots of sweeping big shots that really need a theater. Expect to cry. A lot. Partially at Russell Crowe’s singing. Seriously, did no one think to check before they cast him? But otherwise, it’s brilliant. I also heard a line afterward that would have made Finch cry. “Wasn’t this based on a book or something?” Sob!
If you’re inclined to help New York after the hurricane, Kevin Chapman has tweeted about statenstrong.org. He’s there; I assume he knows.
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