ILLEGITIMATE

Chapter 2

A Stick in the Spokes

It's ironic; he's lived in Toronto for a little over three years and the first time he sets a foot in the CN Tower is when they get a hot call there. It's kind of like the lifelong New Yorkers who never take the time to visit monuments people travel halfway around the world to see. Just for the memories, bragging rights and a shitty out of focus Polaroid.

They divide into three teams of two. Ed and Wordy are on the opposite side of the lobby while he and Spike clear the gift shop. It is his first visit to the Tower after all. Sarge is in the truck with Jules, who hasn't left the vehicle's double reinforced backdoors since she returned to work a little over a month ago. He thinks she's privately mourning Steve. That the back of the truck has become proxy for a chapel. Or she didn't pass her psych exam. Either way he doesn't want to talk to her about it.

He and Spike tiptoe around the gleaming tiled floors in the gift shop. The type of floor that just loves to echo footsteps and tell the type of crazed maniacs who holdup national landmarks their exact position. He rounds a rack full of Toronto themed t-shirts and remembers the hot call at the Eaton's Center with Jules. Watching her crawl through the vent. Not wanting to leave her, but having to. How the cord yanked her over the side. How he couldn't feel his body for four seconds.

From behind a row of coffee mugs and other ceramics, a guy charges at him. He's big. Bigger than the schizophrenics or manic depressives usually are. Usually they're little, scrawny guys who look like they haven't been fed a solid meal in months. This guy looks like he just broke out of prison. Because he did.

He lands hard on his back and wrestles with the guy, like the black faux marble tiles are those generic blue mats found in high schools across the country. Fist into face. Knee into gut. Extinguishes the air from the guy's lungs. He's just thankful he got this guy instead of Jules. Doesn't think she'd be able to talk her way calmly out of it. Wrangles him down with his arms behind his back. Digs a knee in just so he knows he's not going anywhere.

"Sam?" Spike yells from the stock room.

"Subject contained."

"Jeez, maybe leave some for the res—" Spike stops his banter on his approach. Stops fixing the comm. link in his ear. Stares for maybe a second while he cuffs the guy on the floor and then runs over. "Jesus, Sam."

"What?"

"Your face."

"Yeah, okay." Figures it's another of Spike's farfetched jokes that revolve around plots he doesn't always get.

"No, Buddy. Your face." His voice is a constant stream, hands shaky. "Jules we need EMS."

"What?" Her voice is panicked.

"Sam's face, it's cut deep." Spike runs to the rack of shirts and grabs one to apparently compress on a phantom wound.

He knocks his teammate's hand away. "My face is fine."

"Sam, look at the floor."

"This is SRU requesting EMS—"

Knee still in a squirming backbone he finally notices the raindrops of blood. He thought at first they were from the subject's nose, which he was afraid he'd broken. All he needed was a police brutality case against him, especially with someone who wasn't in their right state of mind. Instead there's clumping puddles of scarlet flooding around his legs. He finally feels the reserved wetness on the side of his face. The thick stickiness and inability to twitch a few facial muscles fully. He takes the shirt.

At the hospital they stick a needle into his meatloafed face. Freeze away the pain while they knead and sew two halves together. He sits on the gurney, pastel bumpy blue sheet draped over his shoulder to catch any escapee drops. The tissue paper thin layer clashes dramatically with is black t-shirt. He doesn't say a word. Had stitches once in childhood. A bully on the base shoved a stick in the spokes of his bike and he flew off and onto the gravely road. Took ten to the leg. Cried all the way through it and when he got home The General just hurt him worse.

A precinct paid taxi drives him back to the SRU where all the team is waiting. Minus one. The one he wants to see. The guys slap his shoulder; his perfectly blood free shoulder thanks to a bumpy blue sheet. They tell him it's not that bad. The stitches run from his cheekbone almost down to his chin. He doesn't even know how many stitches there are in his face. He lost count. Didn't think to ask.

Each guy offers to buy him a round, because that's how he's satiated lately. Find an angry Sam and calm him with a tall and frosty. He declines and creates some fable about how he's not supposed to drink because alcohol disagrees with anesthetic they used, but tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. The Team shares laughs, because their faces aren't marred and then disappear from the locker room. He lags a minute, wondering if he should peek beneath the flat layer of gauze resting on his face.

Deciding against it, he changes into his jeans and a different t-shirt. Doesn't know why. He has nowhere to go besides home. Maybe just routine. When he leaves the locker room he hears the echoes. Rustling from within her locker room. Reverberations of a past life. He stops and contemplates a moment, just like with the gauze, if he should approach her. She didn't come out to greet him. Maybe didn't know. Maybe wasn't ready. She does take forever.

He knocks on the door to her locker room. Well the door to the women's locker room now. Since Leah joined the SRU they took down Jules' sign. He wonders where they put it, where they got it. Was it some kind of joke or some kind of penance? The guys have a tendency to forget Jules doesn't quite see everything the same way they do. Maybe she complained one too many times about the gender differences and they bought it for her as a gag, or as proof that they really didn't think of her as that different. Or that she's more different than she thinks. Maybe she just grew tired of always being alone.

"Just one second." She calls from inside. Her voice is muffled hidden by a door and possibly a shirt being ripped on over her head. There's a clatter and he imagines her face blinded by the fabric, wild limbs knocking over something from her vanity.

Memories boil and burst in his brain. Secret minutes spent after the shift, going stealth into her locker room although she preferred to meet at a less conspicuous location. Watching her brush out her hair, lean over the counter to balance a few inches from the mirror to reapply her makeup, simple common couple acts that made him think they could have it all. Made him just revel in her beauty.

"Decent."

He turns past the sharp ninety degree angle and finds her perched against the counter just as he remembers. Hand carefully applying mascara to a widened eye. She watches him from her peripherals. The black tank top she's wearing has tangled straps, an indication of how fast she pulled it on. The material stretches across her stomach and breasts, which appear larger to him. Skewed memory from facial lacerations and injections. From singed and bisected nerves. From encapsulating and all swallowing loneliness.

The applicator drops from her hand, clatters to the counter probably globing the inky gunk in thick droplets. She hugs him hard. It's a nice change from the usual powerful punch she pounds into his shoulder. Her arms wrap around his neck and her face squishes against his chest. He's unsure what to do with his hands. They haven't really been this intimate since they've been intimate. Stopped being intimate. It's nice. It's refreshing. It's right.

She pulls back, not caring about his lack of response. Her eyes are teary and her bottom lip semi-trembles in the green lighting of the locker room. If they don't move more, the lights are likely to turn off to reserve energy. Her hand grazes over the side of his face that made the gift shop in the CN Tower look like a slaughter house floor. "You scared me so much."

He chuckles, but it gets caught in a lump in his throat because she's close. So close and instead it comes off as an arrogant snort. He didn't mean it, but maybe she knows, because she ignores it. In a daring move, he captures her hand from his face, removing it from the ridiculous number of stitches. "I'm fine."

"I know. You can handle yourself." She agrees, retrieves her hand from his. It hangs so limply at her side and there are so many other things he'd rather be doing with it. "But after Lew and Steve."

And her voice cuts out. Just turns off. Bottom lip does a jive and she turns her head away before he can see the first fat tear fall. He's seen her cry before. Cried when Lew exploded. Cried after she was shot from the constant pain. Cried from having to relearn basic functions. Cried at the hospital, stationary outside the room containing Steve's corpse. These tears are different. Not for pain, or loss. They're warmer, caring concerning tears.

"Hey." He uses a gentle hand on her shoulder to turn her back towards him and finds her collapsing against his chest again. This time his hand trails up and down her spine as she sobs near silent. "Jules, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

She nods against his chest, one of her hands trails down his arm to find his hand, and her fingers burrow, entwine with his. It's so unexpected but so natural. Her eyes are glassy when she glances up at him, wordless. Cheeks are just the right amount of flushed with the perfect mixture of sleekness from shed tears. He swallows fighting the urge to do anything. To brush her face with his thumb. To part her lips with his own. "You should know you can't get rid of me that easily."

She laughs a short crow's caw and then sniffs once, wiping at her eyes. "Sorry."

"No, it's—" He pauses. Thinks out his words very carefully. Knows there's an infinitesimal chance he and Jules could end up back together. But he doesn't want to risk anything he has with her now, her trust or her friendship for it. "It's nice to know someone cares."

Her lips fall into a straight thin line. Purse tightly and the evidence of tears is all but removed. She caught the word replacement of 'someone' for 'you'. "I'll always care."

He smiles at her. Watches a true blush creep across her chest, up her neck and onto her face. Remembers she gained the same color after they had sex. Remembers holding her and watching her skin redden with the evidence of their passion. "I have to—" she points to her bag, left open, dissected on the bench.

"Yeah." He agrees, seriously considers heading for the door. But something roots his feet in place. Maybe the glow of pain, radiating from his cheek despite the medication. Maybe it's just that he misses her, remembers how she was with Steve. Remembers how he felt when she was with Steve because they could have had that. All they needed was a conversation where he was an adult and realized what he had. That she was all he had.

He stops at the breakneck turn, rubs at the back of his neck. Neighboring nerves use wavelengths unknown to sting the side of his face. "You wouldn't want to go and get a beer or something? Just talk?"

She halts the zipper on her makeup bag, stares at him a second with an almost crinkled nose and a regretful smile. "I can't." He remembers that same expression from the gun lockup four months earlier. The reason was a maybe date with Steve.

"Oh. Yeah. No problem." He gets it. Gets she's not interested. Gets the friendship will be all he ever gets though he longs for so much more. He'll just have to be happy to have her partially in his life.

"No, not like that." She laughs and tucks the makeup bag away into her purse. A loose strand of hair falls around her cheek to frame her face. "Could we get dinner instead?"

"Yeah, sure." His answer is a little too quick. A little too eager. A little too obvious but he doesn't care. It may be a maybe date with Jules. It doesn't matter how he reacts. He leans against the wall, watches as she hesitates in putting up her hair. He hopes she doesn't. She leaves it down. He tells himself it's not a sign.

"So why no beer? Starting a summer cleanse?" He figures it has something to do with Steve's death. He doesn't know how individuals mourn; everyone does weirdly different unexplainable things. When his grandpa died his grandma only wore black for the rest of her life.

She laughs again, kind of forced, kind of awkward. "You know why."

His eyebrows arch and fall on his face in confusion. He really doesn't know why. But he doesn't want to screw this up. But then again how long can a relationship last when it's not based on full honesty. If he's really given a second chance he wants to do things right. "I don't." She wrenches her head up from the bag and he quickly adds, "But whatever."

"The guys didn't tell you?"

Now he's starting to get worried. Leaves the comfort and embrace of the wall. Walks towards her, tries to piece together information he knows but can form a viable answer. He tries to keep an indifferent expression when he can feel the palms of his hands sweating wet. Feel the muscles in his face around his eventual scar twitching and tweaking the pain. "The guys haven't told me a thing."

She sighs, puts a hand to her chin and he grows fearful. What if something is wrong with her? Too many people in the sphere of his influence are falling like flies. She almost died on him once before, he can't take it again.

Her eyes meet his, brown irises unwavering, stable with only a hint of trepidation. "I'm pregnant Sam."

And it hits him worse than anything else she could have said because immediately after she speaks he runs over calendars and timelines in his head. Tries to figure out the last time they had sex and knows it's been almost a year. Throat closes off. "Oh."

"Don't you wonder why I never leave the truck?"

"I just—" He feels very hot, almost dizzy. He licks his bottom lip, tries to focus on anything but her, but now he can see it. The small protrusion through her shirt nestled just under her navel. The fact that her chest is larger and it wasn't his pain distorted slightly offensive version of the perfect female body. "I thought—" He can't stop looking now. Had the impression she was thinking about babies, but didn't think she was thinking thinking about babies. Didn't think she was this close to getting one. Always thought that they—"I thought you were taking it easy because of what happened with—"

She loses a bit of her grin and a hand falls to the bump. It's smaller than a fist, but hits him as hard. Hurts him more than the manic prowling in the CN Tower gift shop with a knife. "Steve didn't know about this."

And the rage he feels against Steve borderlines on hate. Who is he kidding, he fucking hates Steve. The guy who swoops in from nowhere and wins her over in less than a week. Just because they may have gone to high school together. Just because Steve may have seen her sing, when she refused to sing for him. Just because Steve may have gotten beaten up by people she hung around with. "I think I'm going to take a rain check on dinner."

"Oh." For a second, her expression crashes into authentic hurt. Newly mascaraed lashes droop and flex with the swirls of eye shadow. Lower lip even does a gasp of a pout before her face clears away any emotion and bricks itself up stoic. All remaining objects are quickly shoved into her purse without a care. "Yeah. No I get it."

"I've got—" Nothing. He has nothing to do. Has wanted nothing but this since they made the semi-mutual decision to revoke dinner privileges from each other. Wants to watch her laugh in the dim light of a romantic restaurant. Or in a crowded sports bar where there are too many bowls of peanuts which she constantly complains about. But now he can't, because she'll never be his again. Not just his.

"No I get it, Sam." Voice harsher, speaking with authority and understanding. Understanding what he thinks of her now. What she means to him now. What she's done to herself. "This isn't your mess."

"Jules, I didn't mean—" But she's already pissed off. Already gone. Already has her mind made up because he already has his made up. Because she's right. As much as he wants it to be, this isn't his mess.

Next Chapter - Hot call gone wrong. Well more wrong then Slashy Mcfaceripper. Well not really more wrong, just more angsty. It's all Craig's fault really. You'll see.

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