Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-02 19:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Luke, Wren + Gus
What: Wren comes to make sure little Gus isn't scarred for life.
Where: Luke's apartment.
When: After the Vegas plot.
Warnings/Rating: None.
It would be an understatement to say she was worried. Panic, perhaps, would be a better word. She didn’t care that she’d just lost a week of her life, and she didn’t care that she had no idea what had happened to Las Vegas in that week. No, all she cared about what the voicemail Selina had left her. A voicemail in which Selina explained that she’d gone to Luke’s to look for clothes, and that there had been an “altercation” with Iris. An altercation which, according to Selina, had involved Iris instigating a fight and insulting her, which led to the Bat attacking the dog and Iris getting thrown through a window, all while Gus watched. Selina had gone on to state (repeatedly) that it wasn’t her fault, and Wren was partially inclined to believe her, but that didn’t matter, not really. The additional message, the one about the night at the hotel, and the fact that it seemed like everyone was there left her even more panicked. Everyone included Iris, and Selina thought the Bat had been there, though she didn’t clarify why she thought that. Regardless, it left Wren with the clear understanding that somewhere, her four-year-old was being watched by a dog, after spending a week without his father, and with a woman that Wren didn’t entirely trust. Panic was an understatement too, she decided.
She bribed the cab driver to go as fast as money would buy, which meant the ride to Luke’s apartment took under fifteen minutes. She had no idea if she beat him there, and she had no idea if Iris would be there. She didn’t even know if Gus had wandered off. She did know that she wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Gus, but there wasn’t a law on the books that could keep her away from that apartment building, not then. She wasn’t exactly running on logic, and she almost forgot to pay the driver when he stopped the cab. At that moment, Brielle didn’t matter, and Luke’s addiction didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that little boy and all the hell he’d been through, only to end up going through this. Selina’s belief that the Bat was okay chased away any real concern for Luke’s safety, and that only left Gus at the top of her list of worries. Everything else could wait until her heart stopped pounding in her chest like it might stop at any moment.
She knew which apartment to go to, despite never having been inside, and she took the stairs, not having the patience to wait for the elevator. She was dressed simply, in slim white sundress and flats, but the cool clothing did nothing to erase the fear from her features. Her heart was in her throat, and there was no hiding it, no point in even trying. She didn’t slow as she neared the door, and she turned the knob without knocking. “Luke?” she called out. And she had a thought, momentary and fleeting, that Gus might be better off not seeing her. Weeks had gone by since she’d seen him, since she’d handed him over in that police station. Maybe he’d begun to forget, maybe that was better for him, but she couldn’t help herself. Hearing Luke tell her that Gus was okay wasn’t going to be enough, not this time.
Luke didn't need a voicemail to know what had transpired in Las Vegas during the past week. Unlike Wren and Selina, he and Bruce had some communication, which was how he learned of the 'incident' involving him, Selina, and Iris. An incident which Gus had witnessed, and now the boy was on his own, with only a dog to keep him safe. That was enough to eradicate any regard he had for the rules of the road, and speed combined with a lack of regard for red lights meant that he made it back to his apartment in record time. No one stopped him, as the sirens were clearly preoccupied elsewhere, and the little traffic present was easily dodged and avoided on his thankfully unharmed motorcycle. Oh, he was angry, but his concern took precedence, and in truth there weren’t many places for him to direct his anger in the first place. He couldn’t be mad at Iris, because she’d done her damndest to keep Gus safe and it wasn’t her fault that she’d been pulled into a bad situation. He knew she had her problems, and the stress of Selina showing up along with the Bat probably hadn’t helped matters; her priority had been Gus, however, and so he couldn’t blame her. Bruce and Selina bore the brunt of his anger, but even with them it was complicated-- neither of them knew what to do with a child, nor had they intended for any harm to come to Gus. Besides, it wasn’t as though they had planned this. Bruce hadn’t wanted to be here any more than Luke had wanted to be away from his son for a week, trapped inside a fictional character’s mind, where his influence was practically non-existent. So, for once, he decided not to waste time on being angry. What mattered now was making sure Gus was alright and doing what he could to ensure his son recovered from what he’d seen and experienced.
It had been like being stuck in a sort of half-coma, where he felt drugged yet still conscious to a point, the past week. He’d been aware of what was going on, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Memories were hazy, and attempting to influence Bruce’s actions in any way had been a fruitless effort that made the darkness at the edges of his consciousness close in faster. He hated that sensation, of being helpless, and by the time he arrived at his apartment the blood practically sang as it pumped through his veins, revelling in being able to feel again, in being in control of his own body. He took the steps two at a time, sliding his key into the lock and stepping into the darkened apartment with his heart pounding in his ears. The door swung shut behind him, but he didn’t lock it; not because Wren was coming, but because his attention was simply elsewhere. “Gus?” His voice sounded too loud, and he lowered it instinctively. “It’s me, Luke. You don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay now.”
In the midst of the silence, there was a very faint, muffled sound, like someone coughing against a pillow... or sobbing. Luke moved forward, and Finch stepped out of the doorway to his bedroom soundlessly, teeth bared in a silent snarl, more like a monster than a pet dog. He stopped and raised his hands, his steps slowing to a halt. “Hey, boy,” he said carefully. “Don’t be like that. You know me, don’t you? I know I’ve been away for a while, but I’m back now. Calm down.” He kept his voice calm, reassuring, and bit by bit Finch began to relax, until recognition sank in fully. His tail was wagging as he leapt up to greet his master, licking every part of him that he could reach, and Luke couldn’t help laughing as he knelt down to give the dog a hug. “Yeah, I missed you too.” The sound was louder here, clearly coming from the bedroom, and he flicked on the lights once he disentangled himself from his overeager pet and gave the room a customary scan. “Gus? Are you in here?” His response was another sob, louder this time, and Finch whined as he padded over to the bed and nosed at the space beneath it. Of course.
He got down on his hands and knees to peer beneath the bed. Gus was wedged beneath it, against the far wall, eyes wide and face streaked with tears as he looked at him. Finch whined again, clearly too large to fit beneath himself, but judging by the marks on the floor and torn fabric it was evident he’d done his damnedest to reach the boy. “Hey, Gus,” he said softly. “It’s just me. You’re safe now.” He reached for him, and Gus drew back, letting out a whimper that made his heart ache. “I know you’re scared, and I know I left. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to, Gus, and I came back as soon as I could. I’m not leaving anymore, okay?” The boy sniffled, eyeing him warily, as though weighing whether or not to believe his words. “Batman came,” he told him sadly. “He hurt Finch, and a mean lady hurt Iris. Then she went away too.” Luke stifled a sigh, nodding instead. “I know. I’m sorry. But they’re not here now, Gus, and they won’t come back. Everything’s okay. Please come out?” It continued on like this for minutes, agonizingly long, as he attempted to coax the frightened boy out from under the bed. It seemed to be working, but then he heard the door open, heard Wren’s voice, and Gus’ hand withdrew from his as he refused to budge, newly frightened by the voice he clearly didn’t recognize just yet.
This time Luke did sigh. “It’s okay,” he reassured him. “That’s just Wren. You remember her, right?” Gus nodded, but he still didn’t move. “I’m going to go talk to her. You stay here with Finch, and if you want to come out, we can get you something to eat.” The boy nodded again, and he finally forced himself to stand, noticing for the first time in the light that Finch’s snout and paws were streaked with black and something sticky, and a set of pawprints led into the bedroom. The kitchen, though he hadn’t seen it, was a mess; jars were overturned, cupboards had been clawed at, and the little food boy and dog had managed to get at was scattered about. He hesitated before leaving the bedroom and stepping out to meet Wren, wary of seeing her again after their last meeting. Every detail was etched into his memory, of course, and Luke had already begun to regret ever telling her the truth. The fact that he was worried about Gus’ reaction to seeing her again didn’t help either, since the boy had just stopped asking for her, and that was bound to start all over again after this. She couldn’t keep seeing him, not with the protection order; at best she’d land herself in jail, and at worst she’d be in jail while he lost custody of Gus.
“Hi.” Luke left a healthy distance between the two of them, unsure of where they stood but suspecting it wasn’t anywhere good. “He’s okay,” he added. “Scared, and hiding under the bed, but we’ll get through it.”
Whatever her feelings were when she walked in the door, seeing him again took her breath away, like it always did. She wondered if there would be a day when that wasn’t the case, when he wouldn’t be something that made her feel like the world was okay just by being around him, even when everything was wrong. She noticed that he kept his distance, and she tried to do the same, rocking forward on her feet, almost moving toward him, but stopping herself from continuing by sheer force of will. It was a fight to resist that sway, but she managed, though her gaze settled on him for far too long for anything but intimacy before looking beyond him and down the hall.
Something in his sentence made her look back at him, and her head tipped to the side, curious, as if she wasn’t sure if she was reading into his tone. There was nothing she wanted more than to push past him and walk down that hall but, strangely, she almost felt like she didn’t have a right to. It had been an unthinking thing, coming here. Fear and concern so thick that she couldn’t swallow around them, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. But now that she was here, now that she knew Gus hadn’t wandered away, she paused. She thought. She didn’t come right out and tell him about the lawyer’s phone call, and maybe she should have, but the space between them felt endless right then, and she wasn’t even sure who had put it there. “Am I part of that we?” she asked, “Or is it just the two of you?” There was a telling lack of emotion in the question, carefully tamped down. He knew her too well for there not to be signs, though, in the damp gray eyes that regarded him, and in the fingers that rucked the pristine white dress at the hip. Two weeks wasn’t very long, she knew, and it was an easy thing to feel like she didn’t belong in Gus’ life when other people were taking care of him.
She knew all the reasons she shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t se the little boy who was hiding beneath the bed. Logically, she knew, but that didn’t make it hurt any less to ask the question. Just like it didn’t hurt any less to feel like she couldn’t cross that space between them, even if she wanted to. She wasn’t accustomed to distance from him, not like this. His anger was better, she thought, than respectful nothing, and she looked away to keep from showing how hard it was to manage. She wrappd her arms around her waist protectively, the dress fabric sliding back to where it had been. She heard a sniffle from past his shoulder, and a bark, and she looked past him, even as she took a step forward without thinking. But then there was silence again, and she forced herself to stop. She was close enough now that she could reach out an arm and touch him, and her fingers twitched with the restrained desire. “I just want to see him, Luke,” she pleaded, voice finally breaking around his name. And it was selfish, she knew it was, and she nodded a moment later. “I’ll go,” she finally managed, feeling like there was no place in the world she belonged less, no place she had less right to be than there.
The way she looked at him left him utterly confused, evident in his expression for a moment before he pushed it away. She’d said she didn’t hate him, but that was when she was drunk, and now she was sober; everything could have changed in between. Luke almost expected it to, expected her to hate him now that she’d had time to think things over. He assumed she was here for Gus and only Gus, not for him. It was a defense mechanism, bracing himself for the worst, even if he’d brought it all upon himself. “I--” He paused, at a loss for how to respond, and glanced unthinkingly over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “You are. I want you to be, at least. But it’s complicated right now, and I know you know that. This is different, because of what happened, but you can’t-- I can’t-- until the protection order is dropped, it’s too dangerous,” he finished, a terrible way of explaining, but he was torn between laying out the blunt truth and attempting to spare her feelings. If he lost custody of Gus, if CPS found out that he’d allowed her to be near the boy when the protection order was in place, it would all be for nothing. All of it, and he couldn’t let that happen.
He didn’t move back when she stepped forward, nor did he move to meet her, but he did waver between the two. What he wanted, however, and what he thought he should do were two different things. Denying her anything had always been hard. Though it wasn’t a conscious thing, he did stand between her and Gus, and whether or not he would have moved to allow her to pass remained unclear until she said that she would go. His facade of calm cracked then, and he reacted without thinking, a hand going to her arm to stop her. “No,” he said impulsively. “Don’t. I know you want to see him. I know that’s why you’re here, and I-- I don’t expect--” He cut himself off, shaking his head, because this wasn’t about him, and he was selfish to try to make it as much. It was about Gus, and Luke simply didn’t have it in him to tell her to go even if it was for the best. “He might not come out,” he warned her instead, a deliberate change of topic. “But maybe he will if he sees you. Come on.”
Luke turned without waiting to see if she would follow, shushing Finch when he began to bark at the sight of Wren and getting back down into his crouch to peer beneath the bed. “Wren’s here, kiddo, and she wants to see you. Do you think you could come out and say hi, even just for a second?” His response was another muffled sniffle, followed by a quiet “She does?”, and he turned to look up at her in silent encouragement.
All those I can’ts only drove home the realization that she was intruding, and that hurt more than she would have believed it could. It shouldn’t be anything, losing something she’d only had for a few brief weeks. Slipping back into not having should be easy, easier than the uncertainity. But it wasn’t, and she wouldn’t have argued with him if he had simply agreed that she should go. She would have turned, and she would have left, and that would likely have been it. Because being denied, it was too hard to go through when her entire world seemed to hang in the balance. He confused her, though, for a moment, with the statement about not expecting. Not expecting what? she started to ask, but his hand was stopping her, and she almost sobbed with how thankful she was. It was an effort, just giving him a nod, calm and controlled, as if she didn’t want to rush past him into the room that he had been blocking her access to. She focused, instead, on the fact that the little boy might not coming out from his hiding place, which wouldn’t surprise her. She wasn’t expecting this to be easy, and she wasn’t even suspecting Gus to remember her. He was so small, and it had only been a few weeks.
She followed, and she only slowed long enough to let Finch nose at her hand and calm his barking with recognition that was half a decade old. She kicked her shoes off at the door, crossing the room on bare feet, and she watched Luke for a few seconds as he talked to the little boy. Her gaze wandered as she stood there, noticing the ruined carpet and floor, the shattered glass at the window, the fact that even Finch couldn’t wedge himself in that tiny space beneath the bed. Her fingers strayed to Luke’s hair as she looked at the glass, looking for any signs of blood, and she tugged her fingers through the thick brown strands thoughtlessly, habit and comfort in the simple touch.
“Oui,” was her reply to Gus’ question, and she did an admirable job of sounding as if there was nothing wrong in all the world, as if everything wasn’t crashing down around her, all without her being able to stop it. Instead of kneeling and peering beneath the bed, she sat down on the mattress, bare feet visible to the little boy, and she gave Luke a small shrug. It was a tactic, and she wasn’t very good at those, but maybe Gus would come out? She hated the uncertainty, and she was fairly sure mothers were just supposed to know what to do, which wasn’t the case with her at all. She realized, then, that her hand had found its way to Luke’s shoulder. She pulled it back, not feeling like she had the right to touch him if he didn’t want it. And they had so much to talk about, so much, but she sighed in the end, and she walked her fingers along his jaw before speaking to the hiding child again. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you,” she said, concentrating on keeping her voice calm and, she hoped, soothing. “I’ve missed you.” The dog barked. “And Finch. I’ve missed Finch too,” she added, trying to see if there was any blood along the dog’s muzzle. Selina’s voicemail hadn’t been too specific in that regard.
Luke was pretty sure he could be in the same room as Wren and not touch her, even with all the uncertainty and words left unsaid between them, but then she was running her fingers through his hair and he couldn’t understand why. She wasn’t drunk, after all, and he’d expected her to be far more distant once the alcohol wore off, especially since they hadn’t really resolved anything that night. He tried to focus on the boy beneath the bed, on coaxing him out from his hiding spot, but it was more difficult than he’d anticipated with her there. Finch seemed content enough to linger on the edges, nails clicking against the floor as he paced, sat down, and repeated the process over, as though waiting for the moment he might need to intervene. He tried not to react to her touch, he did, but even something as simple as her hands in his hair was so much more than he’d expected after the fiasco with Brielle, and his more worrying confession about what he’d spent the past five years doing.
She may not have known what to do, but in all honesty neither did he. Even if she hadn’t come, his plan of action would have been to be patient, because really, what else could he do? Being a father was something that would come with time, and all he really had was his memories of his own father to go off of. He drew back from the bed, just a little, enough so that Gus wouldn’t feel like he was crowding him underneath and giving him the space to come out if he wanted to, and he looked up at her when her fingers walked along his jaw. If he couldn’t have her, which he assumed he couldn’t, not when she didn’t trust him, then why was she touching him? Didn’t she know it was practically torture, trying not to hope that it meant something even though he wanted it to? Maybe he deserved it. Even as the thought entered his mind, he ran his fingers along the inner part of her wrist and down, unable to help himself.
Gus’ sniffles had become fewer and farther between, apparently soothed by Wren’s calm tone in the face of the sort of chaos he’d previously been forced to witness. While he didn’t emerge just yet, Luke was close enough to see that the boy had inched forward, just a little, no longer curled up against the wall. “We missed you too,” came his solemn little voice, still tinged with leftover tears. “You went away. Will you stay now, with me and Finch and Luke?” It was the sort of question he’d always hated answering during the first few days, when Gus constantly asked when Wren would come back, and it had been a relief when he’d stopped asking. Now, it was that all over again, and he still had no idea what to say.
Touch had always been something calming for her. Her maman, despite her faults, had always been about soothing touches to her daughter’s forehead and hours spent brushing her daughter’s hair. In a childhood that was broken in so many ways, there had always been that one constant, and it had stayed with Wren through the years. The touch didn’t mean everything was fixed, but it did mean she still wanted to touch him, and she was stressed enough and uncertain enough in that room not to fight it. If there wasn’t a scared little boy beneath the bed, and if they all just hadn’t lost a week of life, she would have likely been able to refrain. But as it was, she couldn’t, and his fingers on her wrist made her gray gaze slide to where he was touching her, and she watched the path of his fingertips along that delicate skin like a greedy thing that might not ever get something she needed so badly ever again. She would have slid off the bed if it was just the two of them, and she would have touched him anywhere she could manage. She would have justified pushing aside Brielle and the killing, just like they always justified pushing off everything to wrap themselves around each other when they were young. But there was Gus, and she stayed where she was, her fingers just trailing over to still against his lower lip for a moment. She looked at him, let her gaze hold his in the destroyed room, and she moved her fingers against his lip a second later, the movement slow as she watched him.
She could tell Gus’ voice was closer, even though she couldn’t see him, and the solemnity in that tiny voice made her want to break down. It was probably good that she couldn’t see him, because seeing the child would only make her own voice warble and shake, and she wanted to keep it as calm as she could manage, as reassuring as she could manage. That didn’t make the questions he asked any easier, and she had no idea how Luke had been answering questions like that in the past. She gave him a questioning look, but she fell back on honesty, because it’s what her maman had always done. And maybe her own mother wasn’t a very good role model, but it was all Wren had to go on. “I couldn’t come,” she explained, not talking down to him, even though she didn’t understand how much comprehension he actually had. “I had to stay away for a little while, but it won’t be for very much longer,” she promised, hoping that would be true. Even if it was supervised visitation, it was something. “I promise, Gus. I didn’t stay away because I didn’t want to see you and Finch and Luke. I wanted to see you very, very much, mon bebe.” She brushed tears off her cheek, and she looked up at the ceiling to keep them in check. “And I’ve gotten to see Finch now, and Luke, but I still haven’t see you,” she said, hoping that wasn’t pushing too much, but wanting so very much to see the little boy.
Even though he had no idea what it meant, even though it could have meant nothing at all, Luke was willing to take whatever he could get and certainly didn’t regret the fact that she couldn’t refrain from touching him. He couldn’t either, and he wouldn’t have wanted her to regardless. Despite being acutely aware of Gus’ presence and how it changed things, he found himself unable to look away when she held his gaze. They might have been rough in the bedroom, all demand and bruises, but to him these touches were so much more intimate, barely-there brushes of fingers against skin that said more than any words he could ever string together. His breath hitched at the feel of her fingers against his lips, and he closed his eyes briefly, just for a second, and his hand on her wrist tightened ever so slightly. In that moment, as much as he loved Gus, he couldn’t help wishing they were alone, and his lips parted against her fingers before he caught himself and looked away.
Luke wasn’t so sure if honesty was best for someone so young. He’d skirted around the issue for weeks, giving half-answers that provided no real information in an effort to reassure Gus, to calm him down, and it had seemed to work. He didn’t want to speak for Wren, though, which might make her feel like more an outsider than she already did, and so he bit his tongue and waited, though he was ready to intervene if she said something he didn’t think Gus was old enough to hear or understand. She was his mother, yes, and parenting was a joint effort, but the blunt truth was that he was the one who currently had custody and until the protection order was dropped, he was the one ultimately responsible for the boy’s well-being. He’d never referred to himself as Gus’ father, for example, or Wren as his mother, and the questions about the Johnsons had long since ceased. He wasn’t sure who Gus thought he was, really, aside from the one who was taking care of him, but he didn’t think it was a very good idea to try explaining to a four-year-old that the people he’d thought were his parents his whole life actually weren’t, and he was actually his father. Being called ‘Daddy’ was something he didn’t think would happen for a long, long time.
Gus was silent as Wren spoke, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. Her tears made him apprehensive, because the last thing Luke wanted was for the little boy to start crying again-- he suspected he’d done enough of that during the past few hours. He shifted his attention from her to the boy beneath the bed, flattening himself against the floor in an effort to get a better look at Gus, considering the differences in height level. He was only inches away, the little boy, having moved progressively closer during Wren’s little speech, and Luke gave a tiny, encouraging smile as he slid his hand beneath the bed palm-up. “You don’t have to come out for long,” he whispered. “Just a little while, okay? She really wants to see you, Gus, and I know it would make her happy. You want to see her too, don’t you?” Gus nodded, after a second of hesitation, and with his little hand closed around Luke’s he emerged bit by bit, ever so slowly, from beneath the bed. He eyed Wren like he wasn’t sure if she was someone he should trust or not, but at least he was out, and Luke kept himself intentionally still as though one wrong move might send him scurrying back for cover.
She was sure she was supposed to hate him now. After what he’d told her, she was supposed to hate him. She was pretty sure it made her a terrible person, too, that she didn’t. Wound up with that was the fact that not hating him might have a thousand other implications, like the fact that she wasn’t sure it didn’t mean she wasn’t fit to be anyone’s mother, and she worried about him too, about whether or not it would be better for Gus not to be with either of them. But, when it was all said and done, it didn’t change the important things. Maybe it should, but it didn’t. She still trusted him to be a good father, and she trusted him with Gus’ life. She might not trust him around Brielle, not yet, not now, but she trusted him with her own life too, and maybe that said things about her own morality. Maybe she should be outraged and angry, but instead she was just worried, terrified, visions of electric chairs and retribution taking over her thoughts whenever they had the chance. But none of that mattered when he closed his eyes. Nothing mattered but the fact that his fingers were tightening on her wrist, and that his lips parted against her fingertips before he looked away. He had a way of making everything else in the world disappear, and it was only the existence of the small boy beneath the bed that kept her grounded.
She didn’t move her fingers away until he bit his tongue, and she knew they might not see eye-to-eye on any of this, this being parents thing. They’d had impossibly different upbringings. His had been as normal as a childhood could be, and hers was the kind of thing that ended up as a sad tale of woe on the news. She knew that. She knew, too, that she felt like a visitor, a stranger, in so many ways, and she hated that feeling. She didn’t know what to do about it, how to make it go away, but she wanted to. It was wrapped up in a million other things, anger and jealousy and not belonging, and she didn’t like how any of it made her feel. It was four years of knowing and being on the outside, looking in, and she was having a hard time being okay with it. But that wouldn’t last forever, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t.
She managed to keep the tears in check, and when she looked down Luke had flattened himself on the floor. She resisted the urge to bend down and help, and she let Luke take care of the talking. It made her smile, the patience in his tone, and she reached out and scratched one of Finch’s ears as he paced by. The dog was a mess, and she expected the little boy beneath the bed to be just as filthy. They needed someone not like them for back up childcare, but there was time to talk about that later, since Luke was making some headway. And, a second later, said filthy four-year-old was eying her warily. That ached, but she understood it, and she didn’t let it show on her face. “Bonjour, mon bebe,” she said, keeping her voice soft and not reaching for the little boy, which is what she really wanted to do. Finch barked, tail thumping on the floor, and she scratched his ear again. “Not you, Finch,” she said fondly, not looking away from the little boy. Gus was filthy, and she was guessing he was hungry too. “Maybe he’s just hungry,” she said of the dog, and she tipped her head inquisitively. “What do you think, Gus?” she asked, fingers twitching on her lap. She tried to keep her hand still, she did, but he was so close, and she just reached out a little ways, brushing his tiny arm with her fingertips. “He needs a bath too,” she said of the dog, because Finch seemed to be a safe topic of conversation.
There was time to work out the mechanics of how parenting would work later, he thought, once Wren was legally permitted to see him, though Luke knew that custody--if she managed to get something more than supervised visitation--might be tricky. He’d always imagined being married if he ever had a child, which clearly wasn’t the case now, and even if the thing with Brielle and the killing hadn’t happened he was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to move in with him, even for Gus’ sake. Her job likely wouldn’t allow it. Right at that moment, however, all he was trying to do was give her a chance to act like the mother she was instead of the stranger she’d been made to feel like.
Gus’s appearance wasn’t a surprise, and the fact that he and the dog matched made his lips twitch with the effort of holding back laughter. The little boy’s grip on his hand tightened, and he shuffled against the ground, wariness transitioning into something like shyness. “Bonjour,” he said, all four-year-old lisp and a child’s attempt at French that somehow came out sounding adorable. Luke didn’t nudge him forward, nor did he hold him back; in this, he was merely an observer. Physical contact was something they were still working on, since Gus had been withdrawn when he’d first come to live with him, but that came with time and trust. The boy still woke up in the middle of the night, afraid, and Luke had found that cuddling with both him and the dog was the best and fastest way to get him to fall back asleep. It was why he expected the worst when Wren’s hand brushed the child’s arm, but the little boy didn’t flinch as he’d thought he might. He looked down at his arm, blinked, and looked back up with the sort of solemnity that never ceased to surprise him, considering he was so young. “Uh-huh. We tried to get food, but I wasn’t tall enough,” he informed her, and he held out his arms for Finch when the dog barked again. He was accustomed to this drill, Finch, and padded over obediently in order to have tiny arms wrap around his neck and fingers dig into his fur. The word ‘bath’ had Finch’s ears twitching in displeasure, and Gus laughed as he buried his face against the dog’s scruff. “Luke lets me give him baths,” he said proudly. “He likes to splash.” Which was true, and he was pretty sure giving the two of them a bath was going to be an adventure in itself.
Luke stood then, ruffling Gus’ hair without thinking as he looked down at him. “You could use a bath too, kiddo. Your choice. Bath or food?” Gus screwed up his face in thought, and he whispered something in Finch’s ear before coming to a decision. “Food,” he decided, which was what he was expecting. He laughed, simply relieved that the boy no longer seemed interested in going back beneath the bed. “Wren can stay and eat too, right?” Luke nodded, glancing at her afterward, since he assumed her answer would be yes. The kitchen might have been a mess, but he had a lot of cleaning to do and he wasn’t going to get any of it done now anyway.
She realized, right away, that his parenting style was different than hers. It might have been a strange thing to realize, given the state of everything, but she did notice. She was less likely to give Gus choices than Luke was and, though it had taken her the better part of a week, she’d had Gus crawling all over her by the time she’d given him up two weeks after taking him with her, because she just did it, without asking. It was so much like the boy Luke had been, that careful consideration, that it made her smile as she stood on bare feet and glanced down at the dirty boy and dog. “You’re so much like that boy you used to be sometimes,” she told Luke, a touch to his jaw and voice going quieter, fonder. “I would have insisted on the bath.” There was a warm smile there, despite everything that was wrong, something like approval. Luke as a parent was something she’d never had any apprehension about, and the sentiment made it through in the words.
She ruffled the little boy’s messy hair as she stood there, fingers trailing to a dirty, chubby cheek with that easy kind of thoughtless affection, and she following the simple caress with a scratch between Finch’s ears. “Merci. Thank you for letting me stay to eat,” she told Gus, as if the invitation had been his alone. Well, his and Finch’s, given the clinging to the dog’s neck. She watched as Gus tucked two fingers into his mouth, and had to look away again to keep from letting her eyes well up with tears. “Remind me where the kitchen is, mon bebe, and tell me if Luke is a good cook,” she managed, with a little effort, before stretching to whisper in Luke’s ear, warm against his side. “We should talk after,” she told him, though she knew that would be a challenge. But she was calming now, finally feeling like Gus wasn’t going to disappear without warning. One last touch to Luke’s side as she moved away and toward the bedroom door.
Luke was right to think she wouldn’t agree to them living together just because of Gus. She knew, too, that if Luke thought about it, he’d agree with her. She remembered, vaguely, all the problems Thomas had with that, and she felt really, really strongly that they would manage, regardless. She hadn’t actually allowed herself to think about the possibility of getting some kind of custody until she heard her lawyer’s voicemail, and it really hadn’t set in yet, but it was starting to seem more real, as she stood there in that mess of an apartment. She knew, too, that Luke would want Gus to stay with him, and they’d need to work that through. She wasn’t going to worry about it, though. They’d figure it out. And, in truth, she’d be lying if she didn’t say that she still hoped things would end differently. She remembered the salient parts of her drunken conversation with Luke in the park, the part that woke her in a panic the next morning, but she remembered other things too - the way he’d looked, the way he’d sounded. She still didn’t trust him, but that didn’t change how she felt about him - it only made it scarier. She took a deep breath, and she pulled the cellphone from the slip-pocket of her dress. She pressed the voicemail button, and she held the phone out to him trustingly. Her lawyer would have told her that was the worst thing she could possibly do, trust him with information when he might fight her on custody, but it was a sign of too much belief in the boy Luke had been, in the man he’d become. On the voicemail, the lawyer was saying that the Johnsons had been declared dead after their car lost control during the ice attack on the strip, and that it would help her case tremendously.
The touch to his jaw surprised him, though not as much as it had initially. Luke was slowly coming to terms with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t hate him, though one drunken conversation had left more unanswered questions than it had loose ends tied up. “I’ve found it’s better to ease into the bath,” he said quietly, ducking his head with a smile, uncharacteristically sheepish. “He likes it when it’s made into a game, something fun. My parents used to do stuff like that. They’re all I have to go off of.” Thomas hadn’t been a bad father, but affection certainly wasn’t in his repertoire, and Luke never wanted to be like him, or to make Gus feel like he’d felt all those years ago. No, he wanted the boy’s childhood to be as much like his as possible, even if it was an unattainable goal. Gus watched them with wide eyes, forever struggling to understand something he couldn’t grasp, and Luke had already come to the conclusions that the Johnsons had likely never been affectionate with one another. Gus gave another shy smile at Wren’s thanks, tugging on Finch’s collar, and his fingers only stayed in his mouth for a few seconds before he tugged them out and pointed towards the kitchen. “Uh-huh. Once we had pancakes for dinner, and he let me lick the bowl, and I like it when he burns things ‘cause then we have pizza.” Luke tried to shush him too late, though his laughter kept the boy from thinking he was serious, even though he was puzzled as to why Wren shouldn’t know about pizza and pancakes.
He stilled when she whispered in his ear, and as much as the prospect of actual, sober conversation made him apprehensive, he nodded as she pulled away. Even if it would be easier to avoid it, Luke knew this was inevitable. Gus tugged Finch towards the kitchen, chattering about food and the mess, and he watched the pair with evident fondness, even though he had no idea what he was supposed to feed him. Sandwiches seemed to be a safe alternative, since he wasn’t too big on the idea of demonstrating his cooking skills in front of Wren, even though he was making an effort to deviate from his usual diet of takeout and microwave dinners. The phone being offered confused him, and he raised his eyebrows in a silent question as he took it, bringing it to his ear and listening to the voicemail that played on the other end. He couldn’t be sorry that the Johnsons were dead, not even a little, and he knew he should be glad that this meant good things for Wren’s case. He was glad, of course, but a small part of him still feared that she would fight him for custody, and now she could use the killing against him. Even though he knew she would never do that, it was an irrational fear he simply couldn’t shake, however hard he tried.
“That’s good news, right?” He pulled the phone away once the message was over, offering a hesitant smile. “I mean-- if your lawyer thinks it’s good, then the protection order might not last much longer, and you’ll probably get more than just supervised visits. You should. He needs you around.” Luke rubbed the back of his neck, and the sound of Gus’ laughter from the kitchen provided an adequate distraction to hand the phone back and move past her, out of the bedroom, from one mess to another.
“He’s never known how to cook,” Wren said fondly of Luke’s skills in the kitchen, her tone conspiratorial, as if she was letting Gus in on a big secret. Granted, food had always been available without any need of preparation at Thomas,’ and cooking was never big at the apartment she and MK shared toward their end of their stay in Seattle. Wine, yes, but not food. She touched the little boy’s cheek when she noticed him watching them, the touch a mirror of the one to Luke’s jaw, and she wished she could help him understand. The only thing that made her feel a little better was that she’d never, in all of her childhood, watched her maman be affectionate with anyone. It had taken her a long time to figure it out, but Luke had come along, and she had figured it out. Gus was still so small, that she hoped he could come around to understanding. It was one of the main reasons she wouldn’t live with Luke unless they decided it was right for the two of them. Kids noticed thing, as was evident by Gus’ wide-eyed stare. “I think pancakes for dinner sound wonderful,” she added, and the look she gave Luke was clearly entertained. As for bathtime? “I always went with singing and tickling, and that worked pretty well when it came to baths.” She smiled at the memory, a bittersweet thing, and she watched Gus and Finch disappear out of the room with more energy than she had in her entire body after being absent from it for a week.
His reaction to the phone call surprised her, though, because she hadn’t realized he would ever think she would use what he’d told her against him. She watched him as he edged around her and toward the kitchen, knowing the nuances of his speech and the whispers in his gestures well enough to know something there had bothered him, but not understanding what, not yet. She was trying to figure it out as she joined them in the kitchen and, instead of offering to help, she sat down on the couch with the little boy and began regaling him with stories of Luke when he was “small.” She knew Gus would assume the stories were much older than they were, but it was a topic the little boy liked, and she drifted between English and French, trying not to laugh when Gus mimicked the French words with his lisp. The little boy kept glancing up every few seconds, though, no matter how enthralled he was in the storytelling, as if he was afraid Luke would disappear if he stopped looking for too long, and it made it unbelievably hard for her not to trip up when she noticed what he was doing. In the end, she ruffled Gus’ messy hair, and she pressed encouraging fingers to the tiny hand that had drifted to her lap. “He might mess up if you don’t help him,” she whispered in a child’s loud whisper, the kind that carried easily to where Luke was.
Finch followed the child into the kitchen, ensuring his assistance was not required, and then he kept careful watch with his shaggy muzzle against his paws. It gave Wren enough time to think through whatever had caused Luke’s reaction to the voicemail, and she made a small sound when she figured it out. She looked up at him, the distance not nearly large enough to keep the questioning look from being perfectly clear, and she stood a second later. “I think I’ll go clean up some of the mess in that room, while you two finish up,” she suggested, though it was obvious it was a falsely cheerful statement. She spied a broom in the corner of the kitchen, which she claimed with a reassuring smile to Gus, and then she disappeared into the bedroom a second later, needing the time to pace it out, to seek out some calm from what she perceived the problem was. It was true that she was having trouble adjusting to this, which she hadn’t expected at all, and she opened what remained of the shattered window and let a slight breeze into the room, as if air could make anything better. Sweeping didn’t help either, but it was something that needed to be done, as was changing bedsheets and picking clothing up from where it had been tugged everywhere.
In his defense, Luke had never needed to know how to cook, and he shot Wren a mock insulted look before turning his attention to Gus. “Don’t listen to her. I can so cook.” The little boy might not have fully understood what was going on, but no one was upset, and no one was yelling or crying, which was apparently good enough for him. He remembered his own parents being affectionate, as far back as he was capable of remembering, and while it had embarrassed him when he was older, those memories were far more preferable than ones that could involve raised voices or icy tension. He’d known kids who grew up in homes like that, where their parents either never spoke to one another or spoke too often, too loudly, and he would never want to put Gus through that. It could have an impact, especially this young. So, even though he wanted to live with Wren, he could understand why it needed to be something they decided after careful consideration rather than on impulse. He gave another sheepish grin when she said pancakes for dinner sounded good, and his expression changed when she recalled her version of bathtime, something more careful, softer. “That’s because you can sing,” he teased, forgetting that things weren’t the way they should have been between them, and maybe teasing was too familiar right then.
Then he was in the kitchen, making an obvious effort to keep himself occupied so Wren wouldn’t see what was bothering him. He hadn’t thought his reaction to the voicemail was that obvious, really, and it wasn’t entirely dishonest, because he was glad. While Wren told the boy stories about his younger years that he could only half understand, he set about tidying up first, mopping up spilt milk and throwing away jars that had been clawed and gnawed at, with the aid of small fingers unable to twist off the lids. It was almost soothing with her voice in the background, and he smiled at Gus’ attempts to imitate her French words. Since he was preoccupied, Luke didn’t notice the little boy’s constant glances, though he would have felt even more guilty than he already did if he had. He’d been gone for a week, even though it was no fault of his own, and he made a mental note to see if he could get some more relaxed hours with Caesar’s this week, to spend more time with Gus and reassure him that he wasn’t going anywhere, not again. Wren’s stage whisper reached his ears, however, even if he hadn’t seen what led up to it, and he pulled a face at her back that made Gus huff with laughter as he joined him in the kitchen, followed closely as always by Finch. “You want to help, huh?” Gus nodded importantly, and Luke lifted him up onto the newly cleaned countertop, where he swung his legs and took it upon himself to delegate who received what kind of sandwich.
He hadn’t realized Wren had picked up on his demeanor after the voicemail, but her questioning look told him something was wrong, and even if it hadn’t, her false cheery tone that followed would have done the trick regardless. Gus was oblivious, his only concern that Wren might not come back out to eat with them, but Luke reassured him that she would as they finished making the sandwiches. He didn’t follow her, not right away, trying to fight the urge to do so immediately and trying to pace himself calmly, like everything was normal. He washed Gus’ hands and face, cut his peanut butter and honey sandwich into squares, and, after some begging, dug out an old tablecloth and draped it over the couch so he could eat and watch TV at the same time. After being absent for so long, Luke couldn’t imagine denying the boy anything. He gently instructed him to be careful, after finding a suitable channel, and told him he was just going to help Wren clean up so they could all eat together. Gus nodded happily, attention already fixated on the children’s show beginning on the screen.
Then, and only then, did Luke head for the bedroom, pausing one last time to ensure Gus was seated and not going anywhere--the door was locked, deadbolts and all, incapable of being opened by child or dog--before moving into the room. “What is it?” Because he knew something was wrong, he just wasn’t sure what yet.