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Sam glances across the table, at the little boy sitting there staring in confusion at the hand of cards he'd dealt him a moment before. Sam glances over his shoulder, out the kitchen window. It's weirdly quiet outside all of a sudden, and he feels an icy creeping sensation in the pit of his stomach.
The sound of muffled arguing starts up again, and he lets out a muffled sigh of relief. He turns back toward Charlie and asks, "stumped?"
Charlie's little face screws up. "I don't know. Is it twelve times six times nine?"
"You can't tell me," Sam says. "it'll ruin the game."
Fiona looks up from the couch, giving Sam a rather exasperated glance. Sam cocks his head back toward the table and she flips the page with an annoyed grunt.
"You call 'em," Charlie says, taking a quick sip of water.
"This is your hand," Sam says, patiently.
Charlie frowns up at him. "No, this is." He holds out his right one and frowns.
Sam masks a smirk against the lip of his water bottle – no booze for the moment, not in front of a kid this young. "A hand's what you call these cards," he explains. "You use them to play games."
"Duh!" Charlie replies, and the sass makes Sam frown. "How do you play cards, Mr. Axe?" the boy asks more seriously.
"Didn't your mom teach you how to play go fish?" Charlie nods. "Kiddo, that's how you play cards."
"Oh," Charlie says, a little crestfallen at his own lack of knowledge.
Sam immediately steps in to comfort the kid. "Well," Sam says, "I can teach you how to play poker. That's a card game…"
Fiona looks up from her magazine. "Sam! You should teach the boy something useful."
Sam smirks at Fi, "hey, poker's a useful skill!"
"If he's trapped in Las Vegas with free time to kill."
"OR Monte Carlo…"
They all jump when the door is wrenched open, and Michael enters the loft with Samantha trailing behind him.
"Hi, mommy!" Charlie smiles. "Old Sam is teaching me how to play poker!"
"Old" Sam's face creases in response to the boy's description of him as Samantha walks over to her son and gently runs a hand over his head. "Honey," she says, kneeling beside the chair, "how would you like to stay with Mr. Michael for a week?"
Fiona's brow rises skyward as she trades looks with Michael. Charlie frowns thoughtfully.
"Can I have ice cream?"
"Sure," Michael agrees, his smile tense and false-friendly.
Charlie seems to be thinking it over. "But you're gonna come back, mommy?"
That innocent sentence causes common hurt for everyone in the room, the memory of Charlie's kidnapping too raw. "Yes, honey. I promise."
"Okay," the boy says, turning back to his cards. "As long as I can have ice cream."
***
Some hours later, with the sun setting over a long and steamy Miami day, Sam and Michael settle down on the stairs outside to wait for dinner to be delivered.
"So," Sam says, "should I call you daddy?"
Michael just winces. "Please, Sam."
"What should I call you? Pops, poppa, daddy-o?"
Michael gave a defeated sigh. "I'm way out of my depth," he admits, in a low voice.
"Don't worry. You're doing a pretty good job," Sam says. "If a guy like me can bring up a kid and manage not to screw up…"
Michael stares at Sam in the obscuring light. "You never told me…"
"I don't like to talk about it," Sam admits. "I've got a little boy – little's the wrong word, he's gotta be eighteen by now. Last time I saw him, he was two." He sips his beer.
"Amanda got him in the divorce?"
Sam nods. "I couldn't give him a stable home – I was in special ops when it happened, it wouldn't've worked out." He takes another drink. "We named him Ethan."
"Nice name," Michael remarks.
"Yeah." Sam says quietly. "She wouldn't let me contact him. I fought, Mikey, believe me…"
"What happened?"
"When Amanda married Mack she started sending my letters back. I think she got married again after she dumped him." Sam plays with the lip of his Budweiser bottle, silently trying to figure out if he's been doing the right thing for the past seventeen years. "I finally caught up with her when they moved to Medicine Hat, before he turned sixteen. By then it was too late. She said Ethan didn't need a drunk like me in his life."
"That was pretty brave of you," Michael offers into the silence of the night. "Stepping away, even though you loved him."
"You know what doing the right thing feels like." Sam rests his head against the top stair, looking up at the now cloud-obscured sky.
"Like shit?"
"Yeah." He looks over at Michael. "Are you really ready to let this kid go when Sam finishes up in Georgia?"
Michael pauses significantly. "We don't know what's going to happen when she does."
Sam frowns up at Michael. "Mikey, you're not considering keeping him…"
Michael gives him an odd look. "No…"
"Don't. He's got a place with Samantha; she's what he knows. It's cruel to separate family."
Michael's look turns incredulous. "I'm his family too, Sam."
"Yeah. The kid doesn't know that, though."
"But he will, someday."
"Maybe, but maybe not." Sam shakes his head. "Boy, you give that chick a hell of a lot more credit than I do."
"I've got to." He doesn't point out to Sam that he doesn't really know Samantha. "He might be the only kid I'll ever have."
Sam whistles, plucking the beer out of Michael's hand and walking back upstairs. "If you ever let Fi in on that one, be sure I'm a couple of hundred miles north."
***
Michael watches Sam drive off and then heads back upstairs. To his surprise, Fiona and Charlie are on the couch together, Charlie fast asleep with his head on Fi's lap, Fi absently stroking his head as she watches a nighttime soap opera on Michael's ancient portable TV set.
"Melrose Place?" Michael whispers as he cautiously joins them, taking a spot between Charlie's sleeping body and the arm rest. "Please tell me you didn't let him watch that."
Fiona tisks him. "I do have some sense, Michael," she replies nonchalantly. "He fell asleep during a Bewitched rerun," she says.
Michael watches the child slumber. "What did he think of it?"
"He couldn't believe that the witch's name was Samantha, too."
Michael smiles fondly at the kid. "We're going to wreck his mind."
"What's to feel bad about?" Fi shrugs. "We all end up warped in one way or another by the time we're his age."
That only brings up horrid memories for Michael, and so he changes the subject. "You're good with him."
Fiona shrugs. "I haven't hurt him. It's easy to trust someone who's never hurt you." She seems to be jabbing at him, and Michael doesn't think she has the right to. She's the one who broke up with him, who left because she couldn't stand being number two to his job. They're reconciled, but the past threatens them still. "We never talked about it, did we?"
"Having kids? It wasn't an option."
Fiona shakes her head. "The time was never right."
"The time's never right to have kids." Michael stops short of calling Charlie an accident – the kid's too nice to have such a label pasted on him, and besides, he's glad he's here.
Fiona leans back against the couch. "What are you going to do when she comes back for him?"
Michael just shakes his head. "Hope she'll let him write. Send cards, emails. Keep in touch."
"That's not good enough," Fiona declares. "You're his father, Michael."
"I'll deal with it when the notice is lifted."
"You still want that?" Fiona's eyes flare at him, and Michael knows she's going to give him a hell of a fight. "I can't believe you, Michael. How can you be willing to orphan this boy?"
Michael winces at the implication. "I won't orphan him."
She leans backward to stare at him. "And I thought Sam's ego knew no bounds."
Michael takes off his shades, resting his own head against the sofa. "I know what I'm doing, Fi." About this, if not when it came to the actual raising of a child. "I need to clear my reputation so Charlie won't have to deal with this when he's older."
"It's not just your life that you're playing with, Michael," Fiona declares. "The game's changed."
"It's not a game," he says. Very tentatively, he covers her right hand with his left, cupping her red-nailed fingers against Charlie's head. "This matters."
"I know." She squeezes his fingers in response.
They fall asleep to the drone of the TV and the vague thump of the club downstairs, his hand holding hers, and hers holding his son's head.
***
Saturday brings torrential rain, a cranky Charlie, and the search for child-appropriate activities. Carla and her minions are unusually quiet, and Sam has wisely busied himself by helping Maddie around the house, leaving Michael and Fi to entertain the boy.
Television turns boring, he's put together every puzzle and filled in the two coloring books Samantha bought for him before leaving, and Michael doesn't have any child-appropriate books in the loft. Fi offers to teach him how to take apart and put together a gun, but Michael nixes that idea swiftly. Michael's ready to offer Charlie a choice between heading down to a video store and renting a DVD player or finding the Miami Public Library when Michael's cell phone rings.
It's Sam. "Hey, Mikey, can you spare a minute? Your mom needs you."
He looks over at Charlie, who's charbroiling pancake batter with Fi in the kitchen. "Be there in a minute."
It takes ten minutes for Michael to bundle Charlie up and pack him into the Charger, and another five to get to Madeline's place. Sam meets him at the door, exhaustion written all over his face.
"Do you know where the emergency circuit breaker is?" he asks.
"I told you, it's in the master bedroom!" Madeline shouts from the kitchen.
"I looked in the master bedroom!" Sam hollers over his shoulder.
"Can we come in?" Michael asks.
"Sam, let them in!" Madeline calls, and Sam rolls his eyes, allowing both father and son to enter the living room. Madeline's in the kitchen, and the sight of Charlie makes her stub out her cigarette and paste on a friendly smile. She heads over and helps them strip out of their rainclothes, smiling down at the little boy. "Hi, Charlie. Would you like to make some cookies?"
Charlie glances up at Michael, who shrugs – he'll just make sure Charlie doesn't poison himself with his grandmother's cooking. "Yes, ma'am," Charlie says.
"You can call me Maddie," she says, glancing at Michael to assure herself that that's the correct form of address. Michael shrugs again, and realizes without needing to hear the words that Sam spilled the beans to Maddie about Charlie's true paternity.
"Okay," Charlie smiles, happy with the prospect of having cookies. Michael and Sam take advantage of the kid's distraction and repair to Madeline's room, in search of the extra circuit breaker.
"Why did you really want me to come, Sam?" Michael asks when they're finally alone.
"I couldn't take it anymore," Sam admits. "Your ma's been driving me crazy about the sun deck and no way in hell am I going out to fix it in this rain." Sam sits upon Madeline's bed. "So how's fatherhood treating you?"
"Fine." Michael's poking around in Madeline's closet, trying to part the clothing to find the hidden breaker. "Did I tell you that my father helped build this place?"
Sam winces. "No."
"I used to hide in this closet when I was three," he adds.
Sam looks deflated. "Christ, Mike."
"Yeah," Michael remarks. "It's fine." He leans against the window. "I'm not like him,"
"I know," Sam says. "But do you know?"
"I do," Michael swears. He pulls a nearly-invisible portion of the wallpaper-covered wall back, revealing a metal panel and the circuit breaker. "There you go. He wanted it in this room for emergencies."
"Thanks," Sam says. "You won't hurt him, Mike."
"I know I won't," Michael says, and tries to wish the thought into reality.
***
After sampling some so-sweet-they're-nearly-inedible cookies, Michael and Charlie make their way to a nearby convenience store. Charlie wants potato chips and Drakes Cakes – Michael tries to bargain him down to breakfast cereal, the promised carton of ice cream, a candy bar and a bag of dried apple chips.
In the check-out line, Michael lets go of Charlie's hand for a moment – just to take out his wallet – and when he looks back down, Charlie's gone.
The groceries are abandoned as Michael goes on instant alert. "Charlie?" he shouts. "Charlie, where are you?" He finds himself racing up the aisle of the mini-mart while the clerk offers to call the cops.
That he looks up and sees Charlie out in the rain trying to retrieve a gumball from the machine posted outside is a stroke of pure luck. Relief and anger combine in Michael as he rushes outside and grabs Charlie by the wrist
"What are you doing?! Why did you walk away?" he barks. Charlie looks up at him, his eyes wide in fear, and from the past Frank Westen's voice comes echoing.
You're nothing, Michael.
"I wanted some gum…." Charlie whines.
"Don't walk away from me again!" Michael cries.
"You can't tell me what to do! You're NOT my daddy!"
Yes I am! his mind cries, but Michael doesn't say it. "Even if I'm not, I'm in charge of you, and you need to sit still and do what I ask you to do."
"I HATE YOU!" Charlie screams as Michael drags him to the Charger. The words bounce through Michael's head and echo there, stuck like a thorn under his skin.
***
Fiona whirls around, gun in hand, when Michael slams the door open. She tries to hide it behind her back when they enter the room but Michael can see it gleaming beside her hip. "How did the day go?"
Charlie runs to Fi, throwing his arm around her waist. "I wanted a gumball, and he wouldn't let me have it!"
"Oh…well…It's….pretty close to your dinnertime?" Fiona suggests, trying to gauge Michael's reasoning. Michael just dumps the groceries on the kitchen counter and starts putting them away.
"He's mean," Charlie says. "He grabbed my arm."
Fiona doesn't say anything, waiting for Michael to explain himself.
"You ran away," Michael says flatly.
The horror in Fiona's expression reflected Michael's secret worries. "Charlie! You shouldn't walk away from an adult unless they're a stranger."
Charlie hides his face against Fiona's stomach. Michael can barely hear his next complaint. "He wouldn't have let me have the gumball. I had a dime, and I wanted to spend my money!."
"You never said that," Michael says.
"You never asked me!" Charlie sticks out his tongue.
"Boys," Fiona says, "I think you should settle this like gentlemen. Charlie, tell Michael you're sorry for walking away, and Michael, tell Charlie you're sorry for grabbing him."
Charlie mumbles his apologies, and Michael grumbles his.
"There. Now let's have some ice cream; Dumbo's on TV."
Charlie's instantly cheerful. In the kitchen, Fi snags Michael by the elbow and whispers, "I know what you're afraid of. You'll never be like your father, Michael."
"You should have been a diplomat, Fi."
Fiona gives him a cheshire-cat grin. "How dull. Diplomats don't need guns."
Michael's answering smile confuses Charlie, but tells Fi everything she needs to know.
***
It's Sunday morning when Samantha picks her son up. It'll take six hours for them to get back home, she explains, and they really need to make sure he settles in. She scribbles an address for Michael to write to, and he folds it carefully within his grasp.
The boy eyes the older man with curious apprehension as his mother packs his belongings. Michael makes note of his watching. "I promise I'll write to you."
"Why?" Charlie asks.
"Because we're…friends." Michael says carefully. "And friends need to stick together."
"But you're mommy's friend, not mine."
"Don't you think I'm your friend?" Michael asks.
Charlie frowns. "Sure, but why do you have to be my friend all the way across the country?"
That cuts right through Michael's pretenses. "Someday," Michael says, "when you're older…when things are safer…I'll tell you. But right now, you need to be with your mom."
"Okay," Charlie says. "I don't really hate you," he admits.
"I knew," Michael replies.
"I just wanted you to know. Thanks for the ice cream, Mister."
Michael smiles. "You're welcome."
There isn't a hug, but a look of understanding, a smile. Maybe closeness will come some day, when it's all over and he has time to have a life that's wholly his own. Samantha takes the boy's hand and guides him outside; she shoots Michael a look of respectful understanding all her own as she takes the boy by the hand and leads him outside. He watches her rental car retreat for a few minutes, Fiona's hand on his shoulder. And the address lies cradled in his palm, a token of newly-born love.
THE END