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Entry tags:
.fic: Sons and Lovers - D/M PG 1.1
Title: Sons and Lovers
By: HF
Pairing: D/M (mostly from Victor's POV)
Rating/Warnings: PG/PG13?
Disclaimers: Without a Trace belongs to CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Hank Steinberg. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Advertisements: Alas, you must do some reading before this fic will make much sense: Sons (which I'm belatedly incorporating into this weird little nameless AU), A Long Time Coming, Every Distance, and at least the first chapter of Blue River. Apologies for that. But, if you read all the way through the above fics, I solemnly guarantee you that you will come out a stronger and better person for having done it and you will look five years younger.
Notes: This fic literally smote me while I was driving back from a wonderful afternoon of tea and gingerbread with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
faramir_boromir, and I thought about it in great detail while I should have been paying attention to the road.
Title stolen from the great D.H. Lawrence, who I'm sure would be dismayed to see it being put to such use.
SONS AND LOVERS
Victor woke up at seven sharp, irritated with himself for oversleeping on a Saturday. Petra’s side of the bed was already empty, sheets cool to the touch, and he wondered if she was still jet-lagged from her trip to Prague. The trips – the amount of them, one piled on top of another, and her other obligations besides – were beginning to wear on her, though Victor knew she’d never tell him about it.
Sighing, he pulled on his robe and shuffled down the hall to the stairs, absently noted that Petra had started the coffee and that Martin seemed to be up already.
“Martin?” He peered around the half-open door, saw the rumpled and empty bed, a prescription bottle full of pills tipped over on the table next to it. No sign of Martin other than his suitcase, zipped up and pushed against his desk. A run then, he supposed.
But no, it was rainy and unpleasant, wet snow mixed into a miserable grey sky, and not even Martin would go running in this weather. A glance out the hall window showed Martin’s rental car still in the driveway, so he hadn’t gone to the gym either. All was silent downstairs, no conversation coming from the breakfast nook that he could hear.
That left... He glanced back up the hallway in the direction of the guest room. Door firmly shut, and Victor knew that if he tried it, he’d find it locked.
He turned away from the door and the thought alike, and hurried downstairs.
Petra was sitting alone at the breakfast table, newspaper open in front of her and looking more finished and composed in her robe and slippers than most heads of state Victor had ever met. She looked up as he walked in and offered him a smile, little more than a flex of her lips and a deepening of the fine lines around her eyes, but there all the same.
“How did you sleep?” Her traditional morning greeting for husband and children alike, familiar as a kiss after forty years of marriage.
“Like the dead.” Victor poured a cup of coffee, added sugar, not even bothering to blow on it before taking a sip. A bit too deep and he coughed, wincing at the burn and at the rueful smile on Petra’s face he could see through tear-stung eyes. He poured a bowl of cereal, flavorless wheat-germ twigs according to the picture on the box, resentfully eyeing the unopened box of Frosted Flakes – Martin’s favorite, bought only when he was coming home, and reserved for his exclusive use – sitting next to it. “Have you seen Martin?”
“No, I haven’t. I imagine he’s still asleep,” Petra said, peering speculatively into her teacup.
“Not in his bed,” Victor muttered.
“Victor...” Petra’s brows drew down, the beginnings of a scowl.
“What? I’m allowed to be uncomfortable with this.” He reached for an apple and the sports section. “I’m not saying I disapprove, Petra... I’m saying that I need time to get used to it.”
“You’ve known about Martin for almost two years now.”
“Knowing he’s... he’s gay is one thing. Having him bring home a – a – goddammit...”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yes. That’s a completely different thing.”
Petra sighed and sipped her tea. “Considering you threatened Trent with your CIA connections when he first started dating Margaret, I suppose I should be happy you’re taking this as well as you are.”
“When we were in New York two weeks ago, Martin told me they were sleeping together.” The shock of that still caught him at odd moments, like the shock of hearing Maggie was pregnant with her first child, a sudden flash of awareness that his son was involved. With another man. Physically. Too much to be surprised at to sort it all out – that Martin was gay, that Martin was in a relationship, that Martin was in a relationship with Danny Taylor, whom Victor remembered from several years ago.
Who had saved his son’s life back then, very probably, and saved him not once but twice now. He shifted uncomfortably and waited for Petra to say something. Anything.
“I figured they were,” Petra said musingly after a long pause. She folded up her section of the newspaper and set it aside. “But you didn’t seem to be bothered by it back then.”
“We had a terrorist and a murderer to catch,” Victor grunted. “There wasn’t time. And Tay – I mean, Danny – was very helpful.” A weak way of putting it, how Danny’d kept Martin together all that time, how Victor had been almost hoping for at least friendship between Martin and Danny, if only because Danny seemed to have some strange power over Martin, the ability to get him to listen to reason and convince him to stay safe. Victor had lost that ability long ago.
“So I guess you have Danny’s permanent file stashed in your office, and know everything about him,” Petra said with asperity. When Victor opened his mouth to tell her about the foster homes, the alcoholism, the ex-con brother, she raised a commanding, forbidding hand. “Unless he’s a terrorist, a murderer, or a rapist, Victor, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“You weren’t quite this accepting last night,” Victor commented after a moment.
“Danny was the agent who visited with him his second night at St. Vincent’s.” Petra tapped her pen against the joint of her thumb, something she did while thinking something over, considering her words. “I didn’t realize it until I was about to fall asleep... Martin never mentioned Danny when I was staying with him, and I never learned his name when I was at the hospital. I wonder, though...” She trailed off into silence and shook her head. “Well, there’s no point to that.”
“No point to what?”
Petra shrugged. “Idle speculation, and you don’t need to hear it right now.” Absolute decree, and there was no way she was going to tell him what she’d been thinking. She set her empty cup to the side, staring at it thoughtfully. “When he told me he was gay, I thought maybe I’d misunderstood about Jill’s wedding... that maybe the Sam he’d been talking about was actually a man. Isn’t that funny? He said no, that was Samantha, and I was being ridiculous.” Soft sigh at that. “I suppose I was.”
“When did he tell you?”
“When I stayed with him after the... after the shooting,” she said quietly. “The girl he’d been seeing – the other agent? – she came over to ask how he was doing, see if he needed anything. She didn’t stay long, and when I asked him why, Martin said that they’d broken up... That’s why he came to Jill and Thomas’s wedding alone. And then... then he told me. About himself.”
“What was it... What did you do?” Not the question he had wanted to ask.
You’ve known how long?
“It was as though he’d told me he was a... a vampire, or a sea turtle.” Petra laughed, soft and ironic, and stole a sip of coffee from Victor's cup. “I mean, I had no idea what to do with that. Some days I still don’t. And,” she paused and shrugged, brushed a few strands of dark hair out of her eyes – grey mixed in them now, and most women would have colored it out, but not Petra – “and, I asked if he was seeing anyone... He said no. What a ridiculous question, asking about a boyfriend at a time like that.” She laughed again and shook her head.
“He told you back then? Why didn’t you tell me?” Years she’d known about it and not told him, and while their work had meant confidentiality clauses and restricted information, they hadn’t kept their children’s secrets. He remembered his own reaction with no small amount of pain, his determination not to tell Petra, hoping that maybe what Martin had said had only been to anger him, hurt him. Martin’s strategy had worked brilliantly.
“Victor, he asked me not to tell you. And I promised... I couldn’t betray his confidence, not about something like that. I told him you should know, but he wanted to tell you himself, when he was ready.”
“When he could be sure to disappoint me,” Victor said bitterly, picking at the soft shell of a croissant.
“He didn’t say that, but I suspected that was why.” Petra toyed with her wedding ring, twisting the thin band around her ring finger. She almost never wore it there, preferring it on a chain around her neck. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you learned the way you did.”
“Well, I would have learned sooner or later.” Victor searched the table for butter, sighed when he couldn’t find it, ate the roll plain. “It... It’s something you couldn’t ever see, is it?”
Petra smiled. “Do you remember when we met? I was a senior at Radcliffe, you were first-year at Harvard Law?” She caught his rueful expression and smiled gently, reminiscently, still like the serious-eyed girl his friends had set him up with. “I never thought we’d ever be married in a million years. Mostly I couldn’t get past how terrible your ties were. They never matched your sweaters. I couldn’t ever see the two of us being together, until you proposed.”
“That’s different,” he answered, unwilling to be drawn out into memory.
“Not by much.” Petra sighed and took his right hand in both of hers, unexpectedly demonstrative. “We haven’t been the best parents for Martin and Maggie, I know, and maybe they turned out so well despite us. But, Victor... I don’t want Martin to be alone. He doesn’t deserve it.” Quiet and forceful, shaky edge of tears barely kept back, and he’d only ever seen Petra cry three times: her father’s funeral, her sister’s, when Martin had been born.
Victor remained silent.
“You’re going to obsess about this, I can tell.” Petra sighed and withdrew, passing her hands over her face tiredly. “It won’t do any good, Victor.”
“Petra, he’s never going to be able to move up in the Bureau now. The best he’ll probably be able to manage is department head; all he’s worked for – ”
“Um, good morning.”
Victor whipped around, One half of the object of their discussion was standing in the doorway leading to the breakfast room, watching them cautiously.
“Danny,” Petra said, voice warm and empty of the annoyance that had painted it only moments ago. “I’m sure you’re hungry. There’s fruit and rolls, and coffee in the kitchen.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Fitz – Petra.” Danny returned to the kitchen, clink of china and the refrigerator opening and shutting, exploratory sounds in the cupboards and pantry, soft hiss of coffee being poured.
“I wanted to tell you... I haven’t told you before...” Victor whispered. “Danny was the one... he was the agent with Martin in the car that night. He stayed with him until the ambulance got there.”
Petra’s face smoothed and she went still, sudden like an animal startled by something, her reaction to unexpected news. She sat there, composed as ever, but so still, eyes dark with thought.
Danny reappeared in the doorway, coffee and plate of fruit in hand, watching the two of them, and he had to know that something had just happened.
“Let them be happy,” Petra murmured to Victor before turning back to Danny with an invitation to sit and a smile, the same barely-there smile she gave everyone, not much of one at all unless a person knew where to look – into Petra’s eyes – and apparently Danny did, because he smiled back and sat down. Her hand closed around Danny’s, a brief, powerful grip that had Danny blinking at her in silent astonishment, gaze flickering from her hand to her face until she released him.
“Now, Danny,” she said, “how did you sleep?”
-end-
In other news: Eee! Snow! It's snowing! *cavort*
By: HF
Pairing: D/M (mostly from Victor's POV)
Rating/Warnings: PG/PG13?
Disclaimers: Without a Trace belongs to CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Hank Steinberg. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Advertisements: Alas, you must do some reading before this fic will make much sense: Sons (which I'm belatedly incorporating into this weird little nameless AU), A Long Time Coming, Every Distance, and at least the first chapter of Blue River. Apologies for that. But, if you read all the way through the above fics, I solemnly guarantee you that you will come out a stronger and better person for having done it and you will look five years younger.
Notes: This fic literally smote me while I was driving back from a wonderful afternoon of tea and gingerbread with
faramir_boromir, and I thought about it in great detail while I should have been paying attention to the road.Title stolen from the great D.H. Lawrence, who I'm sure would be dismayed to see it being put to such use.
SONS AND LOVERS
Victor woke up at seven sharp, irritated with himself for oversleeping on a Saturday. Petra’s side of the bed was already empty, sheets cool to the touch, and he wondered if she was still jet-lagged from her trip to Prague. The trips – the amount of them, one piled on top of another, and her other obligations besides – were beginning to wear on her, though Victor knew she’d never tell him about it.
Sighing, he pulled on his robe and shuffled down the hall to the stairs, absently noted that Petra had started the coffee and that Martin seemed to be up already.
“Martin?” He peered around the half-open door, saw the rumpled and empty bed, a prescription bottle full of pills tipped over on the table next to it. No sign of Martin other than his suitcase, zipped up and pushed against his desk. A run then, he supposed.
But no, it was rainy and unpleasant, wet snow mixed into a miserable grey sky, and not even Martin would go running in this weather. A glance out the hall window showed Martin’s rental car still in the driveway, so he hadn’t gone to the gym either. All was silent downstairs, no conversation coming from the breakfast nook that he could hear.
That left... He glanced back up the hallway in the direction of the guest room. Door firmly shut, and Victor knew that if he tried it, he’d find it locked.
He turned away from the door and the thought alike, and hurried downstairs.
Petra was sitting alone at the breakfast table, newspaper open in front of her and looking more finished and composed in her robe and slippers than most heads of state Victor had ever met. She looked up as he walked in and offered him a smile, little more than a flex of her lips and a deepening of the fine lines around her eyes, but there all the same.
“How did you sleep?” Her traditional morning greeting for husband and children alike, familiar as a kiss after forty years of marriage.
“Like the dead.” Victor poured a cup of coffee, added sugar, not even bothering to blow on it before taking a sip. A bit too deep and he coughed, wincing at the burn and at the rueful smile on Petra’s face he could see through tear-stung eyes. He poured a bowl of cereal, flavorless wheat-germ twigs according to the picture on the box, resentfully eyeing the unopened box of Frosted Flakes – Martin’s favorite, bought only when he was coming home, and reserved for his exclusive use – sitting next to it. “Have you seen Martin?”
“No, I haven’t. I imagine he’s still asleep,” Petra said, peering speculatively into her teacup.
“Not in his bed,” Victor muttered.
“Victor...” Petra’s brows drew down, the beginnings of a scowl.
“What? I’m allowed to be uncomfortable with this.” He reached for an apple and the sports section. “I’m not saying I disapprove, Petra... I’m saying that I need time to get used to it.”
“You’ve known about Martin for almost two years now.”
“Knowing he’s... he’s gay is one thing. Having him bring home a – a – goddammit...”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yes. That’s a completely different thing.”
Petra sighed and sipped her tea. “Considering you threatened Trent with your CIA connections when he first started dating Margaret, I suppose I should be happy you’re taking this as well as you are.”
“When we were in New York two weeks ago, Martin told me they were sleeping together.” The shock of that still caught him at odd moments, like the shock of hearing Maggie was pregnant with her first child, a sudden flash of awareness that his son was involved. With another man. Physically. Too much to be surprised at to sort it all out – that Martin was gay, that Martin was in a relationship, that Martin was in a relationship with Danny Taylor, whom Victor remembered from several years ago.
Who had saved his son’s life back then, very probably, and saved him not once but twice now. He shifted uncomfortably and waited for Petra to say something. Anything.
“I figured they were,” Petra said musingly after a long pause. She folded up her section of the newspaper and set it aside. “But you didn’t seem to be bothered by it back then.”
“We had a terrorist and a murderer to catch,” Victor grunted. “There wasn’t time. And Tay – I mean, Danny – was very helpful.” A weak way of putting it, how Danny’d kept Martin together all that time, how Victor had been almost hoping for at least friendship between Martin and Danny, if only because Danny seemed to have some strange power over Martin, the ability to get him to listen to reason and convince him to stay safe. Victor had lost that ability long ago.
“So I guess you have Danny’s permanent file stashed in your office, and know everything about him,” Petra said with asperity. When Victor opened his mouth to tell her about the foster homes, the alcoholism, the ex-con brother, she raised a commanding, forbidding hand. “Unless he’s a terrorist, a murderer, or a rapist, Victor, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“You weren’t quite this accepting last night,” Victor commented after a moment.
“Danny was the agent who visited with him his second night at St. Vincent’s.” Petra tapped her pen against the joint of her thumb, something she did while thinking something over, considering her words. “I didn’t realize it until I was about to fall asleep... Martin never mentioned Danny when I was staying with him, and I never learned his name when I was at the hospital. I wonder, though...” She trailed off into silence and shook her head. “Well, there’s no point to that.”
“No point to what?”
Petra shrugged. “Idle speculation, and you don’t need to hear it right now.” Absolute decree, and there was no way she was going to tell him what she’d been thinking. She set her empty cup to the side, staring at it thoughtfully. “When he told me he was gay, I thought maybe I’d misunderstood about Jill’s wedding... that maybe the Sam he’d been talking about was actually a man. Isn’t that funny? He said no, that was Samantha, and I was being ridiculous.” Soft sigh at that. “I suppose I was.”
“When did he tell you?”
“When I stayed with him after the... after the shooting,” she said quietly. “The girl he’d been seeing – the other agent? – she came over to ask how he was doing, see if he needed anything. She didn’t stay long, and when I asked him why, Martin said that they’d broken up... That’s why he came to Jill and Thomas’s wedding alone. And then... then he told me. About himself.”
“What was it... What did you do?” Not the question he had wanted to ask.
You’ve known how long?
“It was as though he’d told me he was a... a vampire, or a sea turtle.” Petra laughed, soft and ironic, and stole a sip of coffee from Victor's cup. “I mean, I had no idea what to do with that. Some days I still don’t. And,” she paused and shrugged, brushed a few strands of dark hair out of her eyes – grey mixed in them now, and most women would have colored it out, but not Petra – “and, I asked if he was seeing anyone... He said no. What a ridiculous question, asking about a boyfriend at a time like that.” She laughed again and shook her head.
“He told you back then? Why didn’t you tell me?” Years she’d known about it and not told him, and while their work had meant confidentiality clauses and restricted information, they hadn’t kept their children’s secrets. He remembered his own reaction with no small amount of pain, his determination not to tell Petra, hoping that maybe what Martin had said had only been to anger him, hurt him. Martin’s strategy had worked brilliantly.
“Victor, he asked me not to tell you. And I promised... I couldn’t betray his confidence, not about something like that. I told him you should know, but he wanted to tell you himself, when he was ready.”
“When he could be sure to disappoint me,” Victor said bitterly, picking at the soft shell of a croissant.
“He didn’t say that, but I suspected that was why.” Petra toyed with her wedding ring, twisting the thin band around her ring finger. She almost never wore it there, preferring it on a chain around her neck. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you learned the way you did.”
“Well, I would have learned sooner or later.” Victor searched the table for butter, sighed when he couldn’t find it, ate the roll plain. “It... It’s something you couldn’t ever see, is it?”
Petra smiled. “Do you remember when we met? I was a senior at Radcliffe, you were first-year at Harvard Law?” She caught his rueful expression and smiled gently, reminiscently, still like the serious-eyed girl his friends had set him up with. “I never thought we’d ever be married in a million years. Mostly I couldn’t get past how terrible your ties were. They never matched your sweaters. I couldn’t ever see the two of us being together, until you proposed.”
“That’s different,” he answered, unwilling to be drawn out into memory.
“Not by much.” Petra sighed and took his right hand in both of hers, unexpectedly demonstrative. “We haven’t been the best parents for Martin and Maggie, I know, and maybe they turned out so well despite us. But, Victor... I don’t want Martin to be alone. He doesn’t deserve it.” Quiet and forceful, shaky edge of tears barely kept back, and he’d only ever seen Petra cry three times: her father’s funeral, her sister’s, when Martin had been born.
Victor remained silent.
“You’re going to obsess about this, I can tell.” Petra sighed and withdrew, passing her hands over her face tiredly. “It won’t do any good, Victor.”
“Petra, he’s never going to be able to move up in the Bureau now. The best he’ll probably be able to manage is department head; all he’s worked for – ”
“Um, good morning.”
Victor whipped around, One half of the object of their discussion was standing in the doorway leading to the breakfast room, watching them cautiously.
“Danny,” Petra said, voice warm and empty of the annoyance that had painted it only moments ago. “I’m sure you’re hungry. There’s fruit and rolls, and coffee in the kitchen.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Fitz – Petra.” Danny returned to the kitchen, clink of china and the refrigerator opening and shutting, exploratory sounds in the cupboards and pantry, soft hiss of coffee being poured.
“I wanted to tell you... I haven’t told you before...” Victor whispered. “Danny was the one... he was the agent with Martin in the car that night. He stayed with him until the ambulance got there.”
Petra’s face smoothed and she went still, sudden like an animal startled by something, her reaction to unexpected news. She sat there, composed as ever, but so still, eyes dark with thought.
Danny reappeared in the doorway, coffee and plate of fruit in hand, watching the two of them, and he had to know that something had just happened.
“Let them be happy,” Petra murmured to Victor before turning back to Danny with an invitation to sit and a smile, the same barely-there smile she gave everyone, not much of one at all unless a person knew where to look – into Petra’s eyes – and apparently Danny did, because he smiled back and sat down. Her hand closed around Danny’s, a brief, powerful grip that had Danny blinking at her in silent astonishment, gaze flickering from her hand to her face until she released him.
“Now, Danny,” she said, “how did you sleep?”
-end-
In other news: Eee! Snow! It's snowing! *cavort*
no subject
It's kind of weird... I mean, Martin wasn't abused or anything and grew up (seemingly) upper-middle class with all the privilege that comes with it, but still, I'd have hated to have his childhood :/ Poor Fitz.