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Alan enjoyed being a father of sons. Not that he would have minded a daughter. Especially after Margaret passed away there were several times when a feminine voice would have come in handy, but that aside there was simplicity to having sons. Alan could understand their basic desires and there were things he didn't have to worry about with sons, like them brining inappropriate men home.
At least that's what Alan thought until one April when he stepped into the garage with a load of laundry in his arms. He stood there for what felt like ages trying to process what he was seeing, his mind throwing up dozens of explanations until it surrendered to the hard truth. His son, his baby boy, was kissing Agent Ian Edgerton. And it wasn't a little kiss. Charlie had his legs around Agent Edgerton's waist and his back against one of his chalk boards and they looked like they were trying to swallow each other's faces.
Alan accepted that he was seeing what he was seeing at pretty much the same moment Charlie opened his eyes. Charlie let out a squeak. Alan let out a yelp and dropped the laundry. Agent Edgerton spun around and dropped Charlie. Alan babbled something and ran from the garage.
Alan managed two drinks before Ian and Charlie came out. Charlie's babbled explanation contained far more math than any discussion about sex should but what Alan managed to ferret out was that it was a casual relationship but it had been going on for a while. Agent Edgerton said very little and Alan tried to remember everything he may have heard about the agent either whispered or outright. Alan's mind kept landing on sniper and lines crossed.
Alan excused himself sighting laundry that still needed to be done and told Charlie they'd talk about it later. They never got to that talk. That was in April.
In early July Alan picked up the phone late one evening to call a friend that had retired in Hawaii. Instead of a dial tone what he heard was the deep voice of Agent Edgerton giving a detailed description of a somewhat complicated sounding sexual act. Alan carefully hung up the phone and went downstairs trying not to hear the moans coming from the other side of Charlie's door.
Alan spent the next several hours getting drunk. The next morning after the worst of the hangover had passed Alan drove to the cemetery to have a long rant at Margaret. He'd tried having a rant at Don but Don just told him that Charlie was Charlie and that Charlie was going to live his life the way he wanted with who he wanted and that he was being a bit of a hypocrite if he really had problems with it. Alan had been forced to agree on a greater philosophical level but there's a difference between philosophy and hearing your son have phone sex with a man who kills for a living. That was July.
In September, the weekend before classes started Charlie announced he was going camping for a few days. Alan was a little surprised. Normally Charlie spent the weekend before the start of the year bouncing off walls while trying to finalize his lesson plans. But Charlie packed his bags then waited. Suddenly there was a honk from outside. Charlie grabbed his bags and ran from the house. Alan followed. Out front was a pickup truck with Agent Edgerton behind the wheel. Charlie threw his bags in the back of the truck and climbed into the cab. Agent Edgerton waved to Alan before pulling away from the curb and driving off. On Monday morning Charlie stumbled into the house smiling with a considerable quantity of grass in his hair. Alan wondered if eight AM was really too early for that first drink. That was September.
In the first week of December Charlie announced that he'd invited Agent Edgerton to stay with them for the holidays. The agent had arrived the first night of Hanukah with a stack of neatly wrapped gifts and after kissing Charlie offered to help in the kitchen.
Alan did his best to make polite conversation. It was the holidays after all. He found out that Agent Edgerton's Hebrew was nearly fluent. As was his Arabic, Kurdish, Tagalog, and Persian. Apparently there's no point in getting people to answer your questions if you can't understand what they're saying. Alan let the conversation falter after that.
That night before bed he found the white noise generator that he'd been given and never used and turned it up loud so he wouldn't be accidentally exposed to any of Charlie and Agent Edgerton's private holiday festivities. Though no amount of white noise could erase the sight of a rather large hickey on the back of Agent Edgerton's neck as he passed Alan in the hall the next morning. That was December.
Round about mid February Charlie received a large flat envelope in the mail. He'd snuck upstairs to read it and didn't come down for several hours. When he did he had an odd look on his face. He went into the garage and didn't properly emerge for several days. Alan was glad when it didn't appear to be P vs. NP that had Charlie obsessed but Alan didn't recognize what the math was and Charlie wasn't forthcoming.
Just before Charlie emerged from the garage Alan popped into Charlie's room to gather up some laundry. He knew it was absurd doing Charlie's laundry at his age but it wasn't likely to get done any other way. As he was reaching for socks he noticed a stack of papers by the side of the bed. The paper looked thick and expensive and the handwriting was not Charlie's. It was curving and elegant. Alan read. Alan knew he shouldn't but couldn't seem to stop.
It was a love letter that went on for page after page. Sometimes it was achingly romantic at other points it became pornographic, still at other points it was funny. It often referenced moments or cases that Alan didn't know about. It was full of pet names, the most common one being Voodoo. Most striking though were the promises littered throughout. Some were extravagant promises of love immortal, others were more mundane, like a promise to eat more fruit and start getting flu shots.
Alan put the letter back just as it had been when he was finished and left the room the laundry forgotten. He went into the back yard and stood by the koi pond that he had dug out shortly after the house was purchased. Charlie had crawled into it as in infant. He'd been under several seconds before Margaret yanked him out. He'd sputtered but hadn't cried. Instead he'd twisted around in Margaret's arms and reached out for the water.
He and Margaret had sighed, gone upstairs, and filled the bath tub so they could give Charlie his first swimming lesson or at least teach him how to float. Alan remembered thinking at the time that perhaps there was something a little odd about his son who took from nearly drowning a desire to swim. That had also been in February.
It was April again when Charlie was shot. Alan couldn't even blame Don or the FBI. A gunman had walked into Charlie's favorite coffee shop and demanded the register. Charlie had tried to keep everything calm and had been shot for his trouble. That's what the LAPD officer told him and Don as they waited outside the ER. The doctor told them the bullet had been small and slow and that wasn't a good thing. It had ricocheted around Charlie's insides doing lots of damage then stopped near his spine. They were doing all they could to save him but it would be a long haul. And even if they could save his life the chance of damage to his spinal cord was good. Don wanted to hear exact odds. Alan didn't.
It was nine hours before Charlie was out of surgery. By that time he had blood in him from David, Nikki, Larry, Robin, half of the FBI SWAT team and a considerable number of LAPD officers, most from Gary Walker's team. Eight hours after that Charlie was declared stable enough to visit. Alan never thought he'd be in another hospital room watching another son lay still and pale as a respirator breathed for him. Charlie had lost a portion of his left lung and they wouldn't know if there was spinal damage until he woke up.
Don stumbled back to the office after that to get reports on the possible shooter. Alan was left slumped by Charlie's bedside holding his hand. That was when Agent Edgerton rushed in. His eyes were sunken and his skin ashen. He crouched down by Charlie's side and brushed away a bit of stray curl. Alan could see his hands shaking.
"Charlie?"
"He hasn't regained consciousness." Alan's voice sounded odd to his own ears; distant and raw. "They had him in surgery for nine hours."
Agent Edgerton pressed his forehead to Charlie's. "Wake up, Professor," He whispered. "Please wake up. You're the only person on earth who puts up with my ass and I need you to wake up and be alright and when you do I promise I'm not going anywhere, okay? Wake up and I will find who did this to you. Wake up and I'll let you take me to that place you're always talking about out on Catalina, and we can sit on a beach and you can talk about fluid dynamics as much as you want, please."
A nurse came to the door. "I'm sorry but I can only allow family in this room." Agent Edgerton tried flashing his badge. "That's nice," the nurse said "But unless you are family I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
Agent Edgerton looked at Alan. There was pleading in his eyes, fear and desperation. Alan knew this could be his one chance to get rid of this violent man who looked at the world through a rifle scope. Who had somehow enticed his little boy even deeper into a dark world Alan didn't fully understand. Alan knew he could banish him back out into the night that he came from.
Alan took a deep breath. "Agent Edgerton is Charlie's... partner. He's family."
"I see. Well if I could get your full name I'll put you on the visitation list."
Agent Edgerton's eye's shone with unshed tears. "Um… Ian, Ian Edgerton."
The nurse scribbled the name onto a little notepad. "All right Mr. Edgerton, I'll get your name on the list. Try not to over stimulate him. What he needs more than anything now is rest."
Ian just nodded and pulled a chair up along side Charlie's bed, across from Alan. He sat down, took Charlie's hand and waited.
Charlie didn't wake up that night, or the next night, or even the one after that. On the fourth night Ian stepped out of the room for just a moment. Charlie's eyes took that moment to flutter open for just a half second then close again. When Alan told Ian he picked up Charlie's hand and kissed it then told Charlie it was okay and he could sleep a bit longer.
Ian was there twenty-four hours later when Charlie managed to open his eyes and keep them open long enough for the doctors to see. Twenty-four hours after that he opened his eyes and wiggled his toes and looked very confused when Don burst into tears. Ian was there for that as well.
Ian was there when they took Charlie off the respirator. He just lay there and breathed for several minutes while the doctor droned on about damage and long term problems and rehabilitation.
Charlie waited until the doctor had stopped then licked his lips. "Hi." His voice was thin, raw and scratchy.
This time it was Ian that started to cry. "Hey there, Voodoo."
Charlie smiled then began coughing up a weeks worth of gunk, old blood and dead lung. He coughed hard enough to pull out stitches.
Ian was there a week later when Charlie managed to pull out stitches again simply by throwing a frustrated tantrum when he realized just how limited his mobility was and decided to override it through force of will.
Alan had come in to find a freshly bandaged Charlie sulking in his bed while Ian tried to spoon feed him some hospital apple sauce. Charlie's jaw was locked shut.
"Here comes the airplane." Ian tried.
"That didn't work when he was two."
Ian squinted at Charlie, Charlie squinted back. "Hey Alan, did you see the thing on the news about that town that was trying to get pi legally defined as 3 again?"
Charlie opened his mouth to rage and quickly found it filled with apple sauce.
"Congratulations Ian. That's only gonna work once. In case you haven't noticed, he learns."
A few days after that Charlie was finally allowed to get to his feet. He did it while wrapped in Ian's arms.
That was all in April.
It was almost June and Charlie was asleep on the couch, his body rather effectively pinning Ian's. He still fell asleep several times a day. His class load had been cut back to one day a week and only in subjects no one else taught. His case load had been cut back to almost nothing as well. Alan would have preferred it at completely nothing and Don tried that but Charlie had made some interesting threats involving Ian's rifle, Don's backside, and possibly hacking Don's personnel file and inserting several baby pictures.
Alan had heard that Charlie got a standing ovation the first time he stepped back into the bullpen.
Alan checked his watch. It wasn't quite dinner yet and Charlie could sleep for another hour or so. The evenings were starting to get warmer but Charlie was still prone to getting easily chilled. He grabbed the light blanket that was just out of Ian's reach and carefully covered both men.
Ian smiled and gave a little nod as he stroked his fingers through Charlie's hair. Alan gave a little nod back and headed to the kitchen to finish off dinner for his boys.