Chapter Text
------------Month 3------------------
“Stop.” His body suddenly stops its anxious movement. His drumming knees, fiddling thumbs, and rocking torso. He grows so still she suddenly wishes he was moving again. Bringing forth action or something that is alive and concrete, unlike the uncertain anxiety she feels nestled tightly in her stomach.
She glances to her left, to see if her sudden outburst has placed a visible expression on his face. It hasn’t. He sits just as he had before, a small smile on his lips as he looks straight at the wall in front of them. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, eyes moving like his to the happy couple that walks in. The woman is visibly uncomfortable, around the eighth month of her pregnancy, and the man waits patiently as he holds each door open for her. His smile brings tears to Dani’s eyes and she’s reminded that she’ll never have what they have. “I’m just emotional.”
He tears his eyes away from the couple. That small smile still on his lips. “It’s fine,” she watches as he pulls his right hand up to his mouth, pressing his nails to his teeth. He never chews them, she’s noticed, but he still places them there. It’s a habit, biting his nails, but he’s kicked it and now soothes the urge to bite by placing the blunt nail to lips. The result is lips that looked chapped. Those chapped lips pull into a smile,” are you excited?”
She doesn’t know.
“Brights?” A nurse in painfully happy scrubs smiles until she sees Dani is the only one getting up. “Is dad not coming?” The way she says it, her frown, it makes Dani realize that she may never have what the happy couple has but she has a perfectly good friend. Dani looks back, Malcolm’s fingers pressed back to his lips and his eyes cast to the wall again. He’s not dad. He didn’t do this and here he sits.
He senses their eyes and turns to them.
“Come on.”
He looks between Dani and the nurse, dumbfounded. He stands when she motions again with her hand. He follows just a step behind, close but not close enough. His head is ducked but she knows from that look in his eyes that he’s focused on their conversation.
“Do you want an ultrasound?”
She hasn’t got the time before Malcolm’s head is back up and grinning,” of course.”
The nurse smiles at his eagerness. She has no idea how that simple, silly smile sends her heart racing. The way his icy blue eyes flick to her, eager and so excited to see a child that isn’t his. None of this is going to work.
“Let’s get the worst over with,” the nurse says once she leads them into their room. She motions for Dani to set on the table and Malcolm joins her uncertainty in the space to her left, standing with his hands in his pockets. The nurse smiles at them, pulling instruments out of respective draws. “I need a little blood.”
Malcolm pats her shoulder, a small joking smile on his lips. Dani doesn’t appreciate his humor.
The nurse positions the needle-
She grabs his hand.
He doesn’t let go.
She draws the blood, slow, and explains each of her movements as she walks them through the steps. She smiles the whole time, attempting to soothe, what she assumes is, first time parent anxieties. The complexity of what they really are is lost even to them.
The doctor nods, a middle aged woman in overly happy scrubs just like the nurse.
“Now, for the best part.” The nurse says, she slides out, hitting the lights as the doctor takes her spot. She pulls the cart up to Dani’s side. Dani squeezes his hand, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes as she rolls her shirt up. The sound she makes as the cold jelly hits her skin makes Malcolm chuckle and Dani wonders if this is what life is like all the time for the other woman. To have someone who is there for her. Dani likes having him here.
“Is that-” Malcolm’s voice cuts off, his mouth unhinged as he looks at the shadow on the monitor.
Dani cries. Looking at this unborn child… She’s got a million things running through her head. She can’t abort the baby, in her mind she’s justified this child. Somehow, she loves this baby despite never having held it or even named it. She can’t put it up for adoption either. It’s hers. This baby is her child. A child she has to raise, to help become an adult better than her. She has deprived this child of a father but she’s more than certain that between Gil and Jt… and even Malcolm, things will be fine.
The baby will be fine.
“It looks like a chicken nugget,” Malcolm says, voice thick with his own tears. “I mean, I’ve seen plenty of sonograms but…”
The doctor smiles up at him,” yeah. It’s a little different when it's your baby though, right?”
Malcolm grins, shooting Dani a sideways glance. He agrees,” yeah, something like that.”
She squeezes his hand, smiling through her tears. “When can I-we know the gender?”
The doctor frowns, she moves the wand around on Dani’s stomach. “You're uncertain about what week you are, right?” The doctor clicks her tongue,” mmm.” She moves the wand more, positioning it until she grins. “I’d say you’re nearly sixteen weeks. If you’re lucky, today.” She fishes around a little more, Dani squeezing Malcolm’s hand. “Op!”
Dani grins as the baby comes into full view.
“What are we hoping for dad?” The doctor glances up at Malcolm.
At the same time, Dani and Malcolm both proclaim,” girl.”
The doctor smiles,” did you practice that?” She doesn’t notice the deep flush on both their cheeks. “Good news, I think we’ve got ourselves a happy baby girl.”
“You seem happy.”
Gil eyes them both in a way that Dani knows means he thinks something is umok between the two of them. She rolls her eyes and ducks under the crime scene tape. Her stomach is still sticky with the jelly from the ultrasound but when duty calls…
“Yeah,” JT frowns at them, looking unamused but Dani finds it harder and harder lately to tell the difference between his moods. “Why were you together?”
Malcolm doesn't say a word, doesn’t even spare them a second glance. He just keeps doing his job.
“I went to an ultrasound for the baby,” she excludes why Malcolm would be there but with their attention now on her child, he’s the least of their concerns.
Which is why they miss the bomb.
“Malcolm!”
The blast comes unexpectedly. It shoves her off her feet, forcing her to land hard on the floor. She blinks heavily, her ears ringing and her arms tingling. Dust rains down. She blinks it away, the thick clouds settling in her hair and eyelashes.
“Malcolm!” She stands and the world tilts for a moment before she’s able to right herself on her feet. She sees him, just off to the side. His body is bent in on itself, startling crimson standing out against his chestnut brown hair and pale skin. “M-Malcolm?” She takes a step forward, fear tight in her chest.
She hadn’t seen the bomb. No one had.
JT gets to Malcolm first. Gently turning him over under those startling blue eyes blink open and pinch shut as the sun above assault his eyes. He’s kicked into action, his body trying to fight something that is not there.
“Stay still,” dazed herself she’s no help. JT does his best to talk Malcolm down, to convince him to go to the hospital, to calm down. Malcolm wrestles himself free of JT’s grip, stumbling dangerously without JT’s hands keeping him upright. “Malcolm!” JT catches him around the waist, managing to keep him on his feet instead of nosediving back on to the floor.
He sits still just long enough for a medic to declare that he’s pretty sure no real damage has been done. It’s enough time for Gil to decide she and Malcolm are going home and he’s not seeing or hearing from either of them unless one of them is dead or dying. She doesn’t test him on how much he means that. She takes Malcolm’s elbow and does her best to steer him into her car.
“I made another appointment. It’s for a few weeks from now.”
He hadn’t expected her to update him. More so, he hadn’t expected the update to be in the middle of another of their infamous ‘Dani takes Malcolm home so he can lick his wounds and sleep’ trips. He closes his eyes, trying to gather words in his mind to create a sentence around the pounding assault of his concussion. He ends up grunting, bringing his left hand over his ear and resting his head against the back of the seat.
Her eyes stay on the road, sparing him a single glance. She feels for him, really. Concussions are a pain and always seem to take too long to heal but those caused by a blast… They take so much longer to heal, the tinnitus is horrendous. “If you’d like to come…”
He grunts again, peeling himself away from the leather of the chair and putting his head in his hands. “I…” he clears his throat. His pupils remain unevenly dilated, the same dazed look smacked across his face as the one he had when she helped him to his feet. “I’ll be there,” he slurs slightly, his hand pressing harder into his skull. “Jus-Just as soon as this ringing…” he sputters off his sentence. He looks up, eyes big,” pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over!”
She does, tires screeching and a horn honking as she weaves over. Malcolm’s door is open before the car is stopped. His knees hit the sidewalk below, pitching him on his hands and knees. She cringes at his rough gagging, feeling sorry and compassionate for his suffering. Just a month ago that was her.
“Bright,” she makes her way over to the other side. His arms trembling under the weight of his chest. He glances up at her, dragging a hand across his lips. “You good?” She offers him a hand up and his hand is freezing. He shakes his head, leaning heavily on Dani’s hand. “We, uh,” she steadies him against her. “We switched placed didn’t we?” He trips, unable to lift his feet up all the way but he does smile. Offering her a small solace, that he’s weak and clammy, concussed and tired but still there.
“Sorry,” he grunts, still needing her pressed into his side as she helps him back into the car.
“Don’t worry about it.”
And he doesn’t.
“You should probably sleep,” she says, feeling the cool buzz in the air when his body is longer pressed against hers. He spends exactly three seconds wobbling in the direction of his bed before his attention goes to the stairs by his bed. The stairs she knows leads to the desk and serial killer paraphernalia he keeps ‘hidden’. “... but you won’t.”
She follows him.
“Or,” Malcolm proposes spinning around to face her too quickly and leaning heavily on the edge of his desk. “Or I can work on the profile I now know needs to be worked on because our killer has evolved!” He’s clearly happy with this improvement but Dani already knows that his methods are going to lean on burning out and starvation. Two things she shouldn’t let him do, with or without the concussion.
“Can I help,” she settles herself in his chair, not giving him the option. Not that she’s so sure he would say no. There’s something about the look in his eyes that makes her realize that he really wouldn’t say no. She’s always invited, welcomes in what little space he allows himself. It speaks to something but she hasn’t figured out the depth of the reach. She thinks that, with him, there’s a chance she never will.