Balance Requires Motion 8/9
Jun. 7th, 2010 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nell65Title: Balance Requires Motion
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, Nikita Wirth, OCs
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: 40,300 words
Chapter: 8/9
Summary: "When Michael first saw Nikita standing on his front porch, his whole world splintered and then, between one step and the next, remade itself."
Part 1, Living the Normal Life, can be found here.
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 1
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 2
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 3
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 4
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 5
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 6
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 7
*****
Michael lay on his side on their bed and watched Nikita run her fingers lightly over their infant son, who was asleep between them. At two weeks old, Robby had begun to fill out and lose the scrawny newborn look, and he was also losing what little hair he had been born with. He was on his back in the middle of their bed, with his tiny arms flung wide and every now and then his mouth would move as he dreamed of suckling at his mother’s breast.
Nikita looked up and caught Michael staring at her. She smiled. “Hey.”
He smiled back at her. “Hey.”
Her smile faded a bit and she asked, “Do you ever feel…” She trailed off and made a face, trying to distance herself from her question with self-mockery. “Adrift?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, I’m happy. I’m really, really happy. I have right now, in this room, in this house, everything I’ve wanted and dreamed about for the last fifteen years. And it is more amazing than I knew how to imagine.” She curled her finger around Robby’s hand. “So, I feel like there shouldn’t be a ‘but,’ but –“
“There is.”
“Yeah.” She pulled her mouth into a deep frown. “I hated the Section right? But, when your choice is get out of bed or die, you get out of bed with a certain – intensity. That is, when you’re not thinking seriously about death.” She shrugged again, and smiled a little, rueful smile. “Then, once I was Operations, well, the sense that you might save the world again today, that’s – powerful.”
“I know.”
“So, how did you learn to live without it?”
“I didn’t. Not all at once. I thought I was going back, and so everything I did was part of the profile. To get Adam trained to survive on his own, while building him a life he might not have to run from.” Michael reached out and lightly stroked the back of his finger along Robby’s soft cheek, still amazed that he and Nikita had actually managed what had seemed so utterly impossible for so long. He looked back at Nikita. “And then, when I realized I wasn’t going back, I had years of habit to fall back on.”
“Right.”
“I had my job, and Adam’s needs, to get me through the days.”
“Do you ever miss it?”
He knew what she meant. “That intensity?”
Nikita nodded, her eyes steady on his.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He offered, “I’m happy now.”
“I know.” She grinned at him then. “You smile so easily and so often. You even laugh, really laugh. You never used to laugh like that.”
“Which – also feels strange.”
Nikita looked back down at Robby, cradling her fingers around his smooth, balding head. “So, if we’re both happy, why do we feel this, weird, floating nowhere sort of feeling at the same time?”
“Veterans can feel like this. Cult walkways too.”
“Well, I suppose, in a way, we are both.”
“Yes.”
“So, how do we find something else?”
“We don’t. We adjust to living a fully human life, and let go of the idea of trying to recapture what was so artificially intense.”
“Artificially?”
“The world hasn’t actually blown up yet, without us, has it?”
“No. It hasn’t.” Nikita chuckled wryly. “So, what you’re saying is, we, me, I, I should get over myself a bit, yeah?”
“Yes. And be easier on yourself too. I’ve had almost ten years to deal with this, you’ve had, what, eighteen months?”
“More or less.”
“Give yourself more time.”
*****
Michael thought about their conversation often over the next weeks as he carefully watched Nikita adjust to the mundane reality of parenting an infant. Dealing with Adam and the mercurial nature of teenage drama had really not been a very good introduction to the tedious nature of daily life with a newborn. For one thing, a teenager was a lot more variable than a new baby.
Which Adam demonstrated by presenting them with a brand new challenge, this time while Michael was washing dishes after supper. Adam appeared at the top of the stairs to the basement and declared, “A bunch of us want to go camping over Memorial Day. Without parents along.”
Feeling Nikita’s eyes on the back of his head, Michael did not say, “no.” Instead he asked, “Who is in this ‘bunch’?”
Adam rattled off a string of names, most of them familiar to Michael. It did not escape Michael’s notice that the group was a nearly even mix of boys and girls. When Michael pressed him, Adam turned out to have a well-thought out plan. Adam had chosen a park, looked into the campsite rules, made a reservation, and had a plan for when they would leave and when they would return and who would be driving and how and what they would eat and where all the equipment would be gathered from.
As impressed as he was, Michael still wanted to say no. He was also sure that as soon as he turned to look at her, Nikita would urge him to say yes. Which she did, sort of, but in a way Michael did not anticipate.
She leaned up against the doorframe to the dining room and said, “I think it sounds like a lot of fun.”
Adam frowned. “But?”
“Here’s the thing. You, Adam formerly-Samuelle, cannot get busted by the park rangers. Not in the way other teenagers should avoid getting busted. In the way people who are supposed to be invisible and are hiding from other people who will have no hesitation about hunting them down and killing them if they get a solid lead, can’t get busted. Do you understand that?”
Adam shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I don’t think you do. If you get busted, if there is any official record tied to the name on your drivers’ license, we will immediately walk out on this life. Everything you have here under this name; your friends, your school, your grades, your soccer stats, your snowboard ranking, your relationship with Erin, all of it, gone. Do you understand that? Really?”
Adam blinked at her intensity, but otherwise did not answer. Michael suspected Adam could not have formed an answer for anything less than a credible threat of death.
“So,” and Nikita smiled a smile that was much too close to a Section smile for Michael’s true comfort, “you have to decide. Can you trust your friends to keep themselves, and you, out of trouble?” She tilted her head and looked Adam over appraisingly. “Can you trust yourself to pick up and run, ditch your friends at the very first sign of things getting out of hand?”
“Um…”
Nikita nodded understandingly. “Okay. How about this? Your dad and I come camping too, same campground, different campsite. Not too close, but close enough to walk between them. Everyone knows we’re there, you, your friends, and their parents. You blame your obsessive, interfering dad for having to follow the rules, but otherwise, we leave you alone.”
“Dad?”
Michael exchanged a long look with Nikita. “Okay,” he said.
“Nick – you are awesome!”
After Adam pelted down the stairs to contact his friends, Michael looked at Nikita. “Obsessive interfering dad?”
“It’s the price you pay for also being the cool dad.”
“I didn’t know you could be both.”
“Well.” Nikita prowled over to him and trapped him against the sink, reaching around him with her arms, pressing close inside his space. “You’ve always been a paradigm breaker, Michael.”
“You’re feeling better.”
She kissed the side of his mouth. “Yes.”
He slid his hands over her hips and pulled her closer. “I was worried.”
She kissed the other side of his mouth. “Me too.”
He slipped one hand up her back to the nape of her neck, and brushed her lips with a kiss. “What changed?”
She dragged her lips over his. “Time.” She kissed his chin. “Robby smiled today.” She kissed his cheek. “I had a good run.” She bit gently at his other cheek. “I got ‘As’ in both my classes.” She kissed him hungrily on the mouth. “I got my IUD today.”
He kissed her back, letting everything else melt away in the familiar, welcoming heat of her mouth and her body.
“Oh my God! Do you guys never use your room?”
******
Adam staggered into the backyard and flung himself onto the grass, rolling onto his back and staring up at the sky. “What are you trying to do? Kill me?”
Nikita laughed and exchanged eye rolls with Erin. They had beaten Adam to the backyard and were already stretching out after their run. Then Erin stepped over Adam and dropped down to straddle his waist. “Yes.” She said, her eyes glinting with more laughter. “That’s my diabolical plan. To kill you.”
“Making me run flat out for five miles will do it.”
“You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.”
“So,” Adam asked, reaching for her hips, “what’s next on your list then?”
Erin laughed again and slid out of his reach, further down his legs to sit on his feet. “Sit ups.”
“What?!”
Nikita finished unfastening all the straps that held Robby securely in the jogging stroller. She called, “I have to get the baby cleaned up. Who wants water?”
Adam and Erin’s “we do!” followed her into the house.
When she came back outside, Adam and Erin were finishing sets of crunches, apparently while racing each other to see who would get done the soonest. Nikita settled into a chair in the shady side of the deck and propped Robby in her lap while she adjusted her bra and a light blanket preparatory to nursing him. Robby waved his arms in the air and cooed at the clouds and Nikita smiled because he was the most amazing two-and-a-half-month old baby in the world, and he was hers.
As she finished nursing Robby she heard Michael’s SUV pull into the drive and in a few seconds he appeared around the corner of the house. Michael dragged over a chair and sat down next to her, holding out his hands to take Robby and spend a few minutes talking to him. Robby smiled broadly, gasped and pumped his fists and kicked his feet, delighted to hear his father’s voice. Nikita handed Michael one of the water bottles she’d brought outside, then looked out to the yard as Adam and Erin tumbled to the grass again. They had pulled out a soccer ball and were playing some sort of game that seemed to mostly involve tripping each other in the name of attempting to steal the ball.
It was making the dogs all excited too, and as Adam and Erin rolled on the ground, laughing and stealing kisses from each other, the dogs jumped over them, trying to get in on the action.
Nikita said, “Are they even trying to stay on their feet?”
She was rewarded by one of Michael’s better I-am-not-even-going-to-answer-that-incredibly-stupid-question stares. She said, “right. They’re not.”
Michael smirked. After checking his watch, he called out to the giggling teenagers on the lawn, “do you still want to go sailing tonight?”
Adam hopped up and then pulled Erin to her feet. They exchanged a quick glance as they walked hand in hand up to the deck, and then Adam said, “Actually, we were thinking, maybe, you guys could go out. Like, on a date. If you wanted. We’ll watch Robby.”
Nikita and Michael exchanged a startled look. Nikita said, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Adam shrugged. “I mean, like, don’t be gone all night or anything, but Robby can go a few hours without you, right?”
Erin added, “We’ll be fine. I’ve done a lot of babysitting for my cousins, including infants.”
Nikita checked with Michael again, and then said, “Okay. Thanks!”
Adam and Erin vanished inside, saying they would get cleaned up and be right back out to take Robby. Nikita knew she should head up and get changed too, but it was so nice to sit there, with Michael and their baby, in the early evening air. A minute or two later they heard the basement shower come on, and Nikita winked at Michael and said, “I bet you four loads of laundry they don’t remember to pretend they each took their own shower.”
“Taking the dogs to the vet for their shots says Adam does. He is very well trained.”
Five minutes or so later the shower went off, and then after a lull just long enough for Nikita to think she’d won, the shower went back on. Michael laughed. “The appointment is on Thursday.”
They went out to a Vietnamese restaurant Michael liked, and then strolled hand in hand around the crowded urban neighborhood that surrounded it before heading home. As they pulled on to their street, Nikita was struck by an unwelcome thought. “You don’t suppose Adam and Erin would get any really stupid ideas from watching the baby, do you?”
She was quite relieved, then, when they walked in to discover Adam pacing while jiggling a fussy baby in his arms. He thrust Robby in their direction with a relieved smile, saying, “He hasn’t stopped crying for an hour. I think he’s hungry. Can we take your car?”
Hardly more than a minute later Adam and Erin peeled out of the driveway, headed out to ‘catch up with friends.’
Nikita winced. “Does he have to squeal the tires like that?”
Michael just gave her another look.
*****
Adam took a giant swallow from the cup Jon handed him, then nearly choked to death. “Jesus, man! You could have said it was beer, not punch!”
Jon was pounding him on the back and laughing. “I thought you’d be grateful I figured out how to snag us some.”
Somewhat recovered, Adam took a more normal drink from his cup. Glowering at Jon from under his brows, he said, “You walked up to the keg when no one else was there?”
“Yeah.” Jon flushed. “Will your dad be freaked out if he catches you?”
“My dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Freaked out because we’re having a beer at backyard cookout surrounded by parents?” Adam shook his head and laughed. “Dude. No.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “My mom made this huge deal out of letting us have non-alcoholic beer when we turned fifteen.”
Adam laughed and offered his cup. “I’ve been drinking wine at the diner table since, like, before I can remember. Cheers, man.”
“Cheers.” Jon tapped his plastic cup against Adam’s. After taking a drink, Jon went on, in a super casual voice, “Jake just showed up, with his family.”
“Where?”
“Over there. Talking to Erin.”
“Cool. I’ve hardly seen him since last summer.”
“He’s more of a tool than he used to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well. Here he comes. You’re about to find out.”
The sound of his alarm clock the next morning made Adam’s whole head throb, and he groaned as he reached to turn it off.
“Here.” He turned to look blearily up at the sound of Nikita’s voice. She walked into his room and set a handful of small white bottles on his desk, along with a glass of water. The rattle and clank seemed very loud to Adam. “Your choice of pain relievers and water.”
Adam closed his eyes and groaned again.
“Sorry. But, your dad wants to leave for work soon.”
Adam didn’t open his eyes. “I guess I kind of over did it.”
“Yes.”
“Is he mad?”
“No. I think he’s more than a little proud of you.”
“For getting shit-faced at a family barbeque?”
“No. For walking away from a fight.”
“Oh.” The pain in his head receded just a bit and he felt more cheerful. It had been really, really hard to walk away from Jake last night. But after the unexpected teasing turned to insults and the insults had turned ugly and Jake threw his first clumsy punch, Adam had realized, thanks to all he had learned working out with his Dad and, now sometimes Nikita too, that he could stomp Jake flat. He also realized that he did not want to do that. Not in front of everyone at the party, and, maybe, not really, ever.
Adam opened his eyes. Nikita was sitting a few feet away in his desk chair. “For real?”
She smiled at him. “Yes.” Then she shrugged. “Less proud of the shit-faced thing afterward, but he understood.”
“I know you haven’t seen Jake much, but, he was my best friend for years.”
“I heard. Michael told me.”
“Jake shouldn’t have said that shit about Erin.”
“No.”
“And he definitely shouldn’t have called me a pussy-whipped wetback faggot.”
“Well. You did tell him he was; how did it go? A pus-filled sack of lying shit with a tiny dick?”
Adam laughed, which made his head throb again. “Oh. Ow.”
“Get up. Take a shower. And then call Erin, she’s already called once for you.”
Adam was still working for his dad this summer, the money was just too good to pass up, and now that he could drive he spent a fair amount of time shuttling equipment and people back and forth between the shop and around the various work sites. Summer soccer went really well and he was sure he would start this fall on the high school ‘A’ team.
Robby got bigger and more fun to play with, and Adam finally confessed to his dad that he had desperately wanted more siblings when he was younger. Erin rolled her eyes and said he only wanted siblings because he had no idea how obnoxious they could be. Between living only a few blocks from each other, and having access to cars, and parents, or, at least, his dad and Nikita, who were willing to play dumb, he and Erin had been able to spend plenty of time together as well. The only exception was two weeks in July she when was gone to a training program in Colorado.
While Erin was away, Adam went running with Nikita and Robby a few times, and he used the opportunity to ask her more questions about her life, and his dad’s, before Minnesota. Adam had turned one of his final social studies papers last spring into a research project on the student left during the Cold War. With Nikita’s help he had found his way to old newspaper pictures of his dad at protest marches, and eventually, of his dad after he was arrested, and at his trial for murder. Seeing his father as a young man, his hair long and wild and his expression haunted and dangerous even in the old, badly scanned newspaper pictures, had been both shocking and oddly impressive. He hadn’t told Nikita that last bit; fairly certain it would have resulted in an impassioned lecture about dangerous acts and unintended consequences.
She was guarded in what she would tell him about what they actually did, but she was willing enough to talk with him about how weird it was to learn your whole life was a set up, almost from the beginning. “I was so proud of myself, for surviving on the streets. I never knew that my father had people watching me, from a distance, the whole time. They stepped in when I was on the edge of falling too deep to get up again. Those nights when, out of desperation, I might have taken that last wrong turn; someone or something better would turn up. I was able to stay clean, not turn tricks to stay alive. I thought it was luck or talent on my part, to find that one last way out. It wasn’t.”
“When did you figure it out?”
She laughed, panting as she pushed the jogging stroller up a slope. “After I realized that I’d been set up to be pulled into the organization, I started reconsidering everything. My sister later confirmed it all.”
“So, you really do have a sister.”
Nikita’s eyes lit up with laugher again. “Yes! I really do have a sister. She doesn’t live in Brisbane.”
“Why did she show you that stuff about when you were homeless?”
“She thought I was too full of myself, and too dismissive of her because he had raised her in a gilded cage. She wanted me to know I’d been in a cage too, though not nearly as nice. The news was late in coming.”
“Did you ever get to know her?”
“Oh yeah. Just because our father groomed us to take over for him didn’t mean anyone else thought it was a good idea. We became partners by default, in order to survive. It turned out we worked well together.”
“How did she feel about your leaving?”
“I suspect she was relieved. She was always afraid I wanted her job. I didn’t, but she never believed me.”
“Would she hunt you down?”
“My gamble has always been no. Not out of support, but as a waste of resources. No point in throwing good money after a bad end, she would say. My successor would be far more likely to be interested knowing my fate, one way or another. That, my sister might very well encourage, to protect her own position.”
They sailed more this summer and camped less. Camping with a baby wasn’t all that much fun, and Nikita and his dad loved to sail. Once they introduced her to sailing, Erin liked it too and, no big surprise, she really got into the weekly races. It was also cool how well she and Nikita got along, especially after they discovered that if they teamed up, they could wipe the court with him playing two-one-basketball in the driveway. At first he’d been inclined to be a little pissy about it, especially given the way Nikita and Erin kept high-fiving each other. But then his dad had looked at him and asked what exactly was his problem with having his girlfriend glowing and pumped up on victory endorphins. That’s when Adam had begun to discover that the right kind of loss could be even better than the wrong kind of win.
On a Saturday afternoon late in August Adam and Erin were hanging around a booth on alternative energy sources that his friends Jon and Paul were working at an environmental fair, when Paul caught sight of Adam’s dad strolling through the crowd. His dad had on sunglasses, and was carrying Robby in one of those front baby carrier things. Paul shook his head sadly and said, “I don’t get it, man. How does your dad still look so cool? I mean, he’s wearing a freaking baby.”
Adam shrugged. “He says it’s the shoes.”
“What?”
“Look,” Adam gestured with his chin. “He has on boots. Not gym shoes. It’s the only difference between him and half the other guys here in jeans and a tee-shirt.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that.”
“Yeah!” Jon exclaimed. “But you’re never going to have it, so don’t worry about it!”
Adam laughed and said nothing, because he knew exactly what Jon meant. His dad carried himself like he did because of all the hairy shit he had done in his life. Whatever he hadn’t believed about their lives before, he did now. And now that he knew more about it, he would not wish that life on his friends. Even to become cool.
“And that’s another thing you’re not going to have.” Jon nudged Paul and snickered. “Somebody like Nicole.”
Erin immediately jumped to Paul’s defense, heatedly arguing that Paul could too have a hot girlfriend someday, while Adam watched Nikita snake her slim, tan arms around his dad from behind, kissing his neck before slinking around him to drop a kiss on Robby’s head, the sun glinting off her yellow hair. And right at the very moment, his dad’s old girlfriend Marie walked out of the crowd and practically straight into his dad and Nikita.
****
Nikita felt Michael stiffen and turned to find him greeting a short woman with red-hennaed curls.
“Hello Marie.” Michael leaned awkwardly over to drop a kiss on each of her cheeks, one hand wrapped around Robby’s round little belly.
“Mike.” The woman looked up at him. And smiled brightly. “And, who is this?” She nodded at Robby.
“This is Robby,” he said. Then he turned and pulled Nikita around so he could introduce her. “And this is Nicole. Robby’s mom. Nicole, this is Marie.”
Nikita stuck out her hand. “Hi. Nice to meet you Marie.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Marie smiled as she took Nikita’s hand in her own, but she kept darting her eyes between Nikita, Michael and Robby and her question was too powerful for Nikita to ignore, even though she was sure Michael would have.
Nikita said, “You must be the French professor.”
“Yeah.” Marie shook her head a little. “And, you must be, Mike’s new girlfriend?”
“Yes. Since last summer.”
“Oh?” Marie’s glance went to Robby again.
“Mike is Robby’s dad. Yes.” Nikita laughed then, to make it joke everyone else would have to laugh at, and took Michael’s arm. “Even Mike can’t defeat the power of a broken condom.”
Marie grimaced politely at the bad joke, and then said, “So, you’re married, then?”
Nikita shook her head. “No.”
“Marie?” A slight, sandy-haired haired man came up to their little group, pushing a stroller with a baby who looked to be about a year old. “There you are,” he said.
“Hi!” Marie gave the man a big kiss, then still holding on to him, she turned back to Michael and Nikita. “This is my husband, Kevin Smith. He’s in physics. It’s crazy, but we met on the plane to Aix en Provence two years ago. Both of us going to the university there for a semester. And this is Katie, our daughter. Kevin? This is Mike.”
Michael smiled then, and held out his hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Kevin.”
Kevin took it, smiling himself. “Mike, eh? Nice to meet you too.”
Nikita asked them a few easy questions about their research, gently deflected their questions about her, and eased herself and Michael away. “So.” She said. “That’s Marie.”
“Yes.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Mmm.”
“And she looked happy.”
“Yes.”
“So stop feeling guilty. You really aren’t responsible for everyone you ever cared about.”
Michael didn’t answer, other than to smile slightly and rest a warm, possessive hand on her hip as they walked toward their car.
*****
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, Nikita Wirth, OCs
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: 40,300 words
Chapter: 8/9
Summary: "When Michael first saw Nikita standing on his front porch, his whole world splintered and then, between one step and the next, remade itself."
Part 1, Living the Normal Life, can be found here.
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 1
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 2
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 3
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 4
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 5
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 6
Balance Requires Motion, Chapter 7
*****
Michael lay on his side on their bed and watched Nikita run her fingers lightly over their infant son, who was asleep between them. At two weeks old, Robby had begun to fill out and lose the scrawny newborn look, and he was also losing what little hair he had been born with. He was on his back in the middle of their bed, with his tiny arms flung wide and every now and then his mouth would move as he dreamed of suckling at his mother’s breast.
Nikita looked up and caught Michael staring at her. She smiled. “Hey.”
He smiled back at her. “Hey.”
Her smile faded a bit and she asked, “Do you ever feel…” She trailed off and made a face, trying to distance herself from her question with self-mockery. “Adrift?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, I’m happy. I’m really, really happy. I have right now, in this room, in this house, everything I’ve wanted and dreamed about for the last fifteen years. And it is more amazing than I knew how to imagine.” She curled her finger around Robby’s hand. “So, I feel like there shouldn’t be a ‘but,’ but –“
“There is.”
“Yeah.” She pulled her mouth into a deep frown. “I hated the Section right? But, when your choice is get out of bed or die, you get out of bed with a certain – intensity. That is, when you’re not thinking seriously about death.” She shrugged again, and smiled a little, rueful smile. “Then, once I was Operations, well, the sense that you might save the world again today, that’s – powerful.”
“I know.”
“So, how did you learn to live without it?”
“I didn’t. Not all at once. I thought I was going back, and so everything I did was part of the profile. To get Adam trained to survive on his own, while building him a life he might not have to run from.” Michael reached out and lightly stroked the back of his finger along Robby’s soft cheek, still amazed that he and Nikita had actually managed what had seemed so utterly impossible for so long. He looked back at Nikita. “And then, when I realized I wasn’t going back, I had years of habit to fall back on.”
“Right.”
“I had my job, and Adam’s needs, to get me through the days.”
“Do you ever miss it?”
He knew what she meant. “That intensity?”
Nikita nodded, her eyes steady on his.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He offered, “I’m happy now.”
“I know.” She grinned at him then. “You smile so easily and so often. You even laugh, really laugh. You never used to laugh like that.”
“Which – also feels strange.”
Nikita looked back down at Robby, cradling her fingers around his smooth, balding head. “So, if we’re both happy, why do we feel this, weird, floating nowhere sort of feeling at the same time?”
“Veterans can feel like this. Cult walkways too.”
“Well, I suppose, in a way, we are both.”
“Yes.”
“So, how do we find something else?”
“We don’t. We adjust to living a fully human life, and let go of the idea of trying to recapture what was so artificially intense.”
“Artificially?”
“The world hasn’t actually blown up yet, without us, has it?”
“No. It hasn’t.” Nikita chuckled wryly. “So, what you’re saying is, we, me, I, I should get over myself a bit, yeah?”
“Yes. And be easier on yourself too. I’ve had almost ten years to deal with this, you’ve had, what, eighteen months?”
“More or less.”
“Give yourself more time.”
*****
Michael thought about their conversation often over the next weeks as he carefully watched Nikita adjust to the mundane reality of parenting an infant. Dealing with Adam and the mercurial nature of teenage drama had really not been a very good introduction to the tedious nature of daily life with a newborn. For one thing, a teenager was a lot more variable than a new baby.
Which Adam demonstrated by presenting them with a brand new challenge, this time while Michael was washing dishes after supper. Adam appeared at the top of the stairs to the basement and declared, “A bunch of us want to go camping over Memorial Day. Without parents along.”
Feeling Nikita’s eyes on the back of his head, Michael did not say, “no.” Instead he asked, “Who is in this ‘bunch’?”
Adam rattled off a string of names, most of them familiar to Michael. It did not escape Michael’s notice that the group was a nearly even mix of boys and girls. When Michael pressed him, Adam turned out to have a well-thought out plan. Adam had chosen a park, looked into the campsite rules, made a reservation, and had a plan for when they would leave and when they would return and who would be driving and how and what they would eat and where all the equipment would be gathered from.
As impressed as he was, Michael still wanted to say no. He was also sure that as soon as he turned to look at her, Nikita would urge him to say yes. Which she did, sort of, but in a way Michael did not anticipate.
She leaned up against the doorframe to the dining room and said, “I think it sounds like a lot of fun.”
Adam frowned. “But?”
“Here’s the thing. You, Adam formerly-Samuelle, cannot get busted by the park rangers. Not in the way other teenagers should avoid getting busted. In the way people who are supposed to be invisible and are hiding from other people who will have no hesitation about hunting them down and killing them if they get a solid lead, can’t get busted. Do you understand that?”
Adam shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I don’t think you do. If you get busted, if there is any official record tied to the name on your drivers’ license, we will immediately walk out on this life. Everything you have here under this name; your friends, your school, your grades, your soccer stats, your snowboard ranking, your relationship with Erin, all of it, gone. Do you understand that? Really?”
Adam blinked at her intensity, but otherwise did not answer. Michael suspected Adam could not have formed an answer for anything less than a credible threat of death.
“So,” and Nikita smiled a smile that was much too close to a Section smile for Michael’s true comfort, “you have to decide. Can you trust your friends to keep themselves, and you, out of trouble?” She tilted her head and looked Adam over appraisingly. “Can you trust yourself to pick up and run, ditch your friends at the very first sign of things getting out of hand?”
“Um…”
Nikita nodded understandingly. “Okay. How about this? Your dad and I come camping too, same campground, different campsite. Not too close, but close enough to walk between them. Everyone knows we’re there, you, your friends, and their parents. You blame your obsessive, interfering dad for having to follow the rules, but otherwise, we leave you alone.”
“Dad?”
Michael exchanged a long look with Nikita. “Okay,” he said.
“Nick – you are awesome!”
After Adam pelted down the stairs to contact his friends, Michael looked at Nikita. “Obsessive interfering dad?”
“It’s the price you pay for also being the cool dad.”
“I didn’t know you could be both.”
“Well.” Nikita prowled over to him and trapped him against the sink, reaching around him with her arms, pressing close inside his space. “You’ve always been a paradigm breaker, Michael.”
“You’re feeling better.”
She kissed the side of his mouth. “Yes.”
He slid his hands over her hips and pulled her closer. “I was worried.”
She kissed the other side of his mouth. “Me too.”
He slipped one hand up her back to the nape of her neck, and brushed her lips with a kiss. “What changed?”
She dragged her lips over his. “Time.” She kissed his chin. “Robby smiled today.” She kissed his cheek. “I had a good run.” She bit gently at his other cheek. “I got ‘As’ in both my classes.” She kissed him hungrily on the mouth. “I got my IUD today.”
He kissed her back, letting everything else melt away in the familiar, welcoming heat of her mouth and her body.
“Oh my God! Do you guys never use your room?”
******
Adam staggered into the backyard and flung himself onto the grass, rolling onto his back and staring up at the sky. “What are you trying to do? Kill me?”
Nikita laughed and exchanged eye rolls with Erin. They had beaten Adam to the backyard and were already stretching out after their run. Then Erin stepped over Adam and dropped down to straddle his waist. “Yes.” She said, her eyes glinting with more laughter. “That’s my diabolical plan. To kill you.”
“Making me run flat out for five miles will do it.”
“You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.”
“So,” Adam asked, reaching for her hips, “what’s next on your list then?”
Erin laughed again and slid out of his reach, further down his legs to sit on his feet. “Sit ups.”
“What?!”
Nikita finished unfastening all the straps that held Robby securely in the jogging stroller. She called, “I have to get the baby cleaned up. Who wants water?”
Adam and Erin’s “we do!” followed her into the house.
When she came back outside, Adam and Erin were finishing sets of crunches, apparently while racing each other to see who would get done the soonest. Nikita settled into a chair in the shady side of the deck and propped Robby in her lap while she adjusted her bra and a light blanket preparatory to nursing him. Robby waved his arms in the air and cooed at the clouds and Nikita smiled because he was the most amazing two-and-a-half-month old baby in the world, and he was hers.
As she finished nursing Robby she heard Michael’s SUV pull into the drive and in a few seconds he appeared around the corner of the house. Michael dragged over a chair and sat down next to her, holding out his hands to take Robby and spend a few minutes talking to him. Robby smiled broadly, gasped and pumped his fists and kicked his feet, delighted to hear his father’s voice. Nikita handed Michael one of the water bottles she’d brought outside, then looked out to the yard as Adam and Erin tumbled to the grass again. They had pulled out a soccer ball and were playing some sort of game that seemed to mostly involve tripping each other in the name of attempting to steal the ball.
It was making the dogs all excited too, and as Adam and Erin rolled on the ground, laughing and stealing kisses from each other, the dogs jumped over them, trying to get in on the action.
Nikita said, “Are they even trying to stay on their feet?”
She was rewarded by one of Michael’s better I-am-not-even-going-to-answer-that-incredibly-stupid-question stares. She said, “right. They’re not.”
Michael smirked. After checking his watch, he called out to the giggling teenagers on the lawn, “do you still want to go sailing tonight?”
Adam hopped up and then pulled Erin to her feet. They exchanged a quick glance as they walked hand in hand up to the deck, and then Adam said, “Actually, we were thinking, maybe, you guys could go out. Like, on a date. If you wanted. We’ll watch Robby.”
Nikita and Michael exchanged a startled look. Nikita said, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Adam shrugged. “I mean, like, don’t be gone all night or anything, but Robby can go a few hours without you, right?”
Erin added, “We’ll be fine. I’ve done a lot of babysitting for my cousins, including infants.”
Nikita checked with Michael again, and then said, “Okay. Thanks!”
Adam and Erin vanished inside, saying they would get cleaned up and be right back out to take Robby. Nikita knew she should head up and get changed too, but it was so nice to sit there, with Michael and their baby, in the early evening air. A minute or two later they heard the basement shower come on, and Nikita winked at Michael and said, “I bet you four loads of laundry they don’t remember to pretend they each took their own shower.”
“Taking the dogs to the vet for their shots says Adam does. He is very well trained.”
Five minutes or so later the shower went off, and then after a lull just long enough for Nikita to think she’d won, the shower went back on. Michael laughed. “The appointment is on Thursday.”
They went out to a Vietnamese restaurant Michael liked, and then strolled hand in hand around the crowded urban neighborhood that surrounded it before heading home. As they pulled on to their street, Nikita was struck by an unwelcome thought. “You don’t suppose Adam and Erin would get any really stupid ideas from watching the baby, do you?”
She was quite relieved, then, when they walked in to discover Adam pacing while jiggling a fussy baby in his arms. He thrust Robby in their direction with a relieved smile, saying, “He hasn’t stopped crying for an hour. I think he’s hungry. Can we take your car?”
Hardly more than a minute later Adam and Erin peeled out of the driveway, headed out to ‘catch up with friends.’
Nikita winced. “Does he have to squeal the tires like that?”
Michael just gave her another look.
*****
Adam took a giant swallow from the cup Jon handed him, then nearly choked to death. “Jesus, man! You could have said it was beer, not punch!”
Jon was pounding him on the back and laughing. “I thought you’d be grateful I figured out how to snag us some.”
Somewhat recovered, Adam took a more normal drink from his cup. Glowering at Jon from under his brows, he said, “You walked up to the keg when no one else was there?”
“Yeah.” Jon flushed. “Will your dad be freaked out if he catches you?”
“My dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Freaked out because we’re having a beer at backyard cookout surrounded by parents?” Adam shook his head and laughed. “Dude. No.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “My mom made this huge deal out of letting us have non-alcoholic beer when we turned fifteen.”
Adam laughed and offered his cup. “I’ve been drinking wine at the diner table since, like, before I can remember. Cheers, man.”
“Cheers.” Jon tapped his plastic cup against Adam’s. After taking a drink, Jon went on, in a super casual voice, “Jake just showed up, with his family.”
“Where?”
“Over there. Talking to Erin.”
“Cool. I’ve hardly seen him since last summer.”
“He’s more of a tool than he used to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well. Here he comes. You’re about to find out.”
The sound of his alarm clock the next morning made Adam’s whole head throb, and he groaned as he reached to turn it off.
“Here.” He turned to look blearily up at the sound of Nikita’s voice. She walked into his room and set a handful of small white bottles on his desk, along with a glass of water. The rattle and clank seemed very loud to Adam. “Your choice of pain relievers and water.”
Adam closed his eyes and groaned again.
“Sorry. But, your dad wants to leave for work soon.”
Adam didn’t open his eyes. “I guess I kind of over did it.”
“Yes.”
“Is he mad?”
“No. I think he’s more than a little proud of you.”
“For getting shit-faced at a family barbeque?”
“No. For walking away from a fight.”
“Oh.” The pain in his head receded just a bit and he felt more cheerful. It had been really, really hard to walk away from Jake last night. But after the unexpected teasing turned to insults and the insults had turned ugly and Jake threw his first clumsy punch, Adam had realized, thanks to all he had learned working out with his Dad and, now sometimes Nikita too, that he could stomp Jake flat. He also realized that he did not want to do that. Not in front of everyone at the party, and, maybe, not really, ever.
Adam opened his eyes. Nikita was sitting a few feet away in his desk chair. “For real?”
She smiled at him. “Yes.” Then she shrugged. “Less proud of the shit-faced thing afterward, but he understood.”
“I know you haven’t seen Jake much, but, he was my best friend for years.”
“I heard. Michael told me.”
“Jake shouldn’t have said that shit about Erin.”
“No.”
“And he definitely shouldn’t have called me a pussy-whipped wetback faggot.”
“Well. You did tell him he was; how did it go? A pus-filled sack of lying shit with a tiny dick?”
Adam laughed, which made his head throb again. “Oh. Ow.”
“Get up. Take a shower. And then call Erin, she’s already called once for you.”
Adam was still working for his dad this summer, the money was just too good to pass up, and now that he could drive he spent a fair amount of time shuttling equipment and people back and forth between the shop and around the various work sites. Summer soccer went really well and he was sure he would start this fall on the high school ‘A’ team.
Robby got bigger and more fun to play with, and Adam finally confessed to his dad that he had desperately wanted more siblings when he was younger. Erin rolled her eyes and said he only wanted siblings because he had no idea how obnoxious they could be. Between living only a few blocks from each other, and having access to cars, and parents, or, at least, his dad and Nikita, who were willing to play dumb, he and Erin had been able to spend plenty of time together as well. The only exception was two weeks in July she when was gone to a training program in Colorado.
While Erin was away, Adam went running with Nikita and Robby a few times, and he used the opportunity to ask her more questions about her life, and his dad’s, before Minnesota. Adam had turned one of his final social studies papers last spring into a research project on the student left during the Cold War. With Nikita’s help he had found his way to old newspaper pictures of his dad at protest marches, and eventually, of his dad after he was arrested, and at his trial for murder. Seeing his father as a young man, his hair long and wild and his expression haunted and dangerous even in the old, badly scanned newspaper pictures, had been both shocking and oddly impressive. He hadn’t told Nikita that last bit; fairly certain it would have resulted in an impassioned lecture about dangerous acts and unintended consequences.
She was guarded in what she would tell him about what they actually did, but she was willing enough to talk with him about how weird it was to learn your whole life was a set up, almost from the beginning. “I was so proud of myself, for surviving on the streets. I never knew that my father had people watching me, from a distance, the whole time. They stepped in when I was on the edge of falling too deep to get up again. Those nights when, out of desperation, I might have taken that last wrong turn; someone or something better would turn up. I was able to stay clean, not turn tricks to stay alive. I thought it was luck or talent on my part, to find that one last way out. It wasn’t.”
“When did you figure it out?”
She laughed, panting as she pushed the jogging stroller up a slope. “After I realized that I’d been set up to be pulled into the organization, I started reconsidering everything. My sister later confirmed it all.”
“So, you really do have a sister.”
Nikita’s eyes lit up with laugher again. “Yes! I really do have a sister. She doesn’t live in Brisbane.”
“Why did she show you that stuff about when you were homeless?”
“She thought I was too full of myself, and too dismissive of her because he had raised her in a gilded cage. She wanted me to know I’d been in a cage too, though not nearly as nice. The news was late in coming.”
“Did you ever get to know her?”
“Oh yeah. Just because our father groomed us to take over for him didn’t mean anyone else thought it was a good idea. We became partners by default, in order to survive. It turned out we worked well together.”
“How did she feel about your leaving?”
“I suspect she was relieved. She was always afraid I wanted her job. I didn’t, but she never believed me.”
“Would she hunt you down?”
“My gamble has always been no. Not out of support, but as a waste of resources. No point in throwing good money after a bad end, she would say. My successor would be far more likely to be interested knowing my fate, one way or another. That, my sister might very well encourage, to protect her own position.”
They sailed more this summer and camped less. Camping with a baby wasn’t all that much fun, and Nikita and his dad loved to sail. Once they introduced her to sailing, Erin liked it too and, no big surprise, she really got into the weekly races. It was also cool how well she and Nikita got along, especially after they discovered that if they teamed up, they could wipe the court with him playing two-one-basketball in the driveway. At first he’d been inclined to be a little pissy about it, especially given the way Nikita and Erin kept high-fiving each other. But then his dad had looked at him and asked what exactly was his problem with having his girlfriend glowing and pumped up on victory endorphins. That’s when Adam had begun to discover that the right kind of loss could be even better than the wrong kind of win.
On a Saturday afternoon late in August Adam and Erin were hanging around a booth on alternative energy sources that his friends Jon and Paul were working at an environmental fair, when Paul caught sight of Adam’s dad strolling through the crowd. His dad had on sunglasses, and was carrying Robby in one of those front baby carrier things. Paul shook his head sadly and said, “I don’t get it, man. How does your dad still look so cool? I mean, he’s wearing a freaking baby.”
Adam shrugged. “He says it’s the shoes.”
“What?”
“Look,” Adam gestured with his chin. “He has on boots. Not gym shoes. It’s the only difference between him and half the other guys here in jeans and a tee-shirt.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that.”
“Yeah!” Jon exclaimed. “But you’re never going to have it, so don’t worry about it!”
Adam laughed and said nothing, because he knew exactly what Jon meant. His dad carried himself like he did because of all the hairy shit he had done in his life. Whatever he hadn’t believed about their lives before, he did now. And now that he knew more about it, he would not wish that life on his friends. Even to become cool.
“And that’s another thing you’re not going to have.” Jon nudged Paul and snickered. “Somebody like Nicole.”
Erin immediately jumped to Paul’s defense, heatedly arguing that Paul could too have a hot girlfriend someday, while Adam watched Nikita snake her slim, tan arms around his dad from behind, kissing his neck before slinking around him to drop a kiss on Robby’s head, the sun glinting off her yellow hair. And right at the very moment, his dad’s old girlfriend Marie walked out of the crowd and practically straight into his dad and Nikita.
****
Nikita felt Michael stiffen and turned to find him greeting a short woman with red-hennaed curls.
“Hello Marie.” Michael leaned awkwardly over to drop a kiss on each of her cheeks, one hand wrapped around Robby’s round little belly.
“Mike.” The woman looked up at him. And smiled brightly. “And, who is this?” She nodded at Robby.
“This is Robby,” he said. Then he turned and pulled Nikita around so he could introduce her. “And this is Nicole. Robby’s mom. Nicole, this is Marie.”
Nikita stuck out her hand. “Hi. Nice to meet you Marie.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Marie smiled as she took Nikita’s hand in her own, but she kept darting her eyes between Nikita, Michael and Robby and her question was too powerful for Nikita to ignore, even though she was sure Michael would have.
Nikita said, “You must be the French professor.”
“Yeah.” Marie shook her head a little. “And, you must be, Mike’s new girlfriend?”
“Yes. Since last summer.”
“Oh?” Marie’s glance went to Robby again.
“Mike is Robby’s dad. Yes.” Nikita laughed then, to make it joke everyone else would have to laugh at, and took Michael’s arm. “Even Mike can’t defeat the power of a broken condom.”
Marie grimaced politely at the bad joke, and then said, “So, you’re married, then?”
Nikita shook her head. “No.”
“Marie?” A slight, sandy-haired haired man came up to their little group, pushing a stroller with a baby who looked to be about a year old. “There you are,” he said.
“Hi!” Marie gave the man a big kiss, then still holding on to him, she turned back to Michael and Nikita. “This is my husband, Kevin Smith. He’s in physics. It’s crazy, but we met on the plane to Aix en Provence two years ago. Both of us going to the university there for a semester. And this is Katie, our daughter. Kevin? This is Mike.”
Michael smiled then, and held out his hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Kevin.”
Kevin took it, smiling himself. “Mike, eh? Nice to meet you too.”
Nikita asked them a few easy questions about their research, gently deflected their questions about her, and eased herself and Michael away. “So.” She said. “That’s Marie.”
“Yes.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Mmm.”
“And she looked happy.”
“Yes.”
“So stop feeling guilty. You really aren’t responsible for everyone you ever cared about.”
Michael didn’t answer, other than to smile slightly and rest a warm, possessive hand on her hip as they walked toward their car.
*****
