Chapter Text
It’s still dark when the knock comes. Early – it has to be early – and Erin finds herself coming awake slowly, blearily. At first she’s half convinced that it was a sound from her dream, but the knocking starts up again, quiet and desperate.
Jay’s elbow is in her face and his leg is draped over her hip. Erin can’t quite keep her eyes open, not yet, but she gets enough awareness of her body to shove Jay away and crawl out of bed. She fumbles her way across the room with eyes still mostly closed; is grateful they’re in her apartment tonight, and not Jay’s. Her questing fingertips hit the door and she turns the handle, forcing her eyes open. There’s a little ambient light coming in through the gaps in the lounge curtains, and leaking under the front door.
Whoever it is, they’re still knocking. They don’t stop as Erin walks past the bathroom and the spare room, across the lounge and through the kitchen. She checks the clock on the oven. It says 1:38, and the clock on the microwave says 1:29, which means that the real time is somewhere in-between the two. Jay keeps telling her to reset them.
The crack of light under the front door guides her to it. Erin’s eyes close again when her hand grasps the handle and she takes a moment, breathes in deep, and forces them back open. She has to unlock the door – should look through the peephole, because it’s early, and it’s dangerous. Stands on tiptoes to peer through and can barely see anything in the harsh glare of the hall lights outside. Squinting, she takes the chain away from the door, flips the lock and opens it.
Her eyes don’t adjust right away but she hears a woman’s voice. “Thank god. Oh, thank god, Erin.”
Blinking, Erin makes out frizzy hair and a pale face. Olive – it’s Olive – with the baby in her arms. “Olive?” Erin tries to say, her voice cracks and she has to stop. She clears her throat and tries again. “Olive? What – are you okay?”
Olive is babbling. “I don’t know where Hank is, I’ve been to his house and I can’t find him anywhere, he’s not answering his cell, and just – with Justin – and my aunt’s called, it’s a family emergency, and the car seat was in Justin’s car but they took it – the whole thing – for evidence and I haven’t bought a new one because I figured I wouldn’t need to go anywhere but I have to leave, Erin, right now, and it won’t be long, I swear, and I’m so, so sorry to do this to you and-”
The bright light from the hall seems to be kicking Erin’s exhausted brain up into gear. She finds herself reaching out for Daniel. He takes his arms away from his mother’s neck and reaches for Erin in return. “Go,” she says to Olive. “It’s fine, I’ve got him. Do whatever you have to do.”
“Oh thank you, thank you,” Olive breathes, and she is dropping bags on Erin’s doorstep and blurting instructions as fast as she can, a kiss for Daniel’s cheek and suddenly Erin has his warm, sweaty little body in her arms and Olive is backing away down the hallway, still talking, talking…
Erin kind of shuts down when the elevator doors close. She isn’t sure what she’s doing. Standing in the hallway, she stares blankly at the spot where Olive had disappeared. Absently, she bounces Daniel in her arms, pats his back, doesn’t know what else to do.
The baby doesn’t seem quite aware either. He’s sleepy, his head knocking against Erin’s, and his fist curling into the straps of the tank top she’d been sleeping in.
When the light starts to make Erin’s head pound, she nudges the bags inside with her foot and closes the front door. Her legs are tired and her eyes itch, so she folds herself up and sits cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the door. She allows her eyelids to flutter.
Daniel has curled into her. She can feel him breathing, his mouth open against her collarbone. His soft hair brushes against her chin when her chest moves up and down. He’s tiny, but warm and heavy and real against her. He’s drooling on her skin.
Nephew, Erin thinks, in the loosest sense of the word. He should be with his grandfather in a crisis. She wishes she knew where Hank was. He’d gone off-grid after shooting Justin’s killer and Erin has tried to respect that. She just can’t. She doesn’t respect the shooting, or the vanishing act Hank had pulled immediately afterwards, leaving Olive and Daniel and Erin and the 21st District with a hell of a mess to clean up.
Officially, Hank is on leave, and is grieving. Officially, no one knows what happened to Kevin Bingham. Unofficially, Intelligence knows, because Erin told Jay and Olinsky, and Olinsky told the rest. Everyone else knows that Intelligence knows, but no one talks about it. Erin has the sense, though, that there will be hell to pay when Hank gets back.
Erin takes her hand off Daniel’s back and rubs her eyes. She gets to her feet, staggering a little when the weight of the baby throws her off balance, and she carries him down the hall and into her room. “Jay?” she whispers. “Are you awake?”
He grunts.
“Can you get up?”
Another grunt. Erin thinks that was the drawn-out ‘no’ grunt, rather than the more promising ‘mm-hmm’ sound of the ‘yes’ grunt. She’s not entirely sure how to wake him up. Usually she smacks him around or she yells at him, but she’s got the snuffling of Daniel’s sleepy breathing against her and his sticky cheek on her shoulder.
Where is she supposed to put a baby down to sleep? She doesn’t want to risk bringing him into the bed. She sleeps restlessly and Jay sleeps with reckless, leg-flinging, snuggling abandon. One or both of them could roll over onto the little boy, Erin thinks, and she doesn’t want to risk it.
Daniel crawls, she remembers. Does he walk yet? She isn’t sure. How old is he? She can’t do the maths in her head, not when she’s this tired, can only think back to May and picture that birthday party as the last happy moment.
There’s a cardboard box in the lounge. It pops into her head, suddenly. It had held the new mini-fridge, supposed to tide her over while she’s between full-sized fridges, which will be a while. Since she’s blown all her fridge savings on a mini-fridge.
Somehow, through a haze of mental fog and scratchy, sleep-filled eyes, Erin drags the box into the room and sets it behind her bed. She stuffs it with blankets until it’s a little nest, and she folds down the sides so that she can reach in and she lowers Daniel down into it.
He whines when she pulls him away from her body, grumbles when she sets him into the mound of blankets. Erin climbs into bed and puts her hand into the box, wrapping it around Daniel’s little belly so that he knows she’s still here. She strokes her thumb along his back and tries to close her eyes.
Of course, now that she’s in bed and perfectly comfortable, she can’t sleep. It doesn’t help that her arm is losing circulation where it’s pressed against the cardboard, of course, but Erin is suddenly panicking. Daniel will somehow squirm his way down under the blankets and suffocate in the night. He’ll chew on the cardboard and choke. Something terrible is going to happen and it’s going to be on her.
Erin gets up, lifts Daniel up, and puts him on the edge of the bed. She keeps one hand on him to make sure he’s not rolling, and she settles and resettles the blankets. She folds them tightly and pulls them right to the edges of the cardboard and makes sure there’s no way for him to roll down underneath.
Daniel gives a hiccup which is on the verge of a sob and kicks out at Erin’s arm. His little shoe hits her, which makes her think that she should take them off. She pulls each one away from his little feet, peels off his socks and eases off the little jacket that he’s wearing. He’s so warm underneath it almost makes her worried. She picks him up again and he snuggles against her, burrowing in. He must be so tired, Erin thinks.
She sits with him for a little while, until she feels his breathing even out and turn into snuffles. Daniel’s body becomes heavy with sleep in her arms and Erin lowers him back into the cardboard box. She keeps a hand on him anyway, just in case.
Jay comes up behind her when she settles down on her side in bed. He kisses her temple and tries to whisper something that she doesn’t understand.
“You’re asleep,” she tells him. “You can’t talk properly.”
He nods, like he agrees, pulls her closer to him and settles down. His breathing and Daniel’s snuffles take her down into a warm spiralling blackness. She sleeps.