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She closes the front door behind her and leans back against it, allowing a deep breath to spread the sense of home throughout her body.
Home, she thinks, with Dougie, with Stuart.
Home.
For the first time in seven days.
It’s not that she minded the long hours or the travel, the thrill of chasing the worst of the worst, the knowledge that at the end of the day they’ve saved lives when the stakes were at their highest.
It’s just that home, for the past few months, for the first time in a long time, was something to look forward to again. It wasn’t empty or devoid of feeling, not her daddy chasing boyfriends off the porch at gunpoint, but a cozy brownstone at the heart of a city she loved.
She places her keys in a tray by the door, toes off her shoes and slots them right next to Stuart’s in the hallway. Throws her jacket over the back of the couch, even though it’ll get her a grumpy “The hanger’s right by the door,” from Scola in the morning.
A smile twitched at a corner of her mouth.
Maybe she liked him that side of grumpy a little too much.
Her go-bag lands on the ground with a gentle thud.
And she resists the urge to turn on the lights.
Ever since she’d joined the Fugitive Task Force the nights were deeper somehow, the dark more oppressive, pervasive, as if the light itself had to work that much harder to leak into these new cases. Into her new life.
She’d seen her share of darkness, bodies, young and old, families, ripped apart, frayed, dead, taken, yet felt it more acutely now, so caught up in the moment of the chase that it wasn’t until catching a breath that it all sank in at once —the fear, the grief, the danger,— and when those stiller moments came, it was usually time to head home.
That’s why she ends every case by asking the rest of the team out for a drink, or dinner, or drives rather than flies home when the distance permitted.
Home was where her heart was, but she couldn’t afford to bring work back with her.
So she took time to decompress, clear her mind, marshal her thoughts and feelings all in a bid to compartmentalize these parts of her life she didn’t want to overlap. Not that Scola would hold it against her.
Another deep breath and her lungs expand around it, the intimate quiet of the house both lived in and worn, Dougie’s toys on the rug, clean bottles lined up in the kitchen, a hamper of fresh laundry waiting to be folded.
There’s no need to turn on any lights. She’s home now.
In here, no monsters lurked in the shadows, the nights were never quite so long.
With that conviction renewed she heads upstairs to Dougie’s room, illuminated faintly by the night light plugged in near the bottom of the door. He’s fast asleep, hands bundled tight into tiny fists, dreaming more than likely, and the tension in her neck and shoulders unspools.
What she wouldn’t give to scoop him up in her arms right here and now, hear him babble up a storm, let his tender cooing chase the final remnants of apprehension from her bloodstream.
But she can wait.
It won’t be long before he cries for his bottle.
Scola’s down for the count in the bedroom, the light on the bedside table still on, his tie on the floor, his shirt half undone, as if he passed out cold in the middle of getting undressed.
And she can’t help herself.
With a fond smile eased around her lips she walks over to the bed, crawls onto it on all fours, and lowers herself down over Scola’s sleeping form.
Scola stirs awake with a sharp inhale, his arms instinctively slipping around her.
“Hey.”
His voice, thick with sleep, brings her back to herself, grounds her in a way no car ride or after-work drink could ever do— all the grief, and fear, and danger leave her all at once, and firm and warm beneath her she feels certainty— a good man, a fantastic father. Home.
For most of her youth and adult life home was nothing more than a waystation, an in between kind of place to sleep, to eat, before the next case came along and she hit the ground running again.
She hums into Scola’s chest, and starts tugging at his shirt, pulling it free to slip one hand- two hands- underneath it.
“Chase,” comes Scola’s feeble protest, along with a low chuckle that rumbles in his chest, “not really the time-”
“No,” she breathes a smile. “No, that’s not what this is.”
She plants a kiss over his heart, and eases back into the solidity of him, the marked outline of his body she knows so well, his outrageously expensive cologne, his arms around her not protective, not some kind of White Knight move, but a commitment they make to each other every day.
“I just-” she inhales deeply,“I just wanna feel you.”
Scola puffs, moaning another noncommittal grunt before drifting off to sleep again.
She laughs.
No. Home had never felt like this. She liked how this life needed her too, how essential a part she was in it, not just as Dougie’s mom or Scola’s girlfriend, but a piece of the puzzle of their small family unit.
Home was a lonely place until Scola. Until Dougie.
As if he read her mind, the baby starts crying in the other room.
She lifts herself out of the bed, into the hallway, into the blue nursery that brought a smile to her face each time she stepped foot in it.
“Hey, Dougie boo,” she coos, meeting her son’s beautiful blue eyes.
She presses him to her chest, breathes in that smooth baby smell, and casts all her wishes for him into the universe; that he’ll always have a mom and dad to come home to, that he won’t learn the cruelty of the world the way she or Scola had, that he’ll be whip smart like his dad, but maybe a little more of a dreamer than either of them. That above all else he’ll be kind, and happy, loved and loving.
Her lips push against his silky baby hair.
That he’ll never have any reason to be afraid of the dark.