| Any comments, suggestions or questions can be directed to the author. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you found something that you could enjoy. Disclaimer: I do not own anything in relation to C.S.I., Alliance Atlantic, CBS, William Petersen, Jorja Fox or any other characters contained herein... I just like playing with them now and then while stretching my writing muscles. And if you think there's any money to be gained by suing me, you're in for a horrible disappointment. |
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| The continuing years of the Discovery Series storyline as the family gets ready for a big event. The family storyteller gathers up some photos and shares a perspective on the past. (including a "photo album" scrapbook) GSR/Yo!Bling/Etc. *Rated PG for Most Everyone. |
| LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY |
| Part 8 - Unlikely Alliances |
| The room reminded Michael of what a giant Roman chamber must have been like. The impossible high marble walls, the detailed ceiling, the columns interspersed throughout, it all served to make him feel incredibly small. The desert had the same effect on him, but at least on the ground floor of the National Museum of Natural History, he didn’ t have to worry about scorpions, and he could get a really great Caesar Chicken Wrap in the Atrium Café. When he realized his work at the Jeffersonian would be done before lunch, he followed his normal routine and called R.J. to meet him for lunch at the Atrium. His job whenever he was in town was to force the workaholic to take a break at least once a week. This was the other reason he always had her meet him at the Atrium Café. As she rolled over to the table he had selected, he knew that his timing was impeccable, as always. “I am so glad you called today. I was about two irate phone calls away from going postal this morning.” He laughed at her exclamation as she locked down the scooter and looked around the spacious room. “I do what I can.” Standing up, he asked, “What would you like today?” Releasing a deep sigh, R.J. turned and asked, “Cobb salad?” “Coming right up.” He walked over to put their orders in and chuckled at her appearance. R.J. was always one to make an entrance, but as he watched the other café patrons stare off in her direction, he wondered if it wasn’t done intentionally. It was almost as though she knew people would be inclined to watch her, and she was just giving them a legitimate excuse to do so. Upon returning to the table, he noticed that she was checking her cell phone. As he walked past her, he laid a soft hand on her shoulder and whispered, “That’s the other reason we come here.” She looked up at him with a puzzled expression. “Excuse me?” He pointed at the marble cavern in which they sat and said, “No cell signals could ever hope to penetrate those walls. You’re completely isolated from all the needy agencies.” “You are such a stinker!” She shook her head as he laughed. “This is some kind of plot between you and Nick, isn’t it?” “I’ll never tell.” Michael winked at her suspicious glare, and it instantly morphed into a full on laugh. “Besides… Just be glad Jack’s hog-tying and burying you in the woods plan was rejected.” “I need to make sure Angela is okay… He’s had a long standing fascination with that plan.” Michael nearly choked on his water with her comment. “What? TMI?” Wiping the water from his face he said, “Something like that… I do have to work with the man.” Shrugging, she snidely said, “Yeah, that’s not my problem, now is it.” Before anymore could be said, the waitress brought their food over and interrupted the cut session. They both dug into their food and made quite a dent before anything else was said. R.J. was the first to break the silence. “Oh hey… Are you sending anything to your mother this week?” Michael wiped his mouth and asked, “What do you mean?” “Well, she wanted some pictures from me for that scrapbook thing she’s doing, and all of our wedding stuff was just prints. I just figured if you were sending anything her way I’d slip these into the package.” R.J. opened her case and pulled out a folder to hand to him. As he opened the folder, Michael was instantly captivated by the images. “Oh wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen these.” He began to flip through the pictures. It was obvious they had been taken in the desert, but the church was simply amazing. “Where is this?” |
| “Sedona… Not far from my family’s place there.” R.J. brought her glasses up from the chain around her neck and placed them on her face to better see the pictures. “And that is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. They don’t actually do weddings there anymore, and haven’t for a long time, but my mother used to make all of the pottery for the Diocese, and my Uncle kept the grounds at Saint John Vianney, so the Bishop gave us a special grace for our wedding.” |
| Michael shook his head at the beauty of the place. “Ya know… I grew up in Vegas, and I’ve traveled all over the place, but I don’t think I’ve really taken the time to appreciate the desert. It’s just always been there.” He turned the picture of the church’s exterior to R.J. and said, “But stuff like this really reminds me how beautiful it can be.” “Yeah… In a lot of ways, I was the same way. It wasn’t until I left Sedona that I ever thought about how beautiful it was. A few years of staring at the suburban sprawl in college was enough to fix that one.” A comfortable laughter followed her analysis. Michael often found it difficult to reconcile the woman he knew to the one he’d often heard described and reviled within Washington, D.C. circles. He just never saw the vicious, demanding bitch that everyone said she was, so he guessed that those other people just never got to see the real person behind the job. The only thing he knew was that if you didn’t have anything nice to say about someone, then sitting next to R.J. was the place to be. She was most definitely the undisputed cut-down queen in his estimation. His favorite memory of her involved a little rant about a public official speaking at a seminar they attended together. Without looking up from her reading material, she spoke at a volume meant only for him and let him know exactly how she felt about the official in question. “Backstabbing, mealy mouthed, pansy assed, conniving little toad, not worth the oxygen it would take to fill a thimble’s worth of the horseshit he’s dishing out.” It was at that moment that their friendship truly began. He supposed that most people would have found their relationship odd. Michael was, after all, one of those constant ray of sunshine kind of people, but there was a dark side to his good humor, and no one knew it better than R.J. They would sit in the corner of any major family event cracking evil jokes about everyone that dared walk within their line of sight, just so long as Nick wasn’t within ear shot. She interrupted his thoughts with another question, “I haven’t had a chance to ask you, but how’d everything go with Lilli when she was in town last week?” Quickly changing gears, Michael nodded his head and relayed the particulars. “Pretty good actually. She and Geoffrey had some kind of discussion right off the bat and got things squared away. And then I had a Come to Jesus with her about the whole thing and finally figured out what the hell crawled up her ass.” Michael gave her a knowing glance that he was fairly certain she picked up on right away, and it was confirmed when she offered, “Somehow… I think you’ve gotten your anatomy wrong on that one.” The moment her eyebrow rose along her forehead, he was unable to contain the amusement, and they both burst out laughing with the joke. She had such a wicked wit, and seemed to delight in finding just the right buttons to push sometimes. Nick was never one to pass up a good chance to razz his mother or Aunt Sara, but he never had the black streak that R.J. did It never failed to amaze him that those two ever got together. They just seemed like such opposite personalities, but he figured that must have been part of it. After much analysis, Michael decided that they actually complimented each other. Where one slacked, the other took it up. The greatest example of that was the way they seemed to approach anything new; R.J. was always ready for another adventure, while Nick had to thoroughly investigate everything. What this meant was that sometimes R.J. leapt without looking and found trouble, or Nick would drag his feet for so long they’d miss out. But together, she gave him the will to jump in, and he made her think a little before finding herself stuck. The other thing that seemed to work for them was the fact that Nick was the peacekeeper, and R.J. was the anger. He noticed sometimes that Nick would hold things back, in an attempt to just keep the peace, but R.J. would give him leave to unleash that anger when he needed to. At the same time, R.J. needed to be reminded that not every problem required righteous indignation, and that occasionally you just needed to let it go. They tempered each other so well that it was often hard to think of them as separate entities. Michael smiled as he realized that perfect pairings seemed to be the hallmark of their strange little family. His smile did not go unnoticed. “What’s that look for?” “Pardon?” He hoped to avoid giving voice to analysis by playing dumb. “Don’t even… You look like a python with a juicy pigmy goat to squeeze. Spill it.” R.J. never let him get away with that one. He shrugged as he gave in and said, “It’s nothing really, I was just thinking that this weird family of ours is pretty damn good at finding suitable matches.” “You think so, huh?” “Well, yeah… I mean, there hasn’t been a divorce since before any of us kids were even born.” When he saw her acknowledge the truth of his words, he went in for the kill. “And you must be doing something right, because most of you old geezers are still kicking around.” “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” R.J. fixed him with a pointed glare. “It would go completely against his nature if he did.” Nick suddenly appeared behind her and bent down to kiss her cheek before pulling up a seat beside them. “What the hell are you doing here?!” Her shock was evident, but Michael also recognized the same old sparkle in her eyes the moment she saw her husband of twenty six years. “Well, a fine hello to you, too.” He winked at the rush of red that filled her cheeks, and then took pity on her, “I decided to roll the dice. Your secretary said you had a last minute lunch date, and I just figured that since the bug boy was in town, you’d meetin’ with him at your favorite spot.” “Man, it just doesn’t pay being married to G-Man, does it?” Michael took great delight in teasing the couple. “It has its moments.” Watching as R.J. laid her right hand along Nick’s leg before he took it in his and squeezed, Michael comforted himself in the knowledge that not all happy endings involved castles and children. |