Come in from the Rain, Chapter Five	   Come in from the Rain, Chapter
Five

 by Riley Cannon

  

Title: Come in from the Rain
 Author: Riley Cannon, with much input from Danielle Subject: B/K;
canon-based extreme AU (Toby went to Oz, Chris never did); still rated
PG-13 here (and for quite a long time to come yet) Feedback: Yes
 Archived at Unit B; others welcome, but ask first Disclaimer: Tom Fontana
thought it up; I just play in the sandbox. Warnings: None applicable; just
the angst that flavors everything they do. 

Summary: They're still in the cafe, getting to know each other.  "Come in
from the Rain" 

~Chapter Four~ 

"Holly asked if Toby was coming home tonight," Victoria said as she
settled on the sofa and picked up her book. 

Over at the fireplace mantel, studying the family photos arrayed there,
Harrison nodded. "So did the boys." He shrugged. "I think it's to be
expected. They haven't had him back for very long." Just seven days since
Toby had finally walked free of that place and come back to all of them. 

Victoria nodded and looked over at him, valiantly trying to mask her
worry. "It is going to be all right," she said, somewhere between a
statement and a question. 

"Of course it is," Harrison said, striving just as fervently to believe
that and hating himself for the stray doubt that would pass through his
mind now and then. It wasn't lack of faith in Toby. He did not doubt for a
minute that Toby was doing his damnedest to put his life back together,
that all those years in prison had made Toby appreciate that life even
more and want to do everything in his power not to repeat the mistakes
that had landed him there. Unfortunately he knew all too well this was
going to be a difficult transition for his son, that well-meant
resolutions might not always be so easy to keep, and that all of them
likely were not making it any easier for him to adjust. 

Harrison sighed and picked up a photo of Toby and Genevieve from their
wedding day, brushing a speck of dust from the silver frame. They looked
so young and happy there, no premonition of what the future had in store.
He put the photograph back, pensive gaze passing across the others and
lingering on the last one they had taken with Toby, a family grouping from
Christmas 1996. There were times he thought the camera had a caught a
shadow of something in Toby's eyes, just the barest glimmer of a sad and
haunted look that heralded things to come. Or maybe it was his imagination
working overtime, prompted by seeing that expression in his son's eyes too
many times over these last half dozen years. 

He sighed again and joined Victoria, picking up his paper and trying to
think of ways to make things easier on Toby. There likely wasn't much to
be done with the children just yet, the way they kept swinging between
clinging to Toby and not wanting him out of their sight, and at other
times keeping their distance for fear of growing too attached in case he
was taken away again. All of them could offer a thousand reassurances that
their father would never leave them again, but time and stability and the
security that brought, were the only things that would truly put the
children's concerns to rest. He and Victoria could set a better example,
though. If the children saw that Grandma and Grandpa weren't fretting
right and left that was bound to be help ease some fears. 

Harrison suspected a show of confidence and faith like that might do Toby
a world of good as well. 

"Is that a car?" Victoria said as she turned her head to listen to a sound
outside. 

"I think so," Harrison said, betting she was having just as difficult a
time to stay put, to not hurry out and make sure Toby got safely inside.
Thirty seconds later he hoped Victoria did a better job of concealing her
disappointment when they saw it was only Angus coming home. And Harrison
kicked himself for that, a fresh batch of guiltfueled worry springing up. 

"I take it Toby's not home yet," Angus said, too neutral to interpret. 

"No," Harrison said, "something ... must have come up." 

"Yes, I'm sure it did," Angus said, and there seemed to be just the hint
of an edge then. Harrison could hardly blame him if some resentment
bubbled away. 

"Maybe we should call?" Victoria said, attempting to sound very
matter-of-fact about it and not betray any anxiety. 

And Harrison had to wonder just what unholy thing might happen if they all
stopped doing that, if they stopped hiding what they were feeling. How
much was that getting to Toby, that no one said anything about Oswald?
That everything to do with the past half dozen years was politely avoided,
with Toby expected to play along with the ridiculous charade? Nothing was
the same, it never would be; there were times he suspected that might not
be an entirely bad thing either. 

"No," he said after a moment. "He doesn't need us checking up on him every
five minutes," he went on, overriding Victoria's evident concerns and
Angus' equally clear skepticism. "We have to believe in him, we have to
show him that." Otherwise how was Toby ever going to have any faith in
himself? 

He sat back and picked up his paper again, striving not to worry, not to
doubt. In all likelihood, Toby was simply enjoying his first true night of
freedom, away from all their fretful eyes. And Harrison could easily
imagine what a relief that might be.  Glad he could tell Toby something
about his wife, Chris watched him remembering her, envying that a little.
He may have given up on ever finding someone to spend his life with, but
that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate how special that could be. And he
knew exactly how it felt to lose someone who meant the world to you. "She
must have loved you a lot." 

"Maybe," Toby said, surprising him by sounding like he might have some
doubts about that. Although Chris could see how that could happen, six
years in prison were bound to take a toll, bring up tensions and moments
of insecurity. Even so, he wasn't expecting what Toby said next - "I think
I was going to ask her for a divorce." - and it looked like the admission
took Toby by surprise as well. 

Not sure what to say, Chris sat back, fiddling with the silverware and
frowning down at the table. It didn't help a lot that the first thing that
popped into his head was how this revelation altered the picture just a
bit, morphing Toby into something different from a grieving widower. That
didn't make him anymore obtainable, however, and Chris fiercely reminded
himself of that. 

Toby let out one of those huffs again, a note of resigned selfdeprecation
coloring it. "Yeah, statements like that tend to make everything grind to
a halt, too." 

Chris looked up then, seeing the regret in Toby's eyes, body language
saying he was pulling back into his shell. Chris couldn't let that happen,
he couldn't be the one responsible for that. "Toby, no," he reached across
the table and laid his hand over Toby's, squeezing softly. "It's a
surprise, that's all." 

With a cautious nod, Toby looked at their hands and grasped Chris' as he
started to draw it back, returning a firm squeeze that made Chris tingle
right down to his toes. "Thank you for that," Toby said, looking at him
again with a warm gratitude that made the pleasure curl tight in Chris'
belly. 

All he wanted to do was lean over and kiss him, and all he could do was
tell himself to put the brakes on. "Did she know?" he said, striving to
keep this about what Toby needed. 

Toby shrugged, back to tracing patterns on the table. "I don't know, but I
doubt she would have been surprised." He sighed quietly and sat back,
making himself comfortable. "It was easy to keep the charade going before
Oz--" 

"That's why you drank too much, because it was so easy to play makebelieve
?" Chris interrupted, smiling at the grumpy touch look that got him. 

"Okay -- easier, especially if I'd had a snootful." Toby shook his head,
glancing out the window and tracking the progress of an older couple out
walking their dog. "Everything's different when you have to face it stone
cold sober, when you can't dodge reality anymore. You know?" Toby looked
back at Chris, searching his eyes. 

"Yeah, I do. It can crash down on you pretty hard and sudden." One minute
you were a 12-year-old kid without a care in the world, and the next
instant your whole world had shattered and nothing was ever the same.
"It's good, though...eventually," he added with a rueful smile, knowing
how long it had taken him to get to that point. "Makes you figure out
what's really important, what you need to keep in your life and what's
dragging you down." 

"Yep." Toby nodded and leaned forward again, taking another bite of the
sandwich. "I figured out one of the things dragging me down was my
marriage," he said, and then looked disgusted at himself. "Christ, that
makes me sound like a selfish bastard." 

"No, just a realistic one." 

Toby snorted. "Yeah, and that is waaaay better." He took another bite,
chewed and swallowed. "When Gen and I met, the first couple years of our
marriage, it was good but," he shrugged and worked it out as he went, "I
don't know, once the sparks died we could never seem to strike them again.
The kids kept us connected but it wasn't enough. And I knew I couldn't go
back to that, not after Oz." 

Chris understood that. "It wasn't just your marriage, though, was it?" 

Toby shook his head. "No, it was everything." He took off his glasses,
contemplating them as he spoke. "I deliberately smashed my last pair after
the first few months in prison because I didn't want to see clearly, not
with my eyes. That had only gotten me in trouble, taking people at face
value and coming to regret it." He laughed softly, anger underneath it. "I
jumped from the frying pan smack into the fire right off the bat,
believing this guy had my welfare at heart because he looked the part, all
kindly and concerned, just as spooked as I was. Next thing I knew..." He
hunched over, a fist pressed to his mouth as he swallowed the words, as he
trembled with remembered fear and fury. 

Chris didn't need the gory details to know what had happened, his own
memories supplied them in spades. "Toby, hey," he grasped Toby's arm,
feeling the rigid muscle under his hand and anxious to keep him grounded,
"you survived it. Toby, you made it out, and that is the only thing that
matters." 

Toby shot him a disbelieving look, clearly still in need of convincing on
that score. "I don't know, Chris, the things I did, what I discovered
about myself..." He shook his head and sucked in a deep breath. "How do I
just forget that, put it behind me? 

"You don't, you let it be one of those strings." Chris watched him,
thinking of another way to help him work through it. "Toby, what you went
through, that was like soldiers in a combat zone, doing what you have to
so you can get out and come home. My dad never talked much about the war
but when he did that's how he explained it to me, and that maybe you don't
come out the same as before but you can turn it all into something good if
you just put your mind to it." 

Really listening to him, watching him, Toby said, "What doesn't destroy
you makes you stronger?" 

"Yeah." 

Toby let out a deep breath, releasing a lot of tension with it, mouth
quirking with another rueful smile. "I should be fucking indestructible
then." 

"I don't doubt it for a minute," Chris said, seeing the curiosity in those
blue eyes, Toby probably wondering where all this confidence in him came
from when they had only just met. Chris wished he could enlighten him but
he didn't quite understand it all himself. 

After a long moment, gaze never leaving Chris' face, Toby nodded like he
was at least willing to give this all some thought. "That's part of what I
figured out, why I knew things had to change. If it was all going to have
any purpose, I couldn't just walk out of Oz and back to my old life. I had
to make it all count for ... something." He finished with another of those
little huffs. "And then, right when I'd made this life-changing decision,
McManus comes and tells me Genevieve's been killed in a car accident." 

"And you thought it was God punishing you." 

"Crossed my mind." 

Chris shook his head, torn between exasperation and sympathy. "You're not
Catholic, are you?" 

Toby smiled, shook his head. "I don't think they have the market cornered
on that." 

"Hah." 

Toby's smile broadened. "Voice of experience?" 

"Oh yeah," Chris said with feeling. "That was one of the buttons I
mentioned." He leaned towards Toby, serious and intent. "You know that's
bullshit, right? Your wife died because some asshole didn't slow for a red
light, that's all. Wasn't her fault, sure as fuck wasn't yours, and it was
not any judgment from God." He knew he was speaking pretty fervently again
but it would have been difficult not to when this was something else that
hit so close to home. 

And even if Toby did look damn cute without the glasses, Chris picked them
up and settled them back on that snub nose, telling him, "You look the
world square in the face from now on, Toby, nothing fuzzy around the
edges, and see things for what they are - no more and no less. Okay?" 

Toby gave him a look like he couldn't decide whether to be alarmed or
amused. "O...kay," he said in another moment, adjusting the glasses more
comfortably. "I take it that's another hot button issue for you?" 

Chris sat back, took a drink of the coffee, nodded. "Yeah. Spent my share
of time beating myself up over things I couldn't have controlled. Saw a
few too many people I cared about destroy their lives over it." His gaze
shifted past Toby's shoulder, out the window, memories of Jess and Casey
bubbling up to take him away for a moment. He didn't think he could go
through that again and that was all the more incentive to try and steer
Toby clear of sinking into that quagmire. "Guilt's like a cancer, Toby, it
can eat away at you until there's nothing left," he went on, pulling
himself back to the here and now. 

"You don't strike me as someone who would advocate shirking
responsibility." 

"Big difference." He met Toby's gaze again. "Owning up to what you really
have done, that's part of growing up." 

Toby nodded, thinking that over. "Is that something you teach your kids?" 

"Try to. Think it gets through to them once in a while." 

"How long have you been teaching?" 

He shook his head, doing the math in his head. "Eighteen years, end of
this school year." Which blew him away whenever he pulled up that figure. 

"Wow." 

"Yeah." He conceded that with a wry smile, eyes narrowed at the coffee
cup. 

"Not all of that at Willis-Warfield, though." 

He shook his head. "Stayed on at my university for a couple years, then
put in some time at Hudson High. I was there for twelve years." 

Toby gave him an interested look. "You taught high school?" 

"Yep, tenth grade English." 

"Tough gig?" 

"Had its moments." He squinted thoughtfully across at him. "Most of the
kids, they just wanted to get it over with; picking up a book, let alone
writing something, might as well have been some kinda torture out of the
Spanish Inquisition to them. Once in a while, though, something would
click and I could them turning on to the power of words, figuring out that
power could get them someplace other than McDonald's flipping burgers. I
used to have them write something about their lives, what they knew to be
true, because that was a good way to see what was going on in their heads
- sometimes they'd see it too, all laid out in black and white, and
realize there had to be something more." Chris paused, feeling a bit
embarrassed at running on like that, but Toby didn't look like he minded;
looked like he might understand about passion like that. "Yeah, well," he
fiddled with the salt-and-pepper shakers, "moments like that, they could
make all the other frustration seem worthwhile." 

Toby nodded. "I'll bet. Ever find a budding Fitzgerald or Jane Austen?" 

"Yeah, a couple," he said, smiling with the pride of that. "One girl,
she..." his smile faded as Casey's face flashed in his mind again, smiling
at him for once that last time because she had made her terrible decision
and found a twisted peace in her choice. He swallowed, pushed on. "She
could've set the world on fire." 

"What happened?" Toby's voice was quiet, watching his face with
sympathetic intensity. 

Even four years later it hurt to say it. "She killed herself," he said and
felt that awful burden ease ever so minutely as Toby touched his hand. "It
was so fucking senseless, Toby. She had so much going for her, but she
just couldn't see it. She was drowning right in front of everyone and no
one could do a thing to save her." 

"Can't save everyone," Toby said, an echo of Lulu in his words. 

Chris nodded, one corner of his mouth quirked upward. "I know. Spent a lot
of time going over what more I could have done, but," he shook his head,
shrugged, "past a certain point there wasn't anything." He let out a deep
breath, brows drawn together as he frowned at the inoffensive
salt-and-pepper shakers. "Didn't make it any easier to accept, though." 

"You moved on though." 

He nodded again as he picked up his coffee and took another sip - and
grimaced at finding it had gone cold. "Took a sabbatical to reevaluate
some things, and then applied for the job at WillisWarfield. Thought
ten-year-olds might take less of a toll." 

"It turn out that way?" 

Chris caught the waitress's eye and signaled her over for more coffee.
"Well, let's say the jury's still out on that one," he said, able to pull
up a better smile now. "Being ten was a hell of a lot easier when I was
growing up, I know that." 

Toby nodded with feeling, stirring his fresh cup of coffee. "For me too.
Sometimes I don't even know what the hell my kids are talking about. Holly
told me she thought my folks are probably muggles the other day, and I had
to get Angus to explain Harry Potter to me." 

Chris grinned, dimples popping. "Well, you've got a lot of catching up to
do there." 

"On all kinds of fronts." Toby picked up the newspaper left on the
banquette, leafing through it slowly. "Sometimes it feels like the whole
world's changed since I went in - and that was only six years ago." 

"It's just the toys that change; the stuff that counts, that's still the
same." 

Toby gave him a skeptical look at that. "Check back with me in about a
year and we'll see if the validity of that holds up." 

Chris smiled and sent him a touch look this time. 

The music in the background had changed to Billie Holiday singing about
her solitude, and while that was a perfect accompaniment to the soft rain
spattering against the windows, it was at odds with the vibes in that
booth. At least to Chris - and it couldn't do any harm to suppose that
feeling, taking pleasure in some good company, might be mutual, right?
That might even be enough, he thought as he took another drink of coffee,
savoring the rich flavor. Then he looked at Toby, blue eyes sparkling with
excitement over something in the paper, and felt a kick in the gut that
told him no, he could really find it easy to want a whole lot more from
Toby. 

He looked away quickly, watched a young couple two tables over gazing into
each other's eyes, the girl reaching over across the table to lay slim
fingers against her boyfriend's cheek, and Chris felt an even deeper pang
deep down inside. God, it was so long since he had even tried to connect
with someone and now he was chasing another impossible dream. Shouldn't he
have gotten smarter about all that by now? 

He looked back at Toby, had to ask, "So what's got you all excited?" 

"I can go see a baseball game again," Toby said, smiling like that just
about made his day. 

"Yeah, guess you can. That something you've missed?" Chris could
understand that too; there had been a long ago time when he had lived and
died with the Yankees. 

"Yep. When I was at Harvard one my favorite things was going to watch the
Red Sox play." Expression filled with nostalgia, he added, "I think those
were some of the best days of my life." 

"Well, see, that's something that hasn't changed: they still haven't won a
World Series," Chris said, only meaning to tease him a little but enjoying
it more than expected as Toby glared back at him. 

"Yeah, you wait and see who's still playing in October," Toby grumped
back. 

"Beecher, I got two words for you," Chris said, pausing for dramatic
effect as Toby looked at him, waiting. "Bill Buckner." He grinned some
more, almost seeing the steam coming out of Toby's ears. 

~to be continued~ 

Note: If the name Bill Buckner doesn't ring a bell, check here:
http://www/thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/bucknerbill/  Please send feedback
to Riley Cannon.