| Stef's Stuf |
| Meet my friend Stefano. I first posted 'Phoenix' on fanfiction.net on Jan. 1, 2004. On Jan. 6, I got an email from Stef, and we've been working together ever since. He's been my beta reader, continuity guru, and best friend for many months now. In February he asked me to beta for a new story he was starting - "The Too Many Lives of John James McCoy." Well, there were about three other working titles before that. Since he's from Italy, I helped smooth out some of the phrases in English. I still can't believe he writes so well in a second language! Later in the story, he got hit with a big work project, and we ended up collaborating to finish the story. I hope you like it. |
| Too Many Lives: Chapter 1 |
| Nodding to the Uniform at the door, E.A.D.A. Jack McCoy paused to settle his cap securely in place and then stepped out the main door of 1, Hogan Place. It was a raw, blustery, October afternoon, still a little damp from a cold front and rain which had swept through the City area the night before. The temperature was hovering not far above freezing for the first time in the season, and Jack was glad of two things: the heavy overcoat which protected him from the cutting wind and his bike already hidden in his basement for the season. Nothing was better than a ride on his bike, that for sure, but cold was cold and his old bones were starting to resent it with a vengeance. It had been an odd day. The cases currently being tried seemed to be proceeding normally, the meeting with Adam had gone without a hitch, Abbie appeared to be busy with her first case as first chair, no arguments had erupted that he knew of, and there had been no calls from any irate defense attorneys, or Journalists, or one of the many 'we hate Jack McCoy' club that usually bothered him twice a day. He was damned if he could explain it, but despite the fact that everything was fine, somehow he had a sense of foreboding, a feeling that something was about to happen, and he wasn't going to like it one bit! Of course, he didn't like going home at 4:45 in the afternoon either. <Well,> he allowed to himself with a grim smile, <it isn't the going home early: it's what it means.> He was due at a charity function, having been politely ordered to appear by Adam, and he fully expected to be pecked to death by polite ladies and pompous men who were just as bored as he was. He sighed. <The things I do for you, Adam...> He walked toward the nearest corner, looking for a cab, and the cars running on the street. <Nothing to write home about,> he thought distractedly, waving for the cab. As far as he knew there was not a reason in the world to feel so tense, but none the less... ************************************************* There was no warning - just suddenly he was lying on his back on the sidewalk staring up into the face of a very worried Lennie Briscoe. "Wha...?" he said stupidly. "Lie still, Jack," was the cop's firm reply. "But...," and Jack began to sit up. He didn't get far, though, because his head instantly began to swim, and Lennie pushed him back down by both shoulders. "Jack," he said seriously, "you gotta lie still!" Jack carefully focused on the cop. Part of his mind wondered what the hell was Lennie doing there in Hogan place, but the possible answers were so many he lost interest in them instantly. "It's a little damp to be lying on the ground, Lennie." That got a quick smile. "Yes, Jack. I know that. But you were out cold for over a minute, and we gotta get you checked out." "I what?" Jack said, suddenly realizing that there had been a gap in his consciousness, and that someone was inside his head trying to get out with a baseball bat. "Jack!" came a startled and upset female voice, and he realized in a fuzzy fashion that he was hearing a lot of other voices approaching. <Sounds like a stampede,> he thought irrelevantly. He shifted his head just a fraction of an inch and then wished he hadn't, but he was able to see Abbie Carmicheal peering over Lennie's shoulder, hair mussed and her attractive face a study in distress. Several other members of Adam's staff stood right behind her looking equally appalled. "Take it easy, Abbie," he said, his voice unaccountably tired. "I heard you were hurt," she went on in a dismayed tone, ignoring his comment. "What happened?" "Damned if I know," he answered, his usual demeanour cracked enough to let the lurking irony out. Lennie, who was standing guard over Jack, turned and looked at Abbie and the others, nodding at the piece of brick which was lying on the sidewalk just beyond where Jack lay. "That hit Jack. Looks like it fell from a truck, hit another car and ricocheted here. A bit faster and it could have killed him, but even so it was enough to knock him out." Abbie's distress seemed to grow another notch, it that was possible. "My God, Jack..." "Take it easy, Abbie... I'm fine...," Jack began, but at that point, an emergency vehicle drew up less than twenty feet away. In an amazingly short time one EMT was kneeling beside the still prone McCoy while the other one began talking to Briscoe. Although Jack protested that he just had a headache, others were on the side of the EMT, who, after about five minutes of looking him over thoroughly, said, "You should go to the emergency room and get checked out." "Can't do it, " Jack said. He had finally managed to sit up without falling back over from dizziness. Assessing his chances of getting up without help, he considered the problem of reaching for the cab. Maybe Lennie... "Why not, Jack?" Lennie inquired gently. "Because I have to go to a damned reception tonight." Jack raised a hand to his aching head. "And, if I don't show up, Adam will have my hide." Lennie smiled. "I think he might excuse you this time." Jack looked at him from under his brows, but Lennie didn't appear to be intimidated. "How do you feel?" he asked. "Other than having father of all the headaches? Fine," Jack said pointedly. "And you've had a concussion before...," Lennie prodded him. Jack sighed, his patience lessening by the second. "A few times. I'm a biker..." "Feel good enough to stand up?" Lennie asked, putting out a hand and rising to his feet. Jack took it and began to let Lennie pull him up, but the movement was enough to trigger nausea, and he sank back down, working to suppress the need to bring up what was left of his lunch. Briscoe nodded to the EMT. "Take him in and check him out. There'll be someone waiting to take him home if he's released." "I'll ride with him," Abbie offered, her face still far from getting less worried. "Thanks, Abbie, but I'd rather have you talk with Adam and explain to him why I'm going to miss his reception... And please, be sure he understand I didn't put my head on the trajectory on purpose." Jack said tiredly, succeeding in bringing a first, shy smile on Abbie's face. *************************************************** Since he had come in with an ambulance, Jack only had to wait around the emergency room for three hours instead of five or six. First they looked him over, then they ordered x-rays to make sure he didn't have a skull fracture, and then they simply forgot about him for what seemed like hours but was really only forty or fifty minutes. In fact, he was happy to lie still in the hospital bed with his eyes closed. Seeing two or three of everything, all of them overlapping and not quite holding still, was unsettling, to say the least; and he had learned long ago that the only solution was to close your eyes and ignore the world for a while - if you weren't in imminent danger of having someone cut your throat, that is. Besides, who wanted to stare at institutional green walls and stainless steel equipment? He could still hear muted sounds, but the nurse had pulled the canvas curtain closed to protect his privacy; so even if he had wanted to see what was going on out in the central space at the nursing desk, he couldn't have. The painful reality was that nothing was going to distract him from the pounding headache, but if he kept his eyes closed, things were marginally better. Finally, the doctor decided that he definitely needed to be admitted for the night. By then, common sense had set in and Jack did not protest. After all, he was already late for the reception anyway. A corner of his mind wondered how he was going to live that down with Briscoe, but the remainder of him was too tired to give a damn. In any case, the doctor went out to the waiting room to tell Abbie or whoever was outside to go home and Jack was taken upstairs. He allowed the hospital staff to get him to bed, knowing that he'd sleep only at the shallowest level. Having a concussion was old, familiar territory to him - he'd had some of them during his reckless youth and some as side effects of riding accidents - and while it wasn't fun, he knew the worst would be over in a few days. After that, it was just a matter of tolerating a slowly declining headache and combating the urge to sleep anywhere and any time for the next couple of weeks. ************************************************ During the night the hospital staff visited him four or five times to have him recite his name, the date, or tell them how many fingers they were holding up. It didn't make for a restful night. Around six or so, Jack slowly surfaced from a doze and began to take in information about what was around him. The sun was coming up. He knew that because the amount of light coming through his eyelids was growing. He also realized that he had a problem. Because it hurt less that way, Jack had spent the night lying as still as he possibly could without getting a cramp; but now he was going to have to either call the nurse, who would present him with the little plastic bottle for his use, or he was going to have to get up before the pressure in his plumbing became unbearable. If he used the call button, he mused, he wouldn't have to move. That would be better for his head, but the staff of most hospitals took forever to come, and he didn't have that long. Cracking one eyelid, he focused on a chair across the room. <Hmm.> His vision had returned to only doubled rather than tripled. <Much better. Hell, I might even make it to the head without throwing everything up,> he thought wryly, remembering what he had done the evening before once the doors of the ambulance were closed. <OK, time to make the effort.> He rolled gingerly on his side, getting to a place where one foot was already on the floor before he tried to pick his head off the pillow. He was a little sore, from falling like a sack of beans when he was hit, no doubt. Lifting his head was painful, but not totally excruciating, and he began to think that his old skills in dealing with a concussion would stand him in good stead. A moment later he was sitting up, both feet on the floor, taking his time and allowing his body to adapt to his movements. Once his head stopped swimming, he slowly got to his feet, paused again to make sure he was stable and then began to walk to the bathroom. Doubled vision made that interesting, but by moving very slowly, and placing his feet with extreme care, he made it finally and relieved himself, feeling a lot better even if his head was imitating the inside of a bass drum in a marching band. Having finished, it occurred to him that he ought to check whatever other damage he had suffered, and he turned to the mirror over the washbasin, peering at himself and checking for bruises. Suddenly he wasn't where he had been a moment before. ******************************** There was dust everywhere, and Jack had to work to keep from sneezing as he pulled several old drop cloths aside. "What a mess," he sighed in resignation. "Jack? You're up there?" The voice echoed up the stairs that led from the attic down to the rest of the house. "Lennie, God Bless you. I was sure you weren't going to make it," Jack said, delighted, as his friend's head became visible at the top of the stairs. "I figured something would come up." "You wound me, Jack. You thought I'd forget my promise to help you go through all this crap?" "I'm flattered that you showed up. There's no man loved more than the one who shows up to help a friend go through an attic." Lennie shot him a glance he couldn't understand and then smiled easily. "Hey, it's me; can you imagine me giving up a chance to look at antiques?" He looked eager and Jack thought of all the antiques' digging they'd been to and how his friend couldn't drive past a yard sale without stopping. They'd even been late for another old college friend's wedding once because of a particularly interesting estate sale. Jack still had the cut glass decanter he'd picked up for two dollars that time. "Where do we start?" "At the beginning and go on 'til we reach the end and stop. Of course, I always have trouble with the stopping part." Chuckling, they set to work. A distant relative had died and left Jack an old Victorian house, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do with it. As foolish as it was, he rather liked the idea of fixing up the 120-year-old beauty. If only he had someone with whom to share the work, the fun, and the house, he'd be certain that fixing it up was a good idea. "Wow!" Lennie exclaimed some time later. Jack turned to see him looking at a box that was packed with tissue. "Did your great-aunt have any idea of what she had up here?" "Probably not. What did you...?" His question was answered as Lennie held up a black box. "Russian lacquer ware, Jack, the really good stuff." He looked at the box again, as Jack moved over to join him. "My God. This one's is very old..." They dug curiously through the box, uncovering several more lacquer boxes. And then Jack, who had been wrapping the boxes back up, heard a gasp from behind him. He whirled on his haunches, and saw Lennie looking at something flat with an expression of awe on his face. "17th Century, at least," he murmured, and Jack saw the dull gleam of silver as those long hands turned the object over. "St. Basil, St. Catherine, and St. Nicholas...*Look* at it, Jack." It was an icon, the bodies of the saints covered in tarnished hammered silver with only their faces showing. While Jack wasn't as knowledgeable about art as his old friend was, he knew beauty when he saw it and this piece was beautiful. "What a pity it's been locked up here for so long," he said, almost wistfully. "Just like this house..." "Waiting for us to discover it," Lennie's familiar voice murmured. He sounded overwhelmed by the beauty of the discovery, and that pleased Jack more than the discovery itself. "When I was a boy, I used to think that my Aunt had treasure chests locked up here. I guess I was right." They uncovered three more icons, one of them a startlingly beautiful Madonna that they both stared at in silence for a long time. "I might have been more religious," Lennie's said, "if I'd grown up with this kind of art around me." "I can see you like that," Jack said smiling. "In a Russian monastery, painting one of these." "Ha! My eye for beauty is far better than my artistic talent." Jack smiled and reached for the icon, intending to wrap it up again. "I'll want to bring this box downstairs," he began, shifting to make a grab for more tissue paper. Later, he assumed that if it hadn't been for the beers he'd drunk, nothing would have happened. As it was, he lost his balance and ended up half-sprawled across Lennie. His oldest, closest friend, the roommate he'd lived with all through college, the one person he'd never lost touch with, the friend who was always there for him... As Jack laughed and tried to sit up again, he felt those strong arms close around him for just a moment, as, for one brief second, a cheek rested against his head, and a pair of lips touched his temple. And then Lennie was pulling away, his face flushed and a look of distress contorting those expressive features. For some reason that look tore at Jack's heart, and the roar of blood in his ears and the pounding of his heart increased as he sat up. "Jack... I'm sorry... I never meant... I didn't want to... I'll just... you don't have to..." Lennie stuttered. "How long have you known?" Jack asked quietly, pleased to note that his voice neither shook, nor sounded angry. The question wasn't all that important, but he wanted to stop that painful litany of broken sentences. "Since I was twelve," was Lennie's flat reply. "Unless you're asking about my feelings for you, which I figured out a week into our freshman year." He looked down at his hands. "It's all right, J.J." The old nickname from their college' days made Jack's vision blur. "I'll go now. You don't have to try to forgive me." The leaden, weary tone made the tears spill gently onto Jack's cheeks. He watched through the haze before his eyes as Lennie paused in getting to his feet to put the icon carefully into its box. Jack felt frozen, unable to believe that his best friend was really going to walk away. Away from this moment, this house, and his life... "Lennie, Wait!" he said. And then: "Please?" At first he was sure he hadn't been heard, and then that tall form paused right in front of the stairs. "Please, don't go; don't leave me alone," Jack said, meaning it as he'd never meant anything in his life. It was only when Lennie turned back that Jack knew his voice had conveyed everything he wanted it to. As Jack scrambled to his feet and stepped around boxes, remembering suddenly that he'd always loved and envied the grace with which his friend did everything, he saw those features, more familiar to him than even his own, begin to glow with a look of wonder. "You... you're not..." Jack did the only thing he could think of doing to forestall another long string of confused words; he stood right in front of Lennie, leaned up and kissed him. It was supposed to be a gentle brush of his lips, but he hadn't counted on those large hands closing around his arms and pulling him against that broad chest. He hadn't counted on hearing that moan deep in Lennie's throat, and the skillful way those full lips twisted against his own. He opened his mouth without a second thought, and a moan of his own built up as a warm, soft tongue slipped between his lips and brushed against his own tongue. Before Jack could do more that begin to return the kiss, Lennie's arms wrapped around him and pulled him even closer, while a denim-covered bulge rubbed against him. It was only then that Jack realized that he was hard, painfully, frustratingly, hard. He ground his hips against the other man, who pulled away from Jack's mouth. "I'm sorry... it's just that I've thought about us being like this for 'so' long. I'm coming on too strong, it's just that... Oh God, Jack," he moaned as Jack's arms slid around his waist. "I used to jerk off while I watched you sleep. You're so handsome and you're so unconscious of how you affect other people." He paused, a blush stealing across his face. "I used to draw pictures of you in college... hell, I still draw pictures of you." "Thirty years," Jack murmured. "Thirty-two, and seven months," Lennie interrupted. "We've been standing here for maybe one minute and I already want you so badly that I can't stand it. How could I be so blind and leave you alone for thirty-two years?" "And seven months." That mouth was back, this time roaming over Jack's neck. "Sometimes it's not so bad," he paused again to do something incredible to the hollow of Jack's throat. "Sometimes I've gone for a few hours without thinking of you." "Ohhh..." "I compare every man I meet with you." Another pause while that tongue traced Jack's ear. "Ahhhh..." "Every lover I have fails to live up to you..." Jack was stunned by the furious wave of jealousy that washed over him. He growled deep in his throat and reached up to knot his fingers in that dark hair. "No more lovers," he commanded and pulled Lennie's face down until their lips met. This time he initiated the kiss, and he was amazed at how naturally his hands slid down to cup the other's ass and pull him close. "No more girlfriends, then." "God, no," Jack replied. "Ohhh...I can't stand it... please..." "Tell me what... you want," came Lennie's panting reply. "Anything... Anything... everything... just touch me..." The words had hardly left his mouth before his back was flat against a wall. His belt was undone by hands that were obviously accustomed to that activity and then a quick tug on his jeans unbuttoned his fly. He heard a soft gasp, almost a verbal shiver, as one of those hands slid down inside his briefs to glide over his leaking cock. And then his ears heard nothing but his own moaning, interspersed with little breathless pleas for more of this. He locked his knees as best as he could, and gave himself over to the touch of that hand. He knew those hands so well; he'd seen them gripping a tennis racket with nervous tension during a match, cradling a snifter of brandy on any number of nights spent talking about anything and everything, clinging to a hawser on a windy day when they shouldn't have been out on the Bay, soaping down those strong arms in a gym shower room... Jack cried out and his hips bucked as he came into that hand. It was too much, too sudden... He was flying so high he feared the fall that was going to follow. He looked around, trying to focus onto something solid before collapsing into Lennie's arms, and... ********************************* ...suddenly he was grasping the sink of the hospital bathroom to keep himself from falling, his hospital gown as drenched with sweat as though he had indeed been out in a downpour. <What the hell?> He lifted a shaking hand to the padded bandage the doctors had put over the spot where the brick had knocked him. <Time to get back to bed,> he thought grimly, turning and moving with infinite care. Once he was stretched out in bed again, he lay there, conscious of the hormones generated by the scene still rioting through his body. <But it never happened, damnit!> he thought. <There was no attic, there were no Antiques, and I did not fool around with Lennie Briscoe!> It didn't help much, though. He remembered the taste of the beer he had drunk, the half-serious, half-joking conversation with Lennie, his college room mate, and architect, and antiques' hunter, and his best friend from practically always. He also remembered, in detail, that he was still a lawyer, but not a New York District attorney. He had his own firm in a small town in Maine, and he was freshly divorced again and his daughter was living in Los Angeles writing scripts for television, and he talked to her twice a week, and he had a grandson named after him. <damn. It was so real...> As his breathing began to smooth out, Jack started wondering whether the concussion had anything to do with what had just happened. The problem was that he had been concussed at least a half dozen times and he'd never had such intense hallucinations before. Doubled vision, yes, but hallucinations? Definitely not. <And that was one dilly of a hallucination,> he thought. For just a moment he let himself dwell on the taste and feel of Lennie's lips, the way his body had felt pressed against his. The way his hand felt on his cock. He'd better forget about that or he was never going to be able to face Lennie Briscoe again! Continue to Chapter 2 Send us some feedback Back to the Story Index Disclaimer: These characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. We're just borrowing them for fun, not profit. |
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| Jade and Stef during his June 2005 visit to the US, sightseeing in Washington, DC |