Finn's Rooftop

"I met him in the park down the block from our apartment." The teen's lip trembled. "He told me that he could get me a rap audition... That he was a promoter." Tears brimmed up in her single working eye and spilled out. I couldn't imagine the pain that the salty water was causing her detached retina. "I fell for it."

I breathed in. "Shareen, it's not your fault." I knew no matter how many times she heard that, no matter how many confirmations of her own innocence made their way to her young and abused ears, she wouldn't believe it. Maybe not ever.

Stabler piped up behind me. "Did he tell you his name?"

"Andre. He seemed nice." Her mother grabbed the limp hand, caressing it, trying to ease some of the pain and fear the best way she knew how: being there for her small child.

Sudden flashes of a dead girl lying on the street, her burnt and tortured body twisted at an unbelievable angle. I could smell it... the smell.

Oh, god.

I wake up with a moan in my throat and not enough air in my lungs. Looking around, I try to sit up without falling off the couch, but the tangled sheets offer too much resistance and I fall. I want to pound on the floor and hard, but such an action might wake the other occupant of the apartment. John was no doubt asleep in my bed, where I should be. In his arms. But I had screwed that up for a third night in a row. He had had a difficult day, too, more for what I had put him through than anything, and I couldn't find the nerve to apologize. So instead I found myself on the makeshift bed. Again.

I sigh and wipe at my sweaty face to find tears had found their way into the mixture.

Christ. She was haunting me. It wasn't a surprise really. The fact that I'd never met Aisha didn't hold weight over the fact that I knew her family. Or had known them.

I walk to the bedroom door and open it, stopping it just before the creak would begin. There he is asleep on his side of the bed. He looks so damn lonely there, my side empty and cold. As my eyes adjust to the darker bedroom, I see that one of his arms is stretched over to where I would normally be. My heart lurches sadly as my body aches for such familiar and comforting contact. I walk quietly over to him and bend over, trying to disturb the water bed as little as possible. I lightly caress the face of my sleeping partner, in work and in life, and wonder to myself if I should wake him. He would want me to, would want to be there for me at this moment. I feel like I really need his support, both emotionally and physically. If I have ever been in more need of those arms wrapped around me, those ears open and eyes accepting... I don't remember it.

And yet in the end I walk out of the room, not having the courage to wake him. I'm worried about something, maybe that he wouldn't understand where I'm coming from. When you get right down to it, it seems to come to race. Not in our relationship, never in our relationship before this. But now...

Yes, he's Jewish and yes he understands racism. He's been there. Hell, everyone has to deal with it at one point in their lives. But I guess I'm worried that since I'm black and he's white... Not that it makes any difference to me. It's never come up before, but it really seems to be on my mind.

Was he taking Cragen's side the other day? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure of what exactly it is that I'm afraid of. Maybe that he won't understand at all. Or maybe that he already thinks he does. It really doesn't matter how smart a person is. They can never fully understand another's experiences because they haven't lived them. So, am I even looking for empathy?

Frustrated, I grab my brown leather jacket, throw on my shoes, grab the keys and leave the apartment. The further I get from my companion, the worse I feel and the more the memories are coming back.

I head for the rooftop.

*_*_*_*_*

"I'm on my way home and this flaming shoe hits the ground. I look up and... here comes the rest of her."

I winced and nodded. "You see anybody else up there?"

"No, no. I was busy putting out the fire."

Of course the old man hadn't seen anyone. They never did. God forbid one of these times someone could see and be able to identify a perp. No, we wouldn't want to make catching the bad guys any damn easier. It was already a fucking piece of cake.

I close my eyes on the twinkling outline of the busiest city in the world and rub my temples. The memories are coming now, faster and with no way to repress them. At least no way that would leave me mentally secure in a few weeks.

I had just finished the last of the paperwork and was anxious about heading home to my confused and loving partner when the call had come in. Phoning Munch to discuss my later arrival time had been the only delay, and I had gotten to the crime scene as fast as I possibly could have.

I had arrived to find they had just put the girl out, her body still sending cooked and heavy fumes in waves. There was something about burning human flesh... I knew I wouldn't be eating meat for a long while.

I had come so damn close to throwing up right then and there. next to the body. Instead of hanging around, I headed to talk to the single eyewitness, then Stabler had arrived and we headed back to the body. I kept my distance as he conversed with the ME, then heard someone calling out. Without warning I felt as if I'd been hit full on by a semi. It looked like an old friend, Sandy Thompson. Someone from my old stomping ground; we'd grown up together.

But it couldn't be.

Then it struck me.

Was it?

"Let him through, let him through, let him through." I said, rushed, worried and unbelieving. "I didn't know you had a sister." I said as I caught the young man in my arms. He bent down to look at the body, still covered in the white, blood-soaked sheet, and I felt him start to tremble violently beneath my grip. "Rodney, Rodney." I pushed him back.

Hell of a reunion. I used to watch and play with the kid when we were both younger, me in my late teens and early twenties, Rodney from the time he was born up until he was eight or nine. Then I moved to Brooklyn and eventually lost touch with the whole family. I hated myself for not writing or calling or even visiting more often, but I would always take the opportunity to remind myself that long distance correspondence is a two-way street.

To suddenly find that Rodney had lost both Sandy and Jennetta... It had made me physically ill.

I feel tear of empathy for the boy find its way down my face, and I squeeze my eyes even tighter shut, letting the others follow the path of the first. I hate Sandy for leaving his son. No his son and his daughter, who I would never know. Did the man even know that his wife was dead?

I take a deep, chilly breath as one of the confrontations with Rodney scurries into my mind.

"I thought you had him, man." He was so angry, so full of hatred of which he had no where but here, the unit, to vent.

"We were wrong." I felt like just taking the kid in my arms, trying to calm him and explain that things take time, even when time is the last thing on Earth we have enough of. "We're going to get him."

Such a dangerous risk I took. Playing with promises that balanced so heavily on emotions and hope.

Luckily, I was right on both accounts. We had been so very wrong about the identity of the killer and another girl had died because of it. But her death had been the killer's first major slip up, striking not just close to home, but in his own damn apartment building. Tina Dupree had been a "victim of opportunity" as Stabler had put it, and had led us straight to Maleik "King" Harris.

The King's second slip up had been biting Rodney in court and thereby giving up his DNA code, voluntarily this time. I allowed a vicious little smile to grace my face momentarily. After all of that trouble with the DNA; the motion to suppress and the inability to hold the bastard for the crimes... His Majesty had lapsed, if only temporarily, from that cool and calm, patronizing exterior, showing the chickenshit interior that proved he only went after young and more submissive women. He bit down hard on the arm that held him tight, and, as I told him later, bit himself in the ass.

Still, as proud I am of myself and particularly Rodney, I can't get Cabot's perturbed look out of my head. If Alex hadn't really wanted to know, she should never have asked, should never have even broached the fucking subject. Rodney had come through. What does it matter if I planted the idea of attacking Harris in his mind? I didn't open the bastard's mouth and force him to clam it down on Thompson's forearm, did I? No. It doesn't make me a bad cop if I give a victim's bereaved sibling the chance to put away the fucker that killed his sister. To give a brother the chance to help execute his sister's murderer. I'm from a big family and I love every one in it. I know how especially protective I am of my two younger sisters, and know that, put in Rodney's situation, I'd want to be right there. Right there to see the needle go in. If Alex can't understand my motives then maybe she is as inhumane and emotionally void as Stabler seems to think her.

Harris's face the moment he heard that we had linked his DNA to 5 murders and 8 rapes in Detroit... It came to mind.

Fear passed through the placid ocean of his eyes, creating a terrible, if too short, storm. I happened to glance at Stabler's face and liked his expression almost as much as the horror I had seen in Maleik Harris. Smiling like a content panther who knew it's prey was as good as future nourishment for it's several babes. That's how I felt on the inside.

"I want a deal."

I sniffed coldly at that. The creep actually thought he was in a position to barter for his life? Position to pray and repent was more fucking like it.

"You want a deal?" I pause, enjoying the reaction to my sarcastic and furious tone. "How about right before they execute you for killing those girls... I bring you your last meal. How's that?"

The smile vanished and the storm had reappeared, only this time it stayed. I knew that storm would last him the rest of his very short and limited life.

But it's no justice when it comes to Aisha, Tina and the numerous other girls that have died courtesy of the King.

Something hits my mind and I don't know if it actually fits or not, but it feels right. "Caesar's had your troubles now," I start, my eyes still shut to the world. "Widows had to cry. While mercenaries in cloisters sing, the king must die." Of course the fact that I had even heard these lyrics much less had them committed to memory would be my secret until I died. Not even Munch knew there were Elton John songs I favored.

I open my wet eyes and sigh. As my hot breath scorches a path through the frigid air, my eyes start to sting, the temperature absorbing any moisture from them. I think about Rodney's future or lack thereof. Father's God knows where, mother's dead of breast cancer, and the most important person in his life was now dead, maliciously murdered and degraded during her second year as a teenager. At only fourteen years old, still such a child, she had been performing oral sex on an older man that turned out to be a murderer/rapist. It was not known whether her last act was forced or consensual, though the evidence pointed to coercion. Either way, it would live in her brother's memory until his last breath, which might not be too far in the making if he wasn't careful.

I lift my face to the sky in a silent prayer and promise. A prayer for Rodney Thompson's soul, and a promise that I will become his earthbound guardian, at least until the boy finds his feet again, no longer needing me. I won't leave him a second time, not now that our paths have crossed again. I know why they have, too. I picture the little six year old Rodney I remember best, laughing on his mother's birthday after he had just smooshed his piece of cake into his father's face. I smile sadly at the mental picture show, thinking how very much things can change in fifteen years.

I'm meant to keep this person alive, to help him realize that there is a reason to live, though at the moment I have no idea how I'll do that. I will though. I'll find out how. And it starts tomorrow with a little trip out to Harlem.

"I figured I'd find you up here. Contemplating the intricacies of these arduous and emotionally draining times, no doubt."

I'm surprised to hear the voice, but I don't turn around. I love the man, I really do, but right now the last thing I need is 'the Munchkin', and from his words and tone, I figure that's who he's playing. If only he was John, my John, the side that no one else ever gets to see. But not 'the Munchkin', not right now. That version of him is a smartass and too damn emotionless, as if he sees everything, but feels nothing.

"Go back to bed before you freeze your scrawny butt off."

"It's not that cold." Munch's voice is soft and somewhat defensive. He has probably picked up on my hostility towards his usual sardonic self.

I can also hear the man's teeth chattering. He's such a bad liar at times.

"Right." I turn around, a sarcastic remark on the tip of my tongue when I see just what John has decided to wear into the below-zero temperature. The tee-shirt and boxers he sleeps in, shoes and my robe. My open robe.

"Are you crazy?" I quickly close the few feet of distance between us and grab the flaps of the robe, shutting and tying them tight around Munch's thin body. "God damn, but you're stupid sometimes."

"Ooh, you know I love it when you talk sweet to me."

Munch shivers involuntarily and I grab him, moving my hands briskly up and down the terrycloth clad arms. "You're too thin to be walking around in this shit out here. You'll get sick or something."

"All just a ploy to get you in my arms, Tutuola." He paused looking off to somewhere behind me and I frown at him. A silent Munch is a contemplating Munch. And a contemplating Munch is trouble. "I didn't- Well, you've been a little... off lately."

I give him a little smile at his choice in words. 'A little off'. Actually, I'd been rude as hell, a real ass.

For the last two days, I had pretty much ignored John. I had driven off alone to talk to an informant, kept close to Stabler, and avoided taking my lunch break at the same time as John or even in the same place he was working. One of us would usually keep the other company while they were on break. It was the unwritten rule of partners in the SVU, and yet I had broken it twice.

To add insult to injury, I couldn't get the nerve up to tell him I wanted to be alone at nights, so instead I'd take a pillow and blanket into my living room and sleep on the couch. Only I didn't sleep very well.

The first night I snuck out of the bedroom after I was sure he was already asleep, and curled up on the couch. He came out to check on me about half an hour later. He tried to 'wake me up' and get me back to bed, but, not really sure what I wanted, I pretended to be asleep. I almost threw my arms around him when he lightly kissed me on the lips, whispering a barely audible "Goodnight, Oda." The second night, though, I still hadn't decided what was wrong, and I just grabbed the blanket and pillow while he sat in bed reading. He was stunned and angry, I could see it in his eyes, but he refused to say anything. He came out about an hour later and sat down in front of me. It broke my heart every time he touched my face and whispered questions to a 'sleeping' me, that even awake I had no answers to. Then he said he loved me, got up and went to bed.

I loved him too, that wasn't the problem. I didn't really know at that time, but it was fear, not the absence of love.

Fear. He's here now though. I take his face in my hands and bring his gaze to mine. Without the glasses I see how red and exhausted his eyes are. How red, exhausted and hurt. But, damn us both, we're men, and aren't privy to talking about our feelings that often.

Realization hits me, shattering my inhibitions. I understand why he came out as the Munchkin instead of just John. It's sort of like his defense. When he's unsure of himself around anyone he pulls out the pretentious card. And now he's unsure of himself around me. He's not supposed to ever feel that way around me.

"Damn me." I sigh and pull him into my arms. "I'm so sorry, John."

He lets out a shuddery breath, and clings hard to my waist, his body language saying what his pride won't allow him to voice. How much he needs and wants me. I tighten my own grip, hoping he sees the same hidden meanings.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, nothing to my voice but air.

"Just tell me, Oda. Whatever's wrong, just tell me."

I pull my face away, but he's not letting go of my waist. I gently tug his head from my shoulder and I see confusion. I see a man that just wants to help, to understand and to empathize. He just wants me to let him love me. I laugh. "Oh, this is too mushy for me, man."

I pull him back to me, dragging one hand through his salt and pepper hair that's becoming more salty by the day. My other hand lowers to smooth up and down his back, and as I slow I notice that he's shivering.

"Stupid, skinny bastard." I mutter into his hair.

"Not skinny," he mumbles back. "Thin boned."

"Stupid, thin boned bastard."

"That's better."

"Didn't even bother to put something warm on."

He sighs and snuggles closer. "I was worried when you weren't even asleep on the couch. I check, you know."

Guilty silence greets his revelation, then "Let's go back inside, okay?"

He pulls away, and I see a little worry crease his forehead. "You're-"

I shake my head, knowing he's thinking of another night sleeping in an empty bed. I don't think I could take it either. "No. Together."

He nods. I take his hand, slipping my fingers within his, and start towards the door leading to the staircase. "And tomorrow... I'd like to..."

Christ this is hard.

"I'd like to... talk. About something."

I sneak a peek at his face as we near the door. He merely nods and says "Okay."

And, as corny as it seems, I know that it will be. Because he's always understood as much of me as he possibly could, and has just accepted the rest of what's there as "unchangeable, rooted and dense Finn". So, though I feel a little worried, it's not from what he might or might not understand about me. It's about how I ever could have doubted him in the first place. How I could have ever thought that he would forsake me his arms and his love.

Race can sometimes do that to people. Make them defensive and act stupid. But I'm lucky enough to have a relationship where it doesn't matter, it's just not an issue.

Maybe next time I'll be smart enough to keep that in mind.

As John and I reach the door, I recollect talking to Elliot earlier. He asked if, as a teen, I had been thinking about the meaning of life when I went up to the roof of my old building. I had replied in a joking tone that I just wanted off the rooftop, but I hadn't been joking. I had wanted to find a place where I fit, some place that if it was quiet or loud, it didn't matter. I was home.

I open the door for John and follow him in. As I walk down the steps behind the man I spend my nights and days with, I realize that he's where I belong. He's what I've been waiting for.

I'm finally off the damn rooftop.

FIN