Track Twelve: “Need You Now”
Parker had been reading in the shade until Scott sat down opposite him with two glasses of something cold and a plate of the local flatbread.
“Hi,” Scott said.
Parker looked up. His pale eyes fixed on Scott with the same careful attention as before. “Hi.”
“I was told you were the quiet one.”
“By whom?”
“Alfie.”
Parker considered that. “I suppose I am the quiet one.”
“Good. I like the quiet ones.” Scott set one of the glasses down at his elbow. “Local mint and something else; I couldn’t identify the something else. It might be a fruit. Athena said you like it.”
“I do like it.” Parker took the glass. “Thank you.”
They sat in it for a moment, not uncomfortably. Then, because it was the easiest thing to lead with and because he had noticed the tab open on Parker’s reader, Scott said: “Is that a lyric book?”
Parker looked at him properly. “Yes.”
“Old Earth?”
“Very old. Twenty-first century. I have been going through the archives, reading some of the songs Warp Five Forward have on their album.”
“Which artists?”
“Today, mostly the country ones,” Parker said, with an air of quiet challenge, as though expecting to have to defend the taste.
Scott’s face did something. He tried not to let it, and failed. “Which country ones?”
“Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Josh Turner and a lot of Willie Nelson. And,” Parker added, with the smallest self-conscious pause, “about half a working knowledge of the Lady A catalogue, which is not archive listening for me; I have loved them since I was about fourteen.”
Scott set his own glass down, slowly. “Fourteen,” he repeated.
“Fourteen.”
“Which album?”
“Need You Now. That was the first one I found. I did not stop.”
Scott looked at him properly. “That’s my one too,” he said.
“Really.”
“Really. My mums had it on when I was a kid. It’s the only country album they ever bought, and I did not stop listening to it either.” He grinned, slightly astonished at himself. “I have been on the Orion for a year telling nobody, because none of the security team shares the taste, and I did not want the ribbing. Every so often on a night watch I put it on quietly.”
Parker was, cautiously, smiling. “My dad,” he said, “gave it to me. The love of it. He is human. He listens to a lot of it. I grew up with it playing in the house.”
Scott clocked what was implied without pushing. Human father. Meaning Klingon mother. He filed it, warmly, and did not name it. “Do you,” he asked, because he was curious and because it was the natural next step, “listen to any of the other side of it. Klingon music. Anything from that end of you.”
Parker considered. “Sometimes. If I am in a particular mood.”
“What mood?”
“Not one I am going to describe.”
Scott laughed. “Alright.”
“I like Klingon acid punk, if you must know. Not often. But when I want it, I want it.”
“Acid punk.”
“Acid punk.”
“That is,” Scott said, delighted, “not what I had you down for.”
“Nobody ever does.”
“Good. Keep it that way. It’s a very effective party trick.”
Parker’s slight smile widened, just a fraction. “There is,” he said, changing the subject before he lost his nerve, “a bar in one of the harbour towns down the coast. It is themed around the old Earth country-western style. Live singer, boots on the boards, that whole thing. Athena mentioned it. She thought I might like it. I have been trying to work out whether I have the nerve to go on my own.” He glanced up.
“I would come with you,” Scott said quickly, before he lost his own. “Tonight?”
“Tonight. Have you got a hat?”
“I need a hat?”
“A hat and some boots!”
“I think I can replicate some!”
The bar was called Miller’s, and it was two towns down the coast. It was, to Scott’s slight astonishment, an almost letter-perfect Colludian recreation of an old Earth honky-tonk: pine boards, low lights, neon signs in a script neither of them could quite read, a small raised stage at one end, and a singer with a pedal steel and a stool and a hat working through the classics without visible effort.
They took a table near the back. Parker ordered beers for both of them from the holographic waitress.
The singer worked through country western songs, and something Scott did not recognise but Parker did. They talked, quietly, about the music first, because it was the easiest thing to talk about. Parker knew things Scott had not expected him to know. Scott knew things Parker had not expected him to know. They exchanged small delighted moments of recognition, and then, because the room was doing it, the conversation started to widen.
“Can I ask you something,” Parker said eventually, into a lull between songs, “that is going to sound peculiar.”
“Go on.”
“During the temporal-slash-parallel universe event. A few months ago. When the other-timeline versions came through.”
Scott went still, only slightly, and then, because he trusted Parker not to make it into something it did not need to be, relaxed again. “Yes.”
“The four of us who were needed for it, we sat through the briefings together. So we all learned the same things at the same time. Which,” Scott glanced up, “is why I have not brought any of it up in the months since. Everyone already knew. But it has been sitting in a corner of my head, and I would like to lay it down, if you would.”
“Go on, as long as we don’t break the temporal prime directive.”
“In the other timeline slash parallel universe, your other self was married to Jordan. My other self was married to Alfie. Preston, the cadet who came through the rift, was Alfie’s and mine’s son. And they, you and Jordan, were his uncles. Not his parents. Uncles. And it took me about a week after the mission to properly work out that that was the shape of it, and I have been sitting with it since, and I do not have a clean way of talking about it, and I would like a partner in working it out.”
Scott turned his beer slowly on its coaster. “Alright,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how any of it makes sense.”
“It doesn’t, obviously. That’s the joke.”
“No, but I mean the shape of it, in that timeline. Jordan and Alfie broke up. Alfie went to me; I stayed. We had a son. I died at Qo’noS. Alfie went off the rails. Meanwhile, you and Jordan ended up together and became Preston’s uncles.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Right. So the question I have, and I have been carrying it, is not why. I do not need the why. I have made my peace with the why. It happened because a hundred small things went differently, and one of those small things was Jordan going to understand about his Ryslanti heritage instead of staying; after that, everything cascaded. So no, why.” Parker sipped his beer. “My question is more, what are you and I supposed to do with the fact that it happened at all? In front of us.”
Scott let out a small breath. “That,” he said, “is exactly the question.”
“Yes.”
“I have not talked about it either.”
“No.”
“The thing is,” Scott said, thinking as he spoke, “I do not think it means anything about me, or about you or the other two. I think what it means is that Starfleet is an absolutely insane place to work, and that any given day of the job might involve reading a briefing that names a version of you who married your best friend’s fiancé and had a child with him. And you file it, and you move on, because otherwise you cannot function. But the sitting-with-it, that has to happen somewhere. And I have not had anyone to sit with it with until you.”
“No.”
“So we sit with it here. Together. For as long as it takes. And we agree that we are not those people, and we are not becoming those people, and we are not going to make choices in this life based on choices those people made in another one.”
“Agreed.”
“And in about ten years, when this has become one of the strange stories we tell each other, we will laugh about it. Because it is genuinely ridiculous.”
“It is genuinely ridiculous,” Parker said, and a small laugh escaped him. “A parallel universe. A time-travelling shuttle. A son I have not had. A husband I have not married. All while working out my seminar timetable for next year.”
“Welcome to Starfleet.”
“Welcome to Starfleet.”
“Also,” Scott added, warming, “I want it on the record that I do not want to be the alt-timeline substitute for anybody. If we ever, at any point down the line, become anything to each other, it will be because we chose it now. As us. Not because two other people chose it in another universe.”
“Agreed.”
“And I do not want to be defined by any of this. My other self, the crossover, the recall, the being-the-guy-who-left-the-Astra. Any of it. I have been the guy who caused the drama for a year. I do not want to be him. I want to be Scott Florrick, ensign, USS Orion, prospective aide-de-camp to Admiral McCallister, who likes country music and is, apparently, sitting in a bar with a very interesting cadet.”
“Very interesting,” Parker repeated, entirely deadpan.
“Sorry.”
“No, keep it.”
They both laughed properly this time, and it broke the last of whatever tension had been in the room. After that they talked about other things: the Astra, the cadets, Beatrice being Beatrice, whether Athena and Brook had grown a whole extra inch each in the last six weeks, whether Jib was going to be forcibly enrolled in a choir before graduation. Ordinary things. The sort of things two people talk about when they have decided to be friends and to see where it goes.
The singer finished a song. She adjusted her hat. She leaned into the microphone.
“Alright,” Scott said, and set his beer down, and turned to Parker with a face of extremely straight sincerity. “Cadet Hart.”
“Ensign Florrick.”
“I am about to give you a direct order.”
Parker put his own beer down carefully. “Sir.”
“You are going to come and dance with me.”
“Sir. I am not sure that is a lawful order.”
“It is entirely lawful.”
“I would need to check the regulations.”
“There is not time to check the regulations, Cadet. The song has already started.”
“Sir, if I may. Are you certain that this is not, in some small way, an abuse of your rank and position over me?”
“It is absolutely an abuse of my rank and position over you.”
“Sir.”
“Cadet.”
“Then in the interests of not being court-martialled for insubordination,” Parker said, deadpan and delighted, “I will comply.”
“Good.”
He held out his hand. Parker, still entirely deadpan, took it.
Which was how, three minutes later, Scott found himself on a small country western dance floor in a Colludian harbour town, trying to follow a line dance that he had never seen before in his life, and failing utterly.
The rest of the small crowd, a mix of humans and one enormous Ferengi in a cowboy hat, moved through the steps with the easy fluency of people who had done this many times. Scott moved through them with the flailing dignity of a man trying to work out where his feet went next.
Parker stopped watching after about thirty seconds, and then, quietly and without ceremony, stepped up behind him.
“Alright,” Parker said, close enough to his ear that Scott could hear him over the pedal steel. “Stop trying. Just listen.”
“What?”
“Hands.”
He placed his hands on Scott’s hips, one on each side, and Scott, who had been anticipating a fair amount of tonight’s embarrassment but not this specific piece of it, went briefly still.
“Sorry,” Parker said quietly. “Is this alright?”
“Yes,” Scott said, too fast. “Yes. Fine.”
“Good. Now. Right foot forward on the one. Weight through, left foot follows on the two. Not a march. It’s a slide. Feel it.”
Scott felt it.
“Better,” Parker said. He adjusted the pressure of one hand, small and correcting. “Hips lead. Not your shoulders. Your shoulders are doing something religious. Stop it. Hips.”
“I am trying.”
“I know you are trying; that is the problem. Stop trying. Just listen. Hips.”
They moved through eight bars. Scott slowly stopped fighting the steps and started to find them. Parker’s hands stayed at his hips the whole way through, guiding without pushing, warm through the thin cotton of the shirt Scott had, at the last minute, decided to wear over his vest. It was, Scott found, the most he had thought about the placement of another person’s hands in about a year.
By the third repetition of the sequence, Scott was, more or less, doing it. Parker gave him one final small adjustment and then stepped back.
“There. That is the basic pattern. You have it.”
“Please stand back there again.”
“Ensign.”
“Cadet.”
“I am going to go back to our table now, and drink my beer, and watch you continue dancing on your own, which you have now proven yourself capable of doing.”
“You are cruel.”
“I am fair.” Parker was smiling properly now, a whole-face smile Scott had not seen yet. “I gave you a working method. Now use it.”
Scott used it. He got through the rest of the dance in one piece, and looked, by the end, only faintly ridiculous, and turned to find Parker back at the table, watching him with an expression of thoroughly satisfied amusement.
He came back and sat down and drank half his beer in one pull.
“You,” he said, “are a menace.”
“I am a very effective teacher.”
“You are a menace who happens to be an effective teacher. It is a distinct category.”
“I accept the distinction.”
They sat in it, both of them slightly warm from the dancing and the drink, and Parker looked across at him with a face that had, over the course of the evening, given up most of its watchfulness. That was, Scott decided, the win of the night.
Then the singer, on the stage, finished her song, and the small audience clapped, and she leaned into the microphone and said, “Alright, this next one is for anyone in the room who has ever been up at a quarter past one in the morning missing somebody they should not miss. It is an old one. It is a good one.”
The pedal steel started.
Scott and Parker recognised it in the same second, and both of them, in the same second, decided not to say anything about it.
They listened to Need You Now the whole way through. Somewhere around the second chorus, Parker put his hand flat on the table beside his glass, and Scott, slowly, and without looking at him, put his own hand next to it, and their little fingers overlapped, and neither of them moved.
The song ended. The room clapped. The singer thanked everyone. Neither of them moved their hands.
They came back to the villa late, through the dark of the harbour road and up the shaded drive, quietly, as though not to wake anybody. Scott stopped at Parker’s door.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
Parker went in. Scott went next door and sat on his balcony in the warm dark, feet up on the rail, for a long time.
The sea was quiet, a long way off.
His comm tablet chimed once, low.
You awake?
He looked at it and typed back.
Yeah.
The beach. Ten minutes. I could not sleep.
Scott sat with that for a moment. Then he got up, put his shoes on, and went to Parker’s door and knocked, twice, quietly.
Parker opened it in the same clothes he had come home in. He looked at Scott.
“Ready?” Scott said.
“Yes.”
They walked down the villa corridors, past the sleeping rooms, past the door where Alfie and Jordan were presumably tangled together and dreaming, past the terrace, and out through the doors, and down the path to the beach. The villa slept behind them. Nobody was up. Nobody was watching.
Scott, as they stepped onto the sand, took Parker’s hand into his own.
Parker looked at him.
They both smiled.
They walked.
