A/N: Hey guys. This is my first Flashpoint Fanfic. I know I'm excited too. It's set Season 4 AU. Au mainly because I decided to keep Parkinson's Wordy, because it takes more than that for me to get rid of Wordy (major Wordy lover here). Anyway, the team knows about his diagnosis. This story is set around the time of 4x05, but once the newer episodes air, I might work in new information. The story is all 6 main character based (I tried to make it as lifelike as an episode as possible) with a bar separating a change in character, although I cannot promise I will continue to use this format in later chapters as the story layout may conflict. This story will also be heavily based on their family lives, because the show promised us that and I'm wanting more than they're delivering. But I promise more police-y action in later chapters (chapter 3 to be exact). Now that you've read my Stephen King length intro please enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Domino Theory

Chapter 1

Late

Sam places his ear to the smooth surface of the treated wooden door and listens expertly for any indication for running water. His ear begins to grow warm under his body's proximity to the bathroom door and he chances a glance at his watch. It's quarter to seven. If they don't leave now being late is a definite possibility.

"Jules." His balled fist hits the door again like he's going to toss in a flash bomb and retrieve her himself. He wonders momentarily if he would even win in that situation, or if going tactical would only prove to piss Jules off more. Their relationship is already burdened without Natalie being a constant addition. It would be nice to spend time with just his girlfriend without having to worry about prying eyes or third parties.

Jules cracks open the door fully clothed, her hair done and from what he can tell her makeup is finished. He wonders exactly what she's doing in the bathroom at quarter to seven when she looks fine. "Are you almost done?"

It's not that worried about being late, but if they both show up at the exact same time or if they're late on the exact same day; warnings will be issued, transcripts will be read and Toth, Sarge or both will catch on.

Jules holds up her index finger. "I just need a minute and a half."

"Jules—"

"You can set an egg timer if you want."

"We're going to be late."

"Then go." Her tone isn't vindictive and she disappears behind the closed door for half a second before reappearing and tossing him his car keys in a low underhand throw.

They thump against his chest as his eyes widen in surprise. Are they having a fight? Or did they just sidestep a fight? He doesn't mind that she takes forever to get ready. In fact, he likes it; it's one of her high school qualities that she never quite grew out of. And he loves to watch her get ready. He sets his clock early just so he can watch her curl her hair. It's an action that seems so un-Jules-like but at the same time that iron is imbued with all her qualities. Makeup is his favorite though. She has to stand on her tiptoes to reach the mirror over his sink and the position she takes to keep her balance is sexy as hell. "Are you—"

She slaps him in the chest playfully the force of the gesture almost sends him a full step back. "I'm not mad Sam. I get the implications of us both being late on the same day. Besides I have to run to my place after work. I'll take my car."

He gives her a lopsided grin, knowing that he's safely out of the doghouse at least for now. "In that case." He takes a step forward, his arms circling lazily around her jean clad waist until they find the back pockets. His nose nuzzles into the side of her neck and for the hundredth time since he got up, he wonders how he got to so lucky that she come over to his apartment that one night five months ago. "I guess I'll see you tonight."

"Sam." She detangles from him as quickly as possible by placing her hands on his biceps and forcing him back at arm's length. "You're going to be late." Without as much as a kiss goodbye the bathroom door clicks closed behind her.

He tries not to stare at the family portraits as he walks down the hallway that's shrunk over the years. There's a spot just a few steps left of the outlet where there's a nasty dip in the floor and if he walks over it, it's going to let out a loud squeal. He's learned that through sneaking out during his rebellious teenage years.

From the other side of the gray, dawn-stained hallway resonates a hacking cough. The kind that makes his stomach feel first date nervous. When he first started hearing them a year ago he begged his dad to go see a doctor. He even offered to drive. His dad wouldn't listen. They were never good at listening to each other. It took a full six months and the whole family hounding until his father was finally diagnosed as terminal. Since he was going to die it was time to play God.

His mother waddles out of Carmen's room, which they're using as his dad's 'hospital room'. It was originally supposed to be changed into a home gym but sometimes wishes are like goldfish without propellers. His mother wipes her hands on the patchwork apron she's had since the beginning of time. He hasn't got the heart to tell her that much like everything else in this house; it's gone out of style. He's not sure it really matters anymore.

"Michelangelo." His mother still smiles warmly at him. She probably always will, but sleepless nights are building walls behind her eyes and that's introducing resentment because it's like all of this could be settled with his letter of resignation. Like his dad's thirty years of smoking leading to inoperable lung cancer wouldn't exist. Poof.

He swallows the bitterness and lets his own smile reach his cheeks, real genuine like. "Hey Ma." They meet in the middle hall and he places a kiss on her cheek. It's squishy, wet and cold and he knows that she's been crying but they've replayed this conversation so many times before that he can't bring himself to repeat it over again.

"You're up early."

"No, I got up late." He adjusts his gym bag so she knows that he's going into work. So she doesn't get the wrong idea. He isn't succumbing to their peer pressure yet.

Her lips roll into each other and disappear for a few seconds. It's something she does when she's disappointed in him, an action he knows well from childhood. "Well, I'll make you some breakfast."

"I can't Ma." He shakes his head and gives her another quick kiss on the cheek as he pushes past her in the hallway. The same hallway she chased him down with a wooden spoon for eating cannolis off the cooling rack. "I gotta go to work."

"Mikey, when is this gonna stop?" She doesn't follow him, but watches him with tears peeking in the corners of her eyes. "He's not asking for much. You only have one father."

"Yeah and some days when I go into work I save kids' fathers. Other days I save kids from their fathers." He starts walking again aware that his mom is following him, begging him to do something to appease his dying father. It's like something out of Shakespeare. He doesn't really listen to the words anymore. He doesn't even get upset about the constant flow of them, or their insinuation.

He reaches the screen door in the kitchen and he stops. Usually he keeps going because it's easier just to go to work and make a difference and deal with the very real issues of the world than the clouded judgments of his parents. His mom is full out crying now, cheeks tainted white in the fluorescent light of the kitchen in the morning. He stares at his shoes, scuffless and buffed by the same woman. "Some parents would be proud to have a son like me."

"Dad, you said you would take me tonight."

"I know I did Clark, but I forgot I have Daddy and Me class with Izzy. We'll just have to go a different night." Ed doesn't look up from the newspaper he's frantically flipping through that's blocking the view of his teenage son. He's just looking for the hockey highlights before hopefully heading into work early and maybe getting in his first decent workout session in a month.

Sophie left early to head to the bank to sign papers for her new catering business. Clark doesn't have to be at school for another two hours, so he's agreed to watch Izzy this morning. Ed loves his family, his wife, his son and his new baby girl, but part of him has been craving more time with the boys in blue.

It feels like he's been taking on more of the parent role then Sophie since she's realized her dream of owning a business. He does the late night feedings. He does the diaper changes. He even takes care of everything for Clark, which isn't that much because at sixteen, the kid should be taking care of himself. He doesn't really remember the last time he saw her hold Izzy. He worries because with Clark she was so hands on, she had to be hands on and now it's like she's letting Izzy's milestones slip through her fingers.

Part of him wonders if she's doing it on purpose to show him how he was with Clark, or if it's postpartum depression but every time he tries to talk to her about it, she blows him off. She has errands to run, or papers to sign or new recipes to try or interviews to conduct. He just wants his kids to have two fully functioning parents.

"Dad, you promised."

"No, no." He sets down the paper for a moment and glances at his son, who is leaning over the table and is in desperate need of a haircut. "I would never have promised it if I didn't think I could've kept it."

"My test is next week and still I don't know how to parallel park." The modest kitchen echoes with the cadence of Clark's voice.

"Who's fault is that Buddy?"

Clark pushes back from the table and crosses his arms over his chest in a huff. "It's yours. I didn't choose to live in a house with an infant sister at this age."

"Watch the tone."

"No. This crap has been happening ever since Izzy got here." Clark shakes his head, sandy curls in his green eyes once again and then he's gone from the kitchen as quickly as he escalated.

"Clark," Ed warns as they weave through the dining room. He thought he wouldn't have to deal with the real teenage drama for another sixteen years. Girls during their teenage years are twenty times worse than boys. That's the general consensus. Boys as children are horrible but girls as teens are deadly. Here was Clark, his boy, proving him wrong with the amount of unnecessary drama.

"Every time we're supposed to do something you blow me off the second something with Izzy comes up." Clark shoves his feet into already laced sneakers and grabs his backpack from the floor. "If it's that much of a burden I'll find someone else to teach me."

Ed sighs and tries not to laugh at the ridiculous concept of talking down his teenage son from walking out the front door so that he might have an hour to himself to workout. "Okay look. I know that things have been hard with Izzy lately—" He forgets to keep his voice down and from upstairs Izzy's cries echo. Ed stops in mid sentence and runs a coarse hand over his fatigued face. He and Clark then stare at each other, waiting until the other makes the first move.

Clark sighs and runs a hand through his mess of hair and then points to the stairs. "Go."

Ed chuckles and claps a hand on Clark's shoulder before turning towards the stairs. "See that's what being a big brother is about."

"Hey Dad," Clark called to him when he's halfway up the stairs.

"Yeah?" For the sake of time Ed doesn't stop but begins to take the stairs slower. He's hopes that Izzy just needs a quick diaper change or feeding.

"Just because you weren't there for me when I was a kid, doesn't mean you can't be there for me now." Clark slams the door at the end of his sentence and the chances of Ed's early workout leave with his son. Upstairs in his unused workout room, Izzy continues to cry.

"Dad?" Lilly's fingers curl around the side of the door as she peers into the bedroom.

Wordy grins at his daughter's half-closed eyes as he pulls a light blue long-sleeved shirt on over his plain white t-shirt. "Ladybug, what are you doing up."

"I don't feel good." She presses her cheek into the side of the bedroom door and watches as he fumbles with the buttons on the front of his shirt.

"You don't feel good." He repeats and the buttons lose his attention. He opens the door to let Lilly in and bends on his knees so that he's level with her. Then places a hand to her forehead and finds her temperature normal. "What's wrong?"

She leans her tiny shoulders into the wall and shrugs. The blue eyes she inherited from Shelly won't meet him and he's beginning to catch on. "You're not sick are you?" She downcasts her eyes, thick lashes fanning out to block him from view. "Lilly?"

Two thick tears roll down her cheeks and she shakes her head. "No."

He uses the pad of his thumb to gently rub away the tears, and then turns her chin up so she has to look him in the eye. "Then what's the matter? Are you having bad dreams again?"

"No."

He tucks her brown hair behind her ears, smoothing it back, trying to comfort her the way he's been doing so often lately. Kids are intuitive. They know when something's wrong. He and Shelley haven't been fighting but they've been discussing. Options and priorities and whether surgery would be a viable decision in the future. "Was it daddy's cooking last night? Because that was mom's idea."

She giggles and smiles with a mouth full of perfect teeth. Something else clearly inherited from Shelley. "No."

"Then what's the matter?"

She turns away again and her fingers find the frill edge on her nightgown. He takes her hand in his own, small frail fingers that disappear in the creases of his palm when he closes his hand. "There's a mean boy at school."

"What do you mean 'there's a mean boy?'"

"He's mean to me." She speaks with a nasally voice that reminds him to pick up more of her allergy medication. She sniffs loudly as two more tears trek down her cheeks and dangle from her chin.

"How?"

"He calls me names and—" she furrows her brows in painful memory as her eyes become glassy and puffy with tears. "And—and he pushes me down. H-he took my snack too."

"Hey, hey." He pulls her away from the wall and against his chest where she continues to tremble and cry. "Lilly, did you tell your teacher?"

"He's in a different class." Her mouth moves against his shoulder and he can feel the warmth of her tears permeate his shirt's fabric.

"Okay." He puts an arm underneath her boney legs and as he lifts her off the ground, she wraps her arms around his neck. He moves so that the tip of his nose touches hers and they both smile.

"You know what I'm going to do?" Lilly sniffles and shakes her head.

"I'm going to stop in your school today and have a talk to your teacher or principal about this boy, What's his name?"

"Martin."

"Oh well, he's just mad because his name rhymes with farting."

Lilly giggles again, her eyes clear of tears as the problem is irradiated by his promise. He wishes that all their problems could be solved this easily. He wishes that his dad was still around so he could ask him what to do about the early onset Parkinson's. Or the idea of Shelley going back to work at the daycare even though he loves being able to provide for his family and his girls having their mother at home. Or about the team and how even though they've been accepting of his disability, they don't look or treat him the same. Or how a twenty-year friendship can slowly unravel over something so trivial.

"Daddy?" Lilly questions with half-closed blue eyes.

She leans her head against his shoulder and he smiles. "Yeah Ladybug?'

"I love you."

He kisses the top of her head and wonders if he'll be able to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. "I love you too."

"Morning Boss," Winnie greets with a grin.

Greg stops in the dim morning light splashed across the floor on his way to the locker room. The position of the sun outside stretches and thins his shadow and he absentmindedly thinks that it might rain. "You know Winnie; I think this is the first time I've seen you without that headset on."

Winnie chuckles and smooths out the bottom of her hair between two flattened palms to accentuate his statement. Then takes a seat at the desk where she'll be spending the next twelve hours. "We're breaking records today."

"Hopefully not." Greg crosses over to the desk and pulls out an envelope from his pocket. Inside is a semi-formal gold script invitation, a three-page letter written in cursive and a plane ticket. When Winnie looks to him for an explanation he precedes, "Dean is graduating from high school this weekend and he sent me this in the mail a few months ago. I booked today off as soon as I found out, but with everything that's happened recently I thought it was best to come in for a half-day that's hopefully uneventful."

"I'm sure it will be Boss."

Greg nods. Though the team's probation is a good reason to come to work today, he needs something to keep his mind off meeting his son for a second time in ten years. It's exciting; meeting the boy he left behind so long ago. Learning about what he plans to do with his future. Learning about what he missed; did he ever learn to drive? That was a big issue last time. But there's also a forceful trepidation. The last time Dean wanted to see him it was to get him to back off. What if he wanted to see him now for a similar reason?

He clears his throat when he realizes that Winnie is still watching him. He has a four hour flight to go crazy thinking up scenarios. Instead he worries about the people he doesn't see now, because HQ is a little too calm for a Friday morning. He checks his watch and is a little shocked when it reads quarter to seven. After spending an hour this morning rechecking his luggage, he left fifteen minutes late and was sure he wouldn't be at HQ before seven.

Then something strikes him. Slowly he examines the main room and the connecting weight room. "Winnie, has anyone else from Team One made it in yet?"

"Hmmm." She slaps her fingers over the computer keys with expert precision and for the first time he notices that she's managed to put on the headset sometime during their conversation. "No boss, none of Team One are accounted for as of yet."

"Well they've still got fifteen minutes. A lot can happen in fifteen minutes." He lets out a dry chuckle and rubs a hand over the back of his head where it connects to his neck. He feels the tension already beginning to grow.

Outside the sky releases a low guttural grumble as a warning preceding the predestined rain. He knows that there's no way today is going to be uneventful. Rain, thunderstorms, even Fridays make people insane. Even if nothing happens during the shift, what are the chances that his plane won't be cancelled due to inclement weather?

He sighs, still rubbing his neck. "And here I thought I was going to be late."

This is not how she imagines it happening. But it's not like little girls sit around planning out this event like they plan out their weddings. She doesn't even have her wedding planned out. She can't even think of any of that right now because she's still trying to get over the fact that she's perched on the edge of Sam's tub waiting. Just waiting.

She wonders if Sam really did go to work or if he's waiting to ambush her in the living room. It's a ridiculous thought but she wouldn't put the idea past him. He'd probably think it was funny. Funny to make her scared. Funny to make her squirm. Funny to put her in the exact position she's in right now. But as she thinks of Sam lying in wait, it makes her smile.

She sighs, a quick exhalation of breathe through her mouth and places her fidgeting hands between her knees. She looks at her watch, she told Sam she needed exactly a minute and a half and she wasn't lying. Now it was more like a minute. The longest minute of her lifetime. She's been shot, long range by a sniper rifle, and this is the longest minute of her life. It doesn't bode well for her prospective life choices.

One reason it's so long is she keeps falling back on those damn psych evaluations:

"Who do you like more your mom or your dad?"

"Well since I never got to meet my mom and my dad a just a tad overbearing—"

She wonders what the psychologists would think of this. She wonders what's going to happen when Toth gets the memo that explains what happened in this forty second interlude in Sam's bathroom that caused her to be late this Friday morning. She wonders who's going to leave Team One her or Sam? How's that argument going to go? If Sarge and everyone else will be in on that one?

She looks at her watch, twenty seconds now. She's sitting across from that damn psychologist again. They never have faces. She'll never tell them that because that's just another big can of worms that would involve a multilevel conversation. "Julianna tell me, why did you feel that Sam Braddock didn't need to be involved in your pregnancy scare."

Scare. Because that's all it is. Okay, so it's not like the idea of having a baby was so farfetched to her. When Sophie was pregnant she was beautiful and happy. Izzy was adorable and Wordy's girls were all gorgeous. But that was before she and Sam had gotten back together. They were already on a precarious bridge with the whole 'sneaking-around-behind-everyone's-back thing'. Not to mention the fact that Natalie being omnipresent weight around their neck was already a burden.

What would she even do anyways? She waited out the second hand on her watch as it ticked away at the final ten. It's not like she could go out into the field pregnant. Could she even go out into the van pregnant? She's almost positive that no one in the history of the SRU had been pregnant before. No one on Team One for sure. Then it hit her. If she did this, there was a good chance she was not going to make it back on Team One, let alone the SRU.

Settle down. She needed to settle down. The back of her thighs were being to burn from where the edge of Sam's ceramic tub was digging into them. There's nothing to be getting upset about anyways it's just a scare. Time was up. It was time to find out that this was a scare and then no one would ever know about it. About how her stomach feels void and ignited at the same time. About how she can count her heartbeats and she's not even moving. About how no stakeout, or break-in or anything else she's experienced working at the SRU has made her feel this nervous. No one would know but her.

From the other side of the bathroom door she hears the muffled sound of the front door open and close and then an overnight back hitting the ground hard. Her breath hitches in her throat and she prays that Sam is lying in wait in the living room.

A few seconds pass with only the clicking of stilettos against hardwood. Then Natalie's voice rings in from the other side of the door, "Jules?"

"Yeah?" She tries to bury her face in her hands. There's no escaping this. But she can try. She jumps from the side of the tub and places the pregnancy test box in the half full trash and pulls out the bag.

"Are you still here?" No.

"Yeah" Her voice trails off as she takes a last second glance at the instructions and tosses them too. Then her attention moves to the dreaded stick sitting in solidarity on the edge of the sink.

"Aren't you going to be late?"

Jules stares at the white stick and at the two lines staring back at her. "I already am."

Next chapter up next weekend.
If you liked it please review. If you really liked it, please read it again and enjoy.
PS - Bonus points if anyone can tell me what Wordy's third daughter's name is (Lilly, Ally and blank?) and what Spike's sibling's name and gender is (do we even know?)