Keryl Raist's Blog, page 44

38 Weeks: The Fourteenth Week

Image from http://shecapsthat.fanfusion.orgA/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.



Week Fourteen:
The good thing about Fi feeling better is that she's feeling better. She's up and about and moving around and the fear that Michael feels when he sees her lying around looking sick and uninterested in everything has vanished.The bad thing about Fi feeling better, and being up and about and doing things is that she wants to be doing jobs, which has created an entirely new fear for Michael.He's never relished the idea of Fi in danger. Granted his idea of 'in danger' is a few hundred degrees higher than anyone else's, but still, when his spidey-senses tingle about a job being a problem, he doesn't want her near it.This generally does not lead to fun conversations between them, and he usually regrets trying to keep her away from the dangerous stuff, because as she's pointed out, by saving his ass, repeatedly, if there's danger to be had, he's much better off with her as back-up.But this is different. There's the sensation he feels when she's in danger, and it's cold and horrible and he hates it, but this is... deeper, primal. It's his balls trying to crawl deep into his body and hide while ice shoots down his spine and his eyes want to close and escape from the truth of it. He doesn't think he's ever been scared motionless before, but, right now, while Fi hits the accelerator and they speed toward the Keys at close to 130 miles an hour, needing to get a site set before Sam gets there, he's awfully close.The good thing about being scared motionless is that he's not going to distract her. Rationally, he knows she's a better driver than he is. Rationally, he knows they're safe. It's almost 2:00 in the morning, so there's no other traffic on the road. But he can feel the vibrations of the car, feel the light cross breeze off the ocean, and he's very aware they're on an extremely long bridge with no margin for error if anything goes wrong. It's dark, so he can't see the ocean next to them, but he knows it's there, cold and black, and waiting for the wind to pick up a little or for a bump in the road to hit the tire, or just something to go wrong.Apparently he's sitting in the passenger seat, clutching the arm rests, with his eyes closed."Michael, are you okay?"He might be scared stiff, but he's not scared stupid. Now is really not a good time to be arguing about keeping her out of danger."Fine, Fi.""You don't look fine."He manages a smile at her. "Fine, really.""When did you become such a bad liar?""Could we maybe do this when you're not driving us at 130 miles an hour through the dark to go set up a fake drug smuggling operation for Sam?""Are you scared?""Do I sound scared?""Yes."He forces his fingers to let go of the armrests. "I wish we had some real coke to sell this deal. Sam's gonna be in a lot of trouble if they notice all he's got to sell is fifty kilos of baking soda.""If it gets to that point, we'll get him out, and move onto plan B.""You've got a plan B?" This is better, talking tactics relaxes him, moves his focus."Bring in Jesse to play the coke dealer that's screwed Sam?""No. Chuck Finley's the sort of man who would have tested the coke before taking it...  Bring in Jesse as the 'loyal' employee who's stealing from him?""Better yet, if they move to test it, we'll have a distraction ready to go, spring it on them, and they'll run. Do you think you can get something that'll sound like a fake DEA raid ready to go in the background?""Fi, just getting this set is going to be awfully close.""Rival gang?"He thinks about it as she downshifts and exits toward the warehouse they're heading to."I can get something that'll look like a rival gang set up." 
**********************************
Hours later, as they're driving, sedately, him at the wheel, home from what was a successful "cocaine" buy, one that would soon cause Carlos Riveira's boss to become deeply unhappy about the fact that he just spent a million dollars on baking soda. That buy will, at best, get Carlos sent back to Venezuela, and at worst, killed, but either way he was no longer going to be stalking Sam's client, sending her dead doves. "You want to tell me why you were upset?" Fi asks."Trying to pass off baking soda as cocaine is stressful.""Really, Michael? Stressful?" "It was.""Uh huh." He always finds it vaguely disturbing when she responds to him the way his mom does. He just lets it lie, not saying anything, but he knows what she's expecting him to say next. She's got her 'cut the bullshit' look on her face, and at this point he can argue with her about being overprotective, or he can argue about lying, but either way, there's a fight coming up."You're pregnant.""I had noticed that. The weeks of vomiting tipped me off." She's still giving him the keep talking look."Since Nate died, you in danger drives me crazy. You and our baby in danger makes it worse.""You thought that was danger?" She can't believe he'd be worried about a job that easy. And he honestly feels a little stupid for it, now that the danger is passed."No. I didn't think it was danger. But my brain doesn't appear to be giving the orders about what constitutes danger right now."She smiles at him, which he wasn't expecting at all. "That's sweet.""Really?""You concerned about us, yeah? As long as you can keep it under control and don't do anything stupid, it'll stay sweet. Get over-protective and try to keep me out of it, and it won't be sweet, then it'll be annoying.""So, you're enjoying me sitting here, fearing for your life, and doing nothing about it?""Yes." She smiles brightly at him. "Remember back when you thought you might be getting back into the CIA and I told you that if you had to survive based on your understanding of relationships you'd be dead in ten seconds?""Sort of." "It wasn't that I didn't want you working for the CIA, which I didn't, it was that I wanted you to pick me over the CIA. Same thing here, I want you to be concerned, but I want you to pick my happiness over your comfort.""Okay..." Sometimes, life is a lot easier without women in it. This was just too cute not to post. 

Original Fic Friday: Hunter's Tales Volume One: Billy Price

A/N: Vampires, snark, meta, all manner of good things lie within. Want to start at the beginning? Click here. Want to read it all at once? It's .99 at Amazon.



Chapter 5.
Gym class. It’s required to graduate, and it’s another experience I could easily go the rest of my life without. Lucky for me, I can use my glamour to get out of gym.
But I don’t do it all the time. For example, any sport that’s a solo thing, like jogging or yoga, I attend. Team sports are a dead give-away, though, so I get out of them. You can act clumsier than you actually are when moving slowly. But when I’m playing a game, I tend to move at my natural speed, and my natural speed is way too fast. Other vamps seem to have the same issue. Smart ones skip sports. Ego-mad ones want the glory and flock to football and basketball.
This is one of the reasons I always go to the home games, and also why I take gym, even if I don’t always participate.
Mid-November in Nebraska means we’re doing mostly indoor sports. The football team is still outside, but the rest of us are inside. I join the yoga group and watch the rest of the kids.
All the kids in yoga are girls. I don’t much care about girl vamps. I leave them alone. They leave me alone. For a high school hunt, I’m interested in turning the tables on the boys playing the seduction game. I watch the other girls carefully; none of them are vamps. The gym teacher is pretty serious about this yoga thing, and the girls are flushed and sweating.
I shift into The Archer and watch the basketball game.
Now, we can’t actually fly. At least I’ve never met one of us who figured out how to do it. But, we are awfully strong, so we can jump a good long way. If I put some effort into it, I can jump seventy feet. So, when one of the guys pulls off a jump that would make Michael Jordan burn with jealousy, I’ve got my vamp.
He’s young, sort of. His body looks sixteenish. He’s tall, thin, and gangly. His hair is light brown, and he’s got it brushed into a Justin Bieberish ‘do. My guess is that it’s actually cut into a ‘70s Luke Skywalker shag and he’s just brushing it forward. His eyes are a light, but still pretty natural looking, shade of green. He’s probably less than fifty years old.
The other boys are playing full-out; they’re pink, sweating, and breathing hard. He’s pale and calm. He takes a hard elbow to the face, a shot that would split the lip of a human, but he just shakes his head and retreats to the sidelines for a minute.
He catches me staring at him. I look away, fast, but not so fast that he doesn’t catch me doing it. I sneak a glance back up at him, and he smiles at me.
Good.
The guy next to him pokes him gently with an elbow to the stomach and nods at me. I focus my hearing on them and catch a slightly salacious comment about my body.
This one is going to be easy.
***********************
I catch sight of him again at lunch. For the number of dead girls in this town, I was expecting to see someone who didn’t really know how to blend. But this one is good.
He’s eating: really eating, looking like he’s enjoying every bite of the third-rate pizza the cafeteria serves. He’s got his arm around a pretty girl and is feeding her bites of his pizza.
They’re cute. Ridiculously cute. Painfully cute. And she’s so damn happy it’s sickening.
“Enjoying today’s edition of America’s Sweetest Couple?” Billy slides into the seat next to me.
I smile, feeling pleased to see him. “Oh yes, nothing like young love to set the heart to skipping with unfeigned joy.”
“He’s Jack Cross. She’s Evie James. They’ve been dating since about homeroom this morning.” Damn! It’s hard to pry a vamp away from a brand new acquisition.
“Lovely. Nothing like the first blush of a new relationship.”
“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes at me. “So, how are you enjoying day two of the glorious adventure that is Jenks High School?”
“I’m having the time of my life.”
“Glad to hear it. How’d you end up here? Not like we get a lot of mid-year transfers.”
I’ve got a few stock answers for this question. “Parents split up a few years ago. On my eighteenth, mom was done with me. She left. Rather than hunt for my Dad, I took out a map, grabbed a dart, and tossed. I wanted to get somewhere she wouldn’t be able to find me when she woke up and decided to be mommy dearest again. So, here I am.”
“Ouch. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” He’s looking at me hard. Really seeing what’s in front of him. It’s the sort of look that makes me glad I’m in one of my fun Goth outfits. This one has a short navy skirt, black and red striped leggings, a black long-sleeve tee, and a dark gray short-sleeve tee over top. To finish the look off, I’ve got a cute little black scarf, with skulls on the bottoms, wrapped around my throat. Without it, he definitely would have noticed my lack of pulse.
“So, what do people do around here for fun?” I ask.
“Tip cows.” He winks. “Nah, we’re not that far into middle of nowhere. This here is the most holy and devout land of First Church of Christ at the Mall. Everyone in school worships there daily.”
“Brilliant. I like malls.”
He looks a little disappointed.
“Really?”
“Well, I like clothing, and clothing tends to be at malls. I could probably take or leave the actual mall part.”
“Ahh…”
“How about you in specific? What do you do for fun?”
He grins at me. “Morphine.”
The bell rings, and before I have a good comeback, he heads off to his next class.
**********

I don’t see Billy again for the rest of the day. I do see Jack and Evie. They appear to be surgically connected.
This is something of a complication.
It’s not like I usually show up at just the right time when the vamp is between feeds. Yeah, it’s great if it happens, but it’s only happened twice in ten years.
But most of the time, we’re… fickle is as good a word as any. Look, if you’re as old as we are, teens can be pretty boring companions. Fun for a little while, but over time they just get dull, so, if he’s good at his glamour, he takes care of the girl and goes onto a new one. And look, there I am, new, really new, with no visible attachments, slouching away, looking ripe for Mr. Romance to come and sweep me off my feet.
Most of the time is not all of the time though. And if Jack is anything like most of the other vamps I’ve met who feed on teens, he’s pretty into the new one while she is new. Basically, without a crowbar, I’m not going to be able to pry him off of her. And if he’s really responsible for all three dead girls in this area, he’s averaging eight months before he gets bored.
I’m not sticking around here for eight months waiting for him to get bored.
He’s sitting on the back of a bench, waiting for his ride. She’s standing between his legs. They’re cuddling. He hasn’t looked in my direction since gym class. I don’t see any bite marks on her, but it’s cold out, so most of the obvious parts are covered in clothing.
So, Jack, how to get you…
************

Home again, for a little while at least. Drop off my stuff, change my outfit, watch some Sherlock, and then, to the mall.
Remember my suck-ass town comment? Okay, so one of the things a town needs before I’ll deign to consider it a hunting ground is a decent mall. And a few good clubs are nice too, but usually that’s too much to ask for in a small suburb like this one.
I like to shop. I like to dance. So, if I am going to grace your town with my presence, you have to be able to provide me with at least one of those options.
Jenks, Nebraska has a good mall.
Back in the dark ages, when I was a girl, clothing worked something like this: mother went to the dry goods store and purchased cloth. That cloth was wool. It was hot and itchy and smelled like sheep and sometimes pee. (Urine was used to fix certain dyes. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in the 1650s?) She then made a dress out of it. The best thing you could say about it was that it fit. She was a competent, but not talented, seamstress. That dress was my Sunday best for about a year or two. Then it would have enough wear to get demoted to my shop dress, and she’d make a new Sunday best dress. The shop dress was worn six days a week while I tended my father’s shop. I also had a nightgown and a dress that had gone past shop dress to chores dress. I had one pair of boots. One pair of shoes, they were worn only to church and were passed down to my little sisters when they got too small. A winter cloak, a few scarves and aprons, a bonnet to keep my hair covered, two pairs of stockings, and a few unmentionables rounded out my entire wardrobe.
In that my clothing wasn’t homespun, and I did have a new dress every year or two, I was a notch or two above most of the rest of the world.
My fortunes rose, and eventually, I had a few closets full of clothing. But the whole made-for-you-from-scratch-thing was pretty much how clothing worked until the 1920s, when suddenly, there were department stores and ready-to-wear clothing.
So, I like clothing. I like shopping for clothing. I like looking at it, touching it, picking it out, and trying it on. I like all sorts of styles, though I tend to go for mostly Goth looks when I’m on a high school hunt.
I’m at the mall, happily petting a selection of silk corsets, when I sense someone watching me. Nothing magic or supernatural about that, just that feeling that someone is paying attention.
I look up.
“Come here often?” Billy asks.
“Every single day.” I smile at him.
“Is this also punishment for pissing off God?”
“Nah. This is my reward for being a good little consumer.”
He steps closer to me and looks at the piece in my fingers. He gives me a very interested look, like he can’t believe I’d ever put anything like that on, and says, “I’d love to see you in that.”
I lift the magenta corset and flip it over. “You and me both.” I point to the price tag. “Too much for a girl on her own.” I do make a note of what store I’m at. I’ll probably order it online tonight. It’s way too cute to just leave.
“That’s a crying shame.” He looks genuinely disappointed.
“Indeed. So, you spend a lot of time shopping for women’s clothing?”
“Nope. I decided I needed a new hobby this morning and this seemed like fun.”
“Wonderful.” I look around and notice there’s no one else with him. A quick mental inventory reminds me there’s never anyone else with him. “I don’t want to be rude, but… most kids are here in packs. I know why I’m on my own, but why are you alone?”
“Wanna take a walk with me?” Interesting non-sequitur.
“Sure. Lead on.”
He takes me to an ice cream shop by the food court. “Want anything?”
“Yeah. Split a milkshake with me?”
He laughs at that. “You got a poodle skirt hiding somewhere?”
I pretend not to get the reference. This is the second out-of-time thing he’s done. Why?
He shakes his head at my blank look. “Never mind. What flavor?”
“Pick your pleasure. I’m good with any of them.”
“Nope. You get to pick. Lady’s choice.”
Interesting. Are you just terribly polite and old-fashioned, or is something else going on here? I scan the menu and order a chocolate malted. There’s something to be said for these little middle-America towns. Sometimes I can get a decent taste of the past.
The guy behind the counter gives Billy the shake. Billy grabs two straws, and we find a bench in a somewhat quieter section of the food court.
He puts the straws in, holding it toward me. I take a decent size sip. He takes a tiny one.
“Don’t like the flavor?”
“It’s fine. Nothing tastes right to me these days. It’s a side effect of the chemo.”
I nod at him. Something else, indeed. “I figured something like that had to be going on with you. Not too many bald high school kids. That why there aren’t a pile of kids trailing around with you?”
“One of the reasons. I’ve actually only been here for a year. The local hospital has a really good specialist for what I’ve got.”
“And what do you have?”
“A neuroblastoma.” I give him a blank look, even though I do know what a neuroblastoma is. He continues explaining, “Brain cancer. It’ll probably kill me in less than six months.” He sounds surprisingly upbeat about it. “What’s up with you?”
I really wasn’t expecting that question. I take another sip of the shake. “I just moved here…”
“No. I mean, what’s wrong with you?”
“Ummm… What do you mean?” He now has my entire attention, and he’s once again watching me very closely.
“You’re room temperature. Ever since they started me on this last round of chemo, I can see heat. Everything that’s warm has a glow to it. The warmer it is, the more intensely it glows. You’re not glowing.”
Well, that’s something I’ve never run into before. I think frantically for a good lie. Finally, a word springs to mind. “Hypothyroid. Gives me a low body temperature, makes me tired and pale. They’ve got meds for it, but I don’t like the side effects.”
“Oh. I was hoping you were a vampire.” See, here’s the thing; we don’t live in the open, but these days, there are enough of us around that a lot of people believe in us, ‘proof’ to the contrary notwithstanding.I snort at that and look amused. “Why, did you want me to eat you?”
“I’d love it if you’d eat me. Even better if you’d let me do you, too.” He grinned again, a lovely touch of amused lewdness on his face. I was beginning to think I could really get to like this kid. What can I say; I’m a sucker for gallant snark in the face of adversity. “However, I was hoping you’d turn me.”
“Oh, please, Buffy much?”
“Well, yes, that episode did cross my mind, but really, what else do I have to look forward to?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I suppose being a demon isn’t much fun.” This kid has seen way too much Buffy.
“I don’t buy the demon thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if there are vampires, humans would have to make them seem bad. It’s natural. But they wouldn’t have to be evil or anything, just hungry. We aren’t evil for eating cows. But, if cows could talk, don’t you think they’d have stories about the evil, cow-eating humans?”
He takes a sip of the shake. “You’re a very odd girl.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“We call the principal Wanker, and sometimes, if we’re feeling respectful, Mr. Wanker.”
“I did not know that.” A genuine smile creeps across my face.
“Good. I like the idea of cows sitting around a campfire telling stories about the evil humans. It’s a good image.”
“I’m glad you like it. Really, when you think about it, the idea that there’s some sort of special evil that goes with killing other people is all about maintaining some sort of functional society. But really, the universe is amoral, and I think, so are vampires. I mean, I’m sure there are some out there who get off on fear and pain, but most of them probably just want a good dinner.”
He doesn’t look like he really believes me. “If you say so.”
“I probably spend too much time thinking about stuff like this. I write vampire stories sometimes.”
“Cool. Could I read them?”
“Not yet. Maybe when I get a good one done, I’ll let you see it.”
“You better write fast, then. So, if you can’t make me a vamp, how about eating me?”
I snort a brief laugh and very gently shove him.
“You know, I tell most people I’m dying and usually they get all pity party on me.”
I need to deflect that line of conversation pretty quickly. In addition to my eye color, my ability, or lack thereof, to produce the correct emotional response at any given time can be a dead giveaway that I’m not human. “Well, it seems like it’d be odd to be more upset about it than you appear to be. You’re really quite upbeat.”
“It’s remarkably freeing. I mean, I never have to do anything I don’t want to. What happens if I skip my homework? Oh right, nothing. Not like not getting into Harvard is going to napalm my future. And, it’s not like being sniffly and tragic makes anything better.”
“I guess that’s true. Might make girls more likely to sleep with you.”
“Not interested in pity fucks. I know I’m not gorgeous, but I like to think I’ve got enough personality to interest a girl without pulling the ‘I’m dying’ card.”
“I like your personality.”
“Thanks. But not enough to have sex with me?”
“Not yet.”
“So, there’s some hope?”
I smile at him. “There’s always hope.”
He grins back at me, checks his cell, and says, “Gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be sitting there at school.”
“Good.”

*************** I circle the mall twice more, slowly sipping the remains of the shake. Jack is there, with Evie at his side.
Screw this!He hasn’t looked at me more than the one time in gym. I need to go home, think, and come up with a better plan. 

38 Weeks: The Thirteenth Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.



On the first day of the thirteenth week, Sam sat next to Mike at Carlito's and said, "I think I have some good news and some very good news for you." He hands Mike two pieces of a newspaper. The first one is an in-depth report of a recent FBI anti-human trafficking raid, and how fifteen underage girls were rescued from their pimp. Tyrell James "Jaydd" Robinson was facing over one hundred charges relating to sex crimes, trafficking crimes, kidnapping, and since the youngest girl was twelve, aiding and abetting pedophilia. The report talked about how local law enforcement, the FBI, and unnamed "community activists" had collaborated to make this happen.Sam smiles. "That got me off Harris' bad list. He's gotten enough bonus points from the higher ups on this that they're going to revist my Russian Spy problem.""That's good, Sam." He folded the paper carefully, sure Fi will be happy to see it."Now, here's the better news, a buddy of mine sent me this."Mike glances at it for a second, not understanding why Sam might think he'd want to see this. "An obituary from Seattle.""The guy at the top right was one of my boot camp instructors. Check out the bottom left."Michael stares at the picture for a long time, feeling his blood run cold. "Management.""Yeah. Turns out he was a 'retired cop' in Seattle."Michael just sits there, paper limply held between numb fingers. "I took the liberty of looking into it. He was found by his wife, apparently had a heart attack. There was an actual body in the morgue, and he's been cremated. Unless this Crane guy is Managment's twin brother, he's really dead.""Says here he was survived by two sons, a daughter-in-law, two grandsons, and his wife.""Boggles the mind, doesn't it.""Yeah." Mike shakes his head and gives the paper back to Sam. Management was the last loose end. The only piece he never managed to hunt down. And he was just hiding in plain sight in Seattle, with a family.Seven years of his life, finally done, all the pieces tied up, as nice and tidy as they could possibly get.He's vaguely tempted to send a copy of this to Simon, just to know that someone else understands how utterly bizarre this feels. But if he does that, then someone will want to know why he's sending things to Simon, and that will reopen a can of worms he wants to keep not just sealed, but buried in concrete beneath the ocean floor.Sam smiles at him, "It's really over, Mike."Mike smiles back. "Yeah, I think it is. So besides good news, what else is going on?""Glad you asked, a buddy of mine..."
***********************

On Tuesday Fi said, "Let's go to the beach.""Really?""Yes. I'm feeling pretty good today, and I want to get out of the house.""You sure?""Yes, Michael, I'm sure. I want air and sunshine and to move around, and maybe get ice cream or something while we're out." Pretend there's a bit more tummy and a bit less rib."You want to eat?" She'd started feeling better last week, but this was the first time he'd heard her say anything along the lines of actually wanting anything. And after almost six weeks of Fi not wanting anything, let alone food, Mike will happily go get her anything, including front row seats to a live gun battle, if it'll get her out of the house and pique her interest in something."I think so.""Out we will go." Two minutes later he's in swim trunks, a short sleeve button down, and flip flops."Are you thinking food first, or right to the beach?" he asks as he packs a bag with towels and suntan lotion."Food, I'm feeling hungry.""Good, it's been..." Michael's words trail off as Fi comes out of the bedroom in her bikini. It's not that Michael's been unaware of the fact that Fi's body has been changing. He has been aware, and appreciative of this fact, but he hasn't really seen it. Since morning sickness started, Fi's mostly been laying about in his pajama pants and loose t-shirts. So, while he's felt her body pressed against his as they've slept or the rare occasions they've made love, he hasn't really seen it in a while. He stares for a very long minute, eyes devouring the new gentle curves revealed by the swimsuit. The primal part of his brain, one he was barely aware was back there, took in the sight of his woman with his child and started jumping up and down and shouting MINE. The result was a wash of raw sexual desire of the sort he hadn't felt since he was fourteen and laid eyes on Kelly Jamison sitting two rows ahead of him in algebra class, stretching in such a way that the sleeve of her shirt gaped open and he could see she wasn't wearing a bra. The house could be on fire, surrounded by mercs, with every single one of his enemies risen from the dead and zombie-shuffling toward the door, and Fi would still be the only thing on his mind.He swallows hard and says, "You need suntan lotion. And I should put it on you. Right now."She grins at the way he's watching her.  And then reaches up and strokes her neck, shoulder, and chest, fingers just skirting the fabric of the bikini top. "I can put my own sunblock on.""No. Not this time." He grabs for the bottle without looking away from her and manages to knock it over.She walks to him, stopping a few inches away. "Michael?""Yes?" He's staring at her breasts and tummy.She reaches up and nudges his face so he's looking in her eyes. "Like what you see?""God, Fi, yes.""Want to touch?""Even more.""So skip the sunblock and touch me."His fingers traced from her eyebrow to her hip, skimming over shoulder, breast, and belly on the way down. His lips follow, tracing her new curves.An hour later, he does, happily, put sunblock on her, before she got back into her suit, and then they got ice cream and a swim.   

Inspiration: Detriot Urbex

All photos are from Detroitrubex.comSometimes you run across something, and it's just screaming for someone to write about it. So that's what this series will be about, things that are just begging for a writer to get ahold of them and start playing.

I saw a link to Detroiturbex on Facebook, and next thing I knew three hours had gone by as I was absorbed into these photos.

Detroiturbex is a site that is documenting the abandonment of Detroit. It's a collection of images of what is left behind when people leave, and what those who stay do with what was left. 

On the surface level there's the eerie beauty of these images. Some of these buildings are gems of architectural craftsmanship, homes, clubs, businesses created not just for utilitarian purpose, but to enrich the lives of those who lived in and around them with their beauty.

There's the strange feeling emptiness. What happened to the people who belonged in these places? Why are they gone? And not just in the general sense of population pressure and a slumped economy, but in the more specific sense of why this particular property?

And while it's true that the existence of literal ghosts is certainly up for debate, I'm thinking it's safe to say that haunted is an awfully good way to describe these shots. If, when it comes down to it, a ghost is mostly a matter of how humans remember what came before, and deal with our fear of the finite existence of man, then these images are certainly ghostly.

Looking through these images, I also find myself wondering about what was left behind. Everything from stained glass windows and pews, to pianos, patient records, to entire libraries full of books, were left in some of these buildings. Were those signs of owners hopeful of return? Of people running so fast they took almost nothing? Apathy?

In the end, I don't know the answers to these questions, and more importantly, the answers don't much matter. It's the questions that inspire a writer, and the images of Detroiturbex offer tons of interesting questions. So, for anyone who's feeling the need for a little inspiration, I highly suggest heading over to Detroiturbex and taking in the pictures.

38 Weeks:The Twelfth Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.



By the twelfth week, when Fi was still spending most of her time lying about feeling sick and tired, Michael had moved from starting to get worried to really worried. Officially, she's fourteen weeks pregnant. He'd read all the books his mom had brought over, and they all seemed to concur that exhaustion and morning sickness should end around the twelfth week, unless it didn't. On Wednesday, they had the finish-up-the-first-trimester doctor's appointment, and according to Doctor Johnson everything seemed to be fine.  Which Michael doubted, quite a bit. Fi's lost twelve pounds in five weeks, and he's sure women are supposed to gain weight when they're pregnant.And she hasn't done much besides sleep in weeks. She gets out of bed every day, but not for very long some days, and she doesn't seem very interested in much of anything. He can get little flashes of her to come out, for example: she was awfully enthusiastic about planning out how Jaydd was going to get caught by the Feds, and the night after proposing she'd seemed a lot more like herself, but for the most part she's listless and sick.The doc says that's normal, too. Early pregnancy can cause depression, and given the circumstances with the adoption this is to be expected. If she's not feeling better soon, not that Doctor Johnson expects Fi to be frolicking about in sunshine and meadows or anything, but there's a difference between depressed and sad, they can start to talk about medication that's safe for pregnant women.It doesn't matter if this may be within the range of normal, it scares Michael, more than he wants to admit. He's used to Fi angry, or Fi frustrated, or Fi happy. He's used to her active. Fi is fire; she's always moving and changing and shifting and doing something.But now she's ice, slow, cold, fragile.He doesn't like to think of her as fragile. Doesn't like to think of her sick or broken. Doesn't like to be reminding how fragile people are in general, but her in specific... Fi's supposed to be active energy.As they got home from the doctor's, and she went back to bed, he's afraid that this might not end. Afraid that something about her is broken and can't be fixed. Afraid that this is more than just a chemical shift brought on by raging hormones and a heartbreaking choice. He's afraid that losing this child might open a hole in her that can't be healed. He watches her sleep, and worries about it, not sure what, if anything, can be done, or how to go about even trying to find out.
 ********************
Madeline showed up the next morning with a pamphlet from an adoption agency.  "I talked to Mrs. Kennedy down the street, and her daughter and son-in-law used Anderson's. They were very pleased by it, thought it was professional, that they went the extra mile to make sure everyone was happy, and that they knew what they were doing."Mike sighs. They should be researching this. They should be making up lists and talking to people, making calls, and getting to know potential adoptive parents.They should be, but they aren't.It occurs to him that dragging their feet on this might be a sign of depression in both of them, or just a sign of not wanting to deal with reality. Yes, they can claim to be waiting for the first trimester and the biggest risk of a miscarriage to pass before doing anything, but they'd be lying. Not moving on this has nothing to do with possibly setting up something they might not have to do."Thanks, Ma. I'll give them a call later this afternoon. Set up an appointment, or however it is people do this.""Good. And how's Fi feeling this morning?"Fi came into the kitchen and poured herself an anti-nausea smoothie. "I don't want to jinx anything, but so far, I'm feeling pretty good this morning." Madeline smiled. "Glad to hear it. I was telling Mi..." Her eyes caught on Fi's left hand as she lifted the glass. "What's that?"Now it was Michael's turn to smile, genuinely glad to have something happy to tell his mom. "I took your advice and didn't wait for this one to propose to me."This time, time doesn't slow down, and there's no yelling, and the hug doesn't come to a halt half-way completed. After a minute, when Madeline pulls away from hugging Fi, she says to Michael, "It's about time. So, when, where, tell me all about it..."Michael looks vaguely uncomfortable. "Thursday night, in bed, and you probably don't need any more details than that."Madeline swats Michael's arm. "Not that. Tell me about the wedding. You two have talked about it, right?"Maddie watches the two of them looking at each other with no clear ideas in either of their minds. "You know, the whole point of getting engaged is the idea that, at some point after, you'll make some vows about living together for the rest of your life, in front of your friends and family, and then have a big party about them.""One step at a time, Ma."Fi smiles at Madeline. "I do know one thing, no matter how we do this, I'd like you stand up with me."Madeline hugs Fi again.
 ******************************
Jesse took the news very well. He hopped up, offering congratulations, and kissed Fi on the cheek, followed by a somewhat awkward moment of hugging Mike, a not even remotely awkward slap on the back, and a few somewhat bawdy comments.All in all, Sam took the news pretty well, too. Of course, he was already sitting down when they told him. Not that it was too shocking; people get married all the time, and it's not like he thinks Mike and Fi are breaking up anytime in the future, but still there's something so, normal, about getting married.And Mike and Fi aren't normal.Married, house in the... okay it's not precisely the 'burbs, but it is a house with a backyard, kid on the way, though they aren't keeping the kid...Maybe not normal. So he offers the congratulations, and makes the right jokes about the idea of Fi wedding planning, and he's properly honored to be the best man, but it's still... unsettling. He's home that night, sitting on the balcony, slowly sipping a beer, when Elsa comes in."Hey, beautiful. I'm out here." She comes out, slipping off her shoes, and sits in his lap. He offers her a kiss and a drink of his beer. "How was today?"He listens to her talk about mergers, labor relations, profit loss statements, and the like. Tomorrow is her monthly report to the board, so today she's been getting all of her information ready. He likes hearing about this, likes the reminder that she's utterly competent and has a brain under those beautiful brown locks.She takes another swig of his beer, and they both sit on the balcony watching the lights of Miami reflect off the ocean. "You're awfully quiet tonight, what's going on?""Nothing, really. Well, not nothing. But I'm not dodging accessory to murder, either. Might have to get my tux out of mothballs. Mike and Fi are getting married.""Congratulations to them. This is good news."He drinks. "Yep.""You seem less than thrilled.""Yeah.""So, what's going on?""I don't know. I should be happy for them, right? They're happy. And it's not like I've been secretly hoping something will happen to Mike and I'll get a shot at Fi. They're my best friends, and they love each other, and they're getting married. Happens all the time, right?""Yes, it does. People all over the world get married every day. There are two weddings downstairs right now.""I know. I pulled in right about the same time as one of the brides and her seventeen bridesmaids. That was more girly fluffiness than any man should ever be exposed to."Elsa smiles at that. "Are you afraid of being exposed to large quantities of girliness?""I don't think so. I mean, come on, this is Fi. I'm sure the dress and shoes will set them back a bit, but I can't imagine her agonizing over place settings or flowers. Maddie might, but not Fi.""Afraid Mike might end up getting girly..." she thinks about that for a second, it's not the right word, "tame, if they get married?"Tame Mike is an image that refuses to form in Sam's mind. He shakes his head."So, what then?""I wish I knew, baby."Elsa looks at him and kisses him gently. "The road not taken?"He shrugs. "Maybe." And maybe it is. Or maybe it's the reminder that nothing lasts forever, and that even Peter Pan eventually grew up.She caresses his cheek. "Still plenty of time to explore new roads."He looks at her curiously. "What do you mean by that?""I'll just say I'm not categorically opposed to getting married again."   "Hmmm..." He smiles at her. "Good to know." 

Original Fic Friday: Hunter's Tales Volume One: Billy Price

A/N: Vampires, snark, meta, all manner of good things await within. Want to start at the beginning? Click here. Want to read it all at once? It's .99 at Amazon.



Chapter 3.
He finds me at the end of my next class. Not that it was too hard; after all, he was sitting three seats away from me.
“So, you’re the new girl?” I inhale deeply as he gets closer, catching a faint, bitter whiff of chemo. His skin is paper thin, and I can easily see his pulse at his throat and temples.
“Nope. I’ve been here thirteen years. You just never noticed me before.”
Billy Price“Thirteen years, wow! That sucks. And I thought four was bad. Who did you piss off to end up in high school for thirteen years?”
“God.”
He smirks at that. “I’m Billy Price.”
“And you already know my name.” I had to introduce myself all over again in AP English. I’ll be doing that all damn day long.
He grins at me. “Can I help you find your next class?”
“Sure.” I hand him my schedule.
“212. I’m in the next room over. The stairs are this way.”
He leads me through a crowded corridor and up a wide staircase. When we get to 212, he gestures at it with a flourish. It was an almost courtly gesture that would have made perfect sense in 1770, but was horrendously out of place in 2010. “And now you have been safely deposited at French V. If you wait here after French, I’ll show you where your next class is.”
“Thanks,” I say quickly and slip inside.
Billy has me puzzled. He isn’t the vamp. But there’s something else going on with him. Besides the chemo, I mean. I can’t put my finger on it; nothing about him seems particularly off, but he has my Spidey-senses tingling. There is something about him that I haven’t seen before, and I’ve seen pretty much everything.
While the class around me conjugates verbs, I decide getting to know Billy a bit better might be a good plan. Sure, he isn’t the vamp, but the whole reason I’m doing this is fun. Figuring out what’s up with him could be interesting.
He’s waiting just outside 212 for me when I get out of French. I hand him my schedule again, and again, he leads me to my next class.
He doesn’t say much. I get the sense he isn’t feeling well. You’ve probably heard people say fear has a scent. That’s true. But so does any strong emotion. Pain has a scent as well. I can smell he’s hurting.
The character I’m playing should just go into class without saying anything to him. But as I look at him, wondering what makes him special enough to attract my attention, I decide to break character.
“Thanks for the guide work.”
“No problem.” He half-smiles and heads off.
I find a seat and settle in for the last forty-five minutes of school for the day.


Chapter 4.
Home. Another day of high school over and done with.
I have a real home. A place I go when I’m not hunting. I haven’t been there in a while, but maybe after this jaunt, I’ll head back. Maybe try going after a grown-up vamp. I haven’t seen Charleston in too long, and I miss it.
When I’m on the hunt, my car, laptop, lathe, clothes and I hop from one furnished corporate apartment to another.
How do I afford this? Long story short: compound interest is your friend, and when you’re as old as I am, you can really take advantage of it. I’ve also been dabbling in the stock market since the 1880’s. I bought IBM, Apple, Coke, and a few others I’m sure you know, at less than two dollars a share.
And, amazingly enough, I’ve got a really good eye for antiques.
So, once again I’m sitting in the living room of a generic corporate apartment. The furniture in this one is comfy, and the bath tub is big enough to entertain in. I’ve stayed in much worse.
What do vamps do at home? Well, a lot of the same things humans do at home. I read. I watch TV. I game. I work on my art.
And some things you probably don’t do. For example, I spend a few hours checking the local papers for missing girls. None. Most people would think that’s a sign this is a town sans vamp (I mean, besides me), but I know that just means the vamp here is smart enough not to shit where he eats.
Want to get the locals all up in arms, pitchforks and torches at the ready? Go eat and then kill the Homecoming Queen. No, if you’re a smart vamp, you don’t kill the girls; you munch on them for as long as that’s interesting to you, making sure they’re convinced you’re in lurve with them, and then you break up with them.
Remember that anti-glamour thing I mentioned before? Yeah. Work that right, and when you break up with her, she goes and kills herself, and you don’t have to worry about being outed.
After a suitable time, let’s call it somewhere between one and three weeks, depending on how often you need to eat, where you become even more attractive to the idiot twits because you’re the oh-so-sad-little-boy, mourning the tragic loss of your true love—No, you don’t let anyone else know you broke up with her. And you damn well make sure there’s no suicide note!—you pick up a new girlfriend. This can usually get you to graduation. Then off to ‘college’ you go and set up a new life in a new town.
So, I look for towns with unexplained teen-girl suicides, the sort where everyone is stunned because the girl had everything going for her.
And no, not all of us play by this set of rules. If you’re really good at your glamour, you don’t bother to kill the girls. It’s a lot less messy if you don’t have to kill them. If you get off on pain and fear, you don’t bother with the suicide line and go straight for horrific but unexplained murder. If you don’t want one steady feed, a quick insta-glamour that makes the last ten minutes sort of fuzzy will do the job just fine. But if you want to be adored for a while and have a snack available at all times, the suicide trick is easiest way to make sure you’re not going to get outed.
It’s simple to glamour someone to do something while you are there with them or shortly after they’ve left you. It’s a lot harder to make them keep doing whatever it is you want them to do. Basically, glamour is a learned skill, and if you aren’t any good at it, you can end up with some very awkward questions aimed in your direction.
This vamp’s lazy or stupid. He’s lingering too long here. There’s maybe 250 fifteen to eighteen-year-old girls in this town. One killed herself last year. One killed herself this year. One got in a car accident. (That’s another way to get rid of an inconvenient girlfriend/snack.)
I’m in the right town.
Shouldn’t I do this sort of research before I get into town?
Probably. I usually pick places by how much I like the town and if the corporate apartments nearby look decent. Then I settle in and look for a vamp. I don’t care if there’s a huge nest of vamps eating every kid in the local high school. Not if they’re in a suck-ass town with lousy accommodations.
Researching gets me to nine o’clock. Still a lot of hours to kill.
I go to my kitchen. Obviously, I don’t use it for eating. I do use it for woodworking.
The wooden stake thing is true. One of those through the heart and we’re deader than dead. (Deader than normal? Deadest? Ash!) Now, here’s the thing; just like humans, we’ve got a breastbone. Just like humans, it’s pretty damn tough.
You know those big stakes you see Buffy use? Yeah. Okay, they work. And if you’ve got my strength, hammering one of those through someone’s ribcage isn’t an issue. But they aren’t precisely subtle. And they aren’t easy to hide. And when they are hidden, they aren’t all that easy to get to fast. While I’m more than fast enough to take on any human around, sometimes other vamps can be pretty damn fast too, and those few extra tenths of a second can count.
Not to say I don’t ever use the big ones, but I prefer something a little more… sleek.
Did you know that you can buy extremely thin titanium knitting needles? They make them for knitting socks and lace. You can get them less than a sixteenth of an inch wide.
Sitting on my kitchen table is a selection of pretty wood blanks. These days I’m using a lot of rosewood and mahogany. I take two small rectangles of wood, say less than three eights of an inch thick each, chisel out a channel, glue in the knitting needle, glue another block on top, and then onto the mini-lathe they go.
Most people use a mini-lathe for making pens or dollhouse furniture. I use mine to make hair chopsticks: beautiful, titanium-cored, very pointy, wooden hair chopsticks.
I always have my hair in a bun. I almost always have a stick or two tucked in it. And I always enjoy the look of surprise when the vamp notices how that tiny little bit of wood is a lethal weapon.
I spend the rest of the night at my lathe, turning new hair sticks. 

38 Weeks:The Eleventh Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.



Week Eleven
Thursday night, just a typical evening (for now at least, which means it's not all that typical for the last six years) at the Glenanne-Westen home. Just like everyone else, spies, or ex-spies, have some sort of homelife. Granted, in the case of Mike and Fi, it looks a bit like a parody of normal life. They're in bed, reading. Normal enough, until you realize they're in bed because unless you count the stools at the breakfast bar, there are no other chairs in their home, or look at what they're reading. Michael is laying on his stomach, looking at the screen of his laptop, reading about bitcoins and making a list of questions for Barry. He's very interested in the idea of a currency independent of any government and currently untraceable. Fi is lying on her side, reading the newest Demolitions Technica. Yes, demolition experts have trade journals. And yes, if you want to be good at explosives, you need to keep up on the trade. And unlike googling bombs or the like, keeping up on the latest in demolition and mining will give you a much better grounding on new things that go boom, how to use them, and is much less likely to get you on a terrorist watch list. Fi also has subscriptions to locksmithing, safe building, chemistry, and metallurgical journals, and Car and Driver. She likes to keep up with the things she's good at.Michael's scanning the article, thinking through the possibilities of having a back-up cushion in electronic cash, and possibly taking payment in it as well, when his phone buzzes. He doesn't recognize the number and for a second a thrill of fear flows through him. Who could have found this number?He lets it ring, and it goes to voicemail.He feels a little less concerned. The bad guys rarely leave messages.Michael listens to the message and deletes it. The jewelry store. His rings are ready. He feels a smile start and shuts it down, fast. Last thing he wants to do is give this away to Fi.She's also got that slightly scared look in her eye. Sam, Jesse, or Madeline and he wouldn't have let it go to voicemail. And no strangers should have that number.He puts the phone down and shakes his head. "Wrong number. Someone looking for Emily."She stares at him for a long minute."Nothing's starting up. Just a wrong number, really.""Really?""Really. No one out to get us. Just someone trying to get ahold of whoever had this number before me.""Okay."She goes back to her reading, but he can see her shoulders are still a little tense. Could it have been a test call? Call in, see who answers, use it to trace them? It shouldn't be. After they got back they got new phones, and then more new phones. Nothing is in either of their names. But still, after the last year especially, they've been scared cautious.
 ******************
The next morning, Madeline showed up shortly after breakfast and reported they were low on ginger and mint. While living with a hypochondriac gives you a very good understanding of pharmacology, actually being a hypochondriac gives you an encyclopedic knowledge of just about anything that could be considered "medicine." Which means, since Maddie's been on the job, anything even remotely likely to help with morning sickness has been in their home.She's even come up with a concoction that Fi will drink, a mix of mint, ginger, sugar cane, bananna, a little vanilla yogurt, and milk. Michael doesn't care what's in it; he'll happily go get it, because it does seem to stay down and makes her feel a little better.  Better yet, hovering over Fi and researching pregnancy related information seems to be helping his mom deal with giving the baby away.From what he can tell, this as good as it's likely to get, so he's happy to do anything to keep things moving that way. On top of that, it is pretty tasty. As Sam said, one afternoon, helping Michael fix up the hot tub and put up shelves, "You know, if you add about two shots of rum to this, it'd be perfect."Going out to get more of the ingredients gives him another chance to get out of the house by himself without raising any suspicions. So, off he goes, in search of mint and ginger. He's half-way out the door when Madeline says, "Michael, how about you pick up a few flower pots, some dirt, and mint plants.""I can do that.""Good. The last batch you got didn't seem very fresh. You've got a nice sunny patch by the hot tub, so we can grow some there.""I will get you mint plants. Anything else?"Madeline looks at Fi, and she shrugs. "Aloe? We could probably use some of that, too.""Mint, ginger, aloe, and gardening hardware. I'll be back in a bit. Want me to pick up any lunch?""Not for us. I've got aqua yoga at eleven, and I'm dragging Fi along whether she wants to go or not. Exercise is good for you, honey. It'll help you feel better."Fi doesn't look like she believes that at all, but she does seem like she'll go along with it. Michael's not sure if his mom dragging Fi out on errands, to go shopping, and to her exercise classes actually helps with Fi's depression, but it does get her out of the house, thinking about other things, and isn't dangerous. Like with the mint smoothies, Mike figures that's probably about as good as it's going to get for the time being. It's not ideal, but it's better than it was, and hopefully, tonight, he'll be able to coax a real smile and maybe even a laugh out of Fi.
 *********************
He hits jewelry store first. Technically, it's spring, which means it's only in the mid-80s outside, but inside the Charger, it's a whole lot hotter. So groceries, or plants, aren't going to be happy baking in his car.It takes the clerk a few minutes to find his order, but the wait was worth it. Both rings are nestled into a small gray velvet box. Mike tries his on and is surprised at how right, how comfortable it feels on his finger.He's played a married man before, and until he was doing it with Fi as his Mrs. the ring never mattered. On it would go for however long, and then off again without a second thought. Hell, less than two months after playing the role with Fi, he was doing it with Pearce, and not once during that entire time did the wedding ring he was wearing ever enter his mind.But when he was Mr. Jensen, it was there in the back of his mind all the time. He was very aware of the slight weight of the metal and the huge weight of the promise behind it. He hadn't been ready then. Hadn't quite gotten his mind into the right place, let alone his life.This time, the ring slides on and it rests on his finger, safe and secure.  He smiles as he twists it around a bit, so the x the platinum and titanium makes is visible on his finger.He takes Fi's ring, and slips it onto his finger. It goes to just slightly beyond the first knuckle of his ring finger. It's smooth and cool on his flesh. He really hopes she likes it."Is everything satisfactory?""Yes.""Wonderful."He knows he made some sort of small talk while paying and putting the rings back in their box. Part of him wants to just grab Fi, head over to the courthouse, and get this done today. Get those rings where they belong.A bigger part of him, the part that's sort of aware of this romance thing, and more aware of the fact that Fi's been sick for weeks and would probably like to be feeling healthy, and if it's possible, happy, for her wedding, thinks that tonight might be a good night to propose, but not a good night to get married.With that thought, he put the rings in his pocket, and heads to the gardening store. He's got plants to buy.
 ********************
The thing about proposing to a woman in the middle of first trimester exhaustion and morning sickness is that all of the traditional "romantic" options are out. You don't take a woman to a restaurant when the merest whiff of the wrong food will send her running to the nearest sink to throw up. Likewise a romantic walk on the beach at sunset isn't so romantic when your partner is feeling nauseous and tired.So, maybe it won't be the most traditionally romantic evening ever. There's plenty of time for romance later... he hopes. If the books his mom keeps bringing over are anything to go by, Fi should start feeling better any day now.Which leaves... Bed. Bed is good. At lot of their best moments have been in bed. Granted, not this bed, this bed is new, but still, when it comes to romance the spirit of the gesture matters, right? She's already there. Has been since the sun set. They'd been on the porch, soaking up the evening breezes and sunset, planting mint, aloe, and the basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro, and parsley he got. She'll be feeling better eventually, and he likes to cook, so fresh herbs on the back porch seemed like a good idea. They wrapped up as the sun vanished behind the house next door, and with that Fi went inside.He went about his bedtime routine, slipping into some carefully selected pajama pants, the only pair he has with pockets. She's sitting on the side bed, reading. He sits next to her, and kisses her shoulder."Do you want to get married?"She looks startled. Obviously, she wasn't expecting it. "Are you asking because of the baby?""No." And he can honestly say that. He'd ordered the rings before he knew about the baby. "I want you with me for the rest of our lives. And, though I wouldn't know firsthand, yet, rumor has it people get married when they feel that way." Fi doesn't appear to be buying this line. "I was working up to it, you know. Survive Panama, finish Card, get us cleared, settle into new normal, ask Fi to marry me. It was on the list.""You had a list?" She's smiling. That she believes."A plan, really. But, it was part of it. I almost asked when we were in Panama, but telling you I was done with the CIA was a better first step. I wanted to be free of that before I made a life-long commitment."She thinks about that. "Give me a real proposal and you can find out."He takes her book, marks the page, and puts it on the floor, then pulls her, gently, into his lap, stroking her face. "And what does a 'real proposal' look like?""You know: bended knee, pretty words, a ring, romantic location."He kisses her neck, and shifts her out of his lap, settling her on the edge of the bed. Her eyes go wide when he kneels on the floor in front of her, between her legs. He kisses each hand, each finger, and then looks into her eyes. "I didn't ask in Panama because I couldn't make you the most important thing in my life. Not then. But I can now.  Fiona, marry me, and be the most important thing in my world. Build a life with me, and let me spend the rest of my days wrapping my life around yours."She kisses him for a long time after he says that. He pulls back, cups her face, and quickly kisses her lips, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small gray velvet box. "You actually have a ring?" She looks amused and curious.He smiles at her. "I've got a romantic location, sort of, if you lay back, you'll be in the same position you were when I first told you I loved you." She laughs, happy. First time she's laughed in days and it makes him realize how much he's missed her laugh. "Not precisely the same position.""We can fix that." He smiles widely and quickly kisses her lips, his hands tracing down her back and settling on her hips. His touch is firm, warm, and suggestive. And even if it wasn't, his grin is certainly promising good things for later tonight.  He breaks eye contact and opens the box. Fi inhales sharply. "I actually have two rings, though yours is in two parts." He takes hers out, and removes the titanium from the platinum. Leaving the engagement ring on its own."This half is for now."She stares at it for a long moment, light sparkling off the asscher cut diamond. "You remembered.""I remembered. Will you wear it? And, as soon as you want, let me put the other half on your finger, while you put this one on mine?""Yes."He leaned up to kiss her, slipping the ring onto her finger, and maybe it wasn't a candlelit dinner, or a walk on the beach with the wind tossing her hair about, but he's here with her, in their bed, in their home, and that's all the romance he wants or needs.And tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever she's feeling better, they can go do something traditionally romantic.
A/N: Okay, not the same ring as last time, but this one is set a little closer to what I had in my mind. Imagine a second band to form an x with the diamond in the middle, and take away the detailing on the shoulders of the ring, and there's what I've got in mind.

38 Weeks: The Tenth Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.  


On Monday of the tenth week, Michael waited at Carlito's. His ride would be there soon.
One of the conditions of playing mediator for the Garden Terrace Mafia is that he won't know where the negotiations take place. One of his conditions was that they wouldn't know where he lives. So, he waits in front of Carlito's.
When he left that morning, Fi and his mom were working on anti-nausea smoothies. After a very hard weekend that involved all three of them doing a lot of crying, Madeline had gotten behind them on putting the baby up for adoption, and having done so, she switched into hyper-coddling mode for Fi.
So, he's glad she's on board with what they're doing. Very glad that she's working on something Fi might eat. And especially glad to be getting out of the house. He doesn't feel the need to know all the gory details of both his and his brother's pregnancy or birth.
His ride arrives. It's not inconspicuous. A stretch Hummer with black windows doesn't exactly blend into the neighborhood. For the first time in a very long time, Michael feels very, very white.
As a kid, the neighborhood he grew up was mixed, 60-40, white to black. His best friend was black. Hell, Jesse, who might not be his best friend now, but he's awfully close, is black. And while black and white culture were pretty far apart in the seventies, he feels like it's gotten much further apart as time has marched by.
Michael Westen, who is, for all practical purposes, a chameleon, has found a background he can't melt into. And it's a bit off-putting. The fact that he can't quite read the four men around him is off-putting, too. He knows the gold jewelry and teeth are a sign of status, but not what level of status they indicate. He can't read the tattoos the way he could if he was doing this for the Mafia or a Russian gang. He doesn't know the clothing. He doesn't know the music. He can't just look at these men and know where they fit in the hierarchy.
He gets into the Hummer and realizes it's not just the fact that he's awfully white. He's also awfully old. If any of the men in the Hummer are over thirty, hell, twenty-five, he'd be shocked. Usually, in the Mafia or a Russian gang, or any half-decent South American gun or drug running operation, there's someone his age around, someone older, with a proven track record of being a cooler head.
At least they didn't put a bag over his head. Sure, he can't see out the windows, so he doesn't know where he's going, but the fact that he can see the men around him is a good sign of trust.
They don't say anything, and no matter what, people are people, so he can read their faces well enough to know they aren't thrilled about him being here, but they aren't openly hostile, either.
After an hour's drive, he's in a parking garage. They let him out, escort him to an elevator, and press a button with no number. One hundred and eighty-eight seconds until the doors open. Slow elevator, or he's on a high floor, but not so high that his ears popped on the way up.
The doors open and he's facing an extraordinarily posh penthouse. It's decorated in cool whites and blues, floor to ceiling windows are closed and hidden behind opaque curtains. Everything that could be done to provide a sense of anonymous, placeless opulence has been done to this space.
Ricky is waiting for him, another man next to him. He's tall, broad shouldered, would have been handsome if not for a badly healed broken nose, looks to be about twenty-five.
"Michael, let me introduce you to Razor G." Ricky leads him toward the white sofa where Razor is standing up.
They shake hands. Razor's are hard, strong, from the feel of the knuckles, it's not just his nose that's been broken in the past. "Razor, this is Michael Westen."
"Hello."
"Hey."
There are drinks, food, a few legal pads, nice pens, and a recording device on a coffee table flanked by white leather sofas.
"Michael, you can ask anything you like, take whatever notes you like, but nothing leaves here."
"I understand."
"Razor, you've agreed to answer any questions Michael has. His job is to talk with you, Big T, and Jaydd about your plans, what you'd like to do with the Garden Terrace, how you want to do it, and see if he can come up with some sort of plan or compromise."
"'Kay."
With that Ricky left, and Michael started the conversation.
He got home seven hours later. Seven exhausting hours later.
"How was it?" Fi asked as he sat down to dinner. This would be a lovely little play on the idea of a traditional domestic scene if not for the fact that Fi's not eating and they're talking about the inner workings of a gang.
"Have you ever read or see the Godfather?"
"Read it, a long time ago."
He's very pleased to see she seems interested in this conversation, and is dressed in something besides pajamas. He's guessing his mom got her out of the house today.
"Okay, imagine Luca Brasi is trying to make a play to take over the Corleons."
"Ohhh. Not good."
"Exactly. Razor runs the muscle. The only reason he's even at the table is because the big scary guys with guns back him."
"That'll usually get you a place at the table."
"Sure, but there's no way you should be running the group if all you've got is big scary guys with guns. And I think he knows it. He seemed to be hoping to have me find someone to run it for him as well."
"I guess that's a good thing."
"I think so, too. I'm just worried that if he's one of the top three talents this group has on offer that, no matter what I come up with, this isn't going to work."
"Do you find it bizarre that you're working to make a gang more effective?"
"Yeah, it's a bit surreal. But, if I don't then that's a neighborhood that's going to break into open warfare, and no one will be better off with that."
"That I understand." And she would. She grew up in an open warzone, where in many neighborhoods the local organized crime ring was the only thing keeping up any semblance of civic society.  

*************************
On Tuesday, he met with Sam and Jesse and Fi for dinner at Carlito's. It was actually kind of fun to just hang out without talking job strategy. This whole doing work that doesn't involve getting shot at thing is growing on him.
Finally, as the meal was winding down, Sam asks, "So, Consigliari, how goes the negotiations?"
He half sighs, half snorts. He has become the Garden Terrace Consigliari. "I got to spend six hours with a guy named Big T today. He appears to be the brains of the operation." Michael spends a moment thinking about how to describe the man he spent the day with. "Imagine Barry without a college education, his knowledge of banks and financial planning, or metrosexual fashion and spiky hair. In the place of all of that, put an encyclopedic knowledge of governmental organizations that pay out money, for anything. Eight hundred people live in the Terrace, and he's got 1200 signed up for food stamps, 1600 on Aid to Dependent Families, 600 on Social Security—"
"What, he didn't sign them all up?" Sam asked.
"If there are as many as sixty people in the Terrace old enough to collect, I'd be shocked. Anyway, he's got 400 on Disability, 1500 on Medicaid another 600 on Medicare, 6000 registered to vote, 1100 on Unemployment. He's even got twelve of them getting farm subsidies. If there's a way to get money from the government, he's got it. He's got a shop in one of the Terrace apartments that sells all of the stuff they get using WIC and SNAP at a hefty mark up."
"Okay. How much is he making?" Sam looks concerned as he asks.
"He's banking at least six million a year."
"Six million, where are they parking that money?" Jesse asks. They'd all been to the Terrace, and name aside, it's not a garden spot. Six million a year, if actually split between the people who live there would be a very comfortable life. Hell, if they raked three million of it off, and split the rest between the people who lived there, it'd still be a comfortable life.
"Big T would like to know that, too. He knows what happened with his cut, twenty percent, but not what Sherrod did with the rest of it."
"I guess you found the brains of the operation," Sam says as he sips his mojito.
"I think so."
"Did he have any long term plans?" Jesse asked.
"Besides pout and take his ball home if he doesn't end up in charge? No. Though he was also willing to hint that everyone in the Terrace would get indicted for fraud if he didn't come away from the deal smiling. Except him. He didn't outright say it, but my guess is he's got protection in the government somewhere."
"He's probably trading votes for protection," Jesse said.
"I'd assume so. Likely some of the money is going to kickbacks to make sure no one looks to close at his paperwork."
"Sounds like a real charmer," Fi says.
"Oh, he was."
"Who's up tomorrow?" Fi asks.
"Jaydd. Apparently he's the guy who runs the drugs and girls."
"Even better," Sam says.
***********************
As of January, Michael is forty-six years old. He's spent half of those years outside of the United States. And in many of those years, he's been in cultures that are very much not the United States, so he's not typically American when it comes to working girls.
Pretty much, if you're an adult, like sex, and want to make a living at it, he's got no problems with that.
And, over the course of his long and storied career, he's had occasions where he's worked with prostitutes. In Russia, for example, his cover was often high-end business man. In Russia, high-end business deals involve the wining and dining phase (okay, the caviar and vodka phase) and then wrap up with sauna and girls.
And those girls have been worth every ruble he's paid them in information and happy assets.
Those girls, pretty, happy, and discreet, were more than willing to let him bug a room ahead of time, and listen in while they asked innocent leading questions after the sex, when the men are drunk, relaxed, and willing to talk.
And as a "business man" he's been on the receiving end of the girls and booze phase of operations as well, and knowing that the room he was in was likely bugged, he used that as a way to let information he wanted to get out "slip."
But, just like the term feline covers everything from a lion to a tabby cat, prostitute covers a very wide array of girls as well.
Jaydd is telling him about "his" girls. Though he doesn't use the term girls. And though, on occasion the term Jaydd does use has wandered out of Mike's mouth, usually prefaced by "son of a," he really doesn't like the way Jaydd is saying it. From the sound of it, his "girls" may be pretty, but they won't be for long. They're happy, as long as he keeps doling out the meth. And they are very much not adults who like sex and think this is a fun line of work. They aren't adults period.
Michael is doing everything he can to not let his face show how much he wants to jump up, eviscerate the man in front of him, and then choke him to death on his own entrails.
He listens to Jaydd talk about how he and the Johns have no use for the girls after they've had a few kids. That's why he gets them young. About how sometimes he needs to teach them "lessons" to keep them in line and make sure they treat the Johns nice.
Supposedly this is convincing Mike he's got managerial skills.
Mostly, it's reminding Mike of Afghanistan in the '80s. Back then, the Taliban, well, the guys who would eventually become the Taliban, were on the same side as the US. Some of those guys, the ones who liked to run about town, looking for women "acting immodestly" and beat the living hell out of them, sometimes killing them, rose high when the US got out.
And Jaydd would have gotten on fabulously with them.
Mike can feel his palpable hate towards women. He can see Jaydd relishing telling tales of beating his girls, making sure they "behave." And though he won't look to make sure, Michael can tell from the way he's sitting, from the way he's talking, that retelling how he beat those girls is giving Jaydd a hard-on.
Michael knows how this goes, where it ends. Right now Jaydd roughs them up, enjoying the pain. Given enough time, pain alone won't do it. He'll be killing them, maybe not next week, but soon enough that it makes Michael very nervous.
It's the only interview where he takes no notes, asks few questions, and is done in less than an hour.
When he gets home, he hops in the shower and scrubs, hard. Fi slips in behind him, takes the soap and scrubby away from him.
"You got a shower this morning. What happened?"
"I spent an hour with the most despicable human in Miami." He told Fi about Jaydd and was pleased to see she had absolutely no problem with him having some sort of accident, possibly involving massive jail time, or a six foot deep hole if not.
******************
On Thursday, he asks Ricky to set up a meeting with Valentine. This time, it's on his turf. The penthouse at the Dearaborn might not be the most convenient location, but he can control it. No one who isn't invited to this meeting will get to listen in.
Sam and Jesse escort Valentine in. He seems irked to see Sam, apparently he remembers their previous meeting. He looks around the penthouse and says, "Barbara Mandrell?"
Sam half shrugs. "It was the first name I could think of."
Drinks are offered, everyone sits down. Michael says, "Ricky tells me you'll pay me one hundred thousand dollars if everyone comes away from this deal happy."
Valentine nods.
"Is there anyone else who can run this gang?" Valentine smiles, and Mike feels a sense of relief. "When you said everyone happy, you don't mean those three I spent the last few days talking to?"
Valentine sips his drink, and then carefully puts it down. "Not at all. When I grew up there, we were poor, no two ways about it, but we were safe, and a lot of us didn't stay poor forever. Less than twenty percent of us dropped out of high school.  We got jobs, moved up in the world, built families. The Garden Terrace was a community where people who were poor could stay while they got back on their feet. Once upon a time, they got back on their feet.
"It's not like that anymore. People go there, and they don't leave. They go and rot. Big T makes sure they stay forever, because the longer they stay the richer he gets. Jaydd sees it as a farm producing new generations of girls he can sell, and addicts he can make money off of. It's time that the Garden Terrace Project gets back to being what it was supposed to be, a haven for poor families in need of help.
"Don't get me wrong. I don't want anything to happen to Razor. He's family, and when this is done, I'll find a place for him in my organization. But the other two..." Valentine's smile makes it clear that anything that takes those two out of the game is welcome.
"If a power vacuum were to appear, is there someone who can step in?" Michael asks.
"Yes. His name is Tyler. He's keeping his head down now, because he doesn't have the guns to go up against the other three. But if they got out of the way, he'd be able to get things going right."
Michael nods. "We'll set it up. First step, Big T is going to be in charge for a while. Of the three of them, he looks like he'll do the best job. Come November, I think he's going to get caught with a massive voter fraud problem. At the level he's doing it, we'll be able to get City, County, State, and Federal charges against him. While he's inside, the rest of his fraud ring is going to be found."
"What about..." Valentine asked, knowing exactly how many barely literate people who live in the Terrace signed anything that Big T gave them.
"We'll make sure it doesn't splash back on the people in the Terrace. Big T is good. My people are better. We'll make sure it looks like he did it by himself."
"And Jaydd?"
"Not sure yet. But by the end of the month, he'll be gone."
"So, come December, Tyler will be in a position to start running things?" Valentine asks.
"Yes."
"Good. Ricky told me that if anyone could get this sorted out, it was you. I'm very glad to see he was right."
"Thank you. Do you know anyone out of state who might want some girls? I think it'd be a really good idea for Jaydd to get caught by an FBI human trafficking sting."
"I can arrange for him to provide entertainment for a gig in Atlanta."
"And I can arrange for some friendly Feds to grab him and the girls when he crosses the border," Sam said.
"Won't they wonder that you and Mike were involved in this?" Jesse asks.
"They might, but for the sake of getting rid of Jaydd, no one will ask any questions. Big T is the one who has to be taken care of delicately, he's got too many others roped into his frauds."
"We'll take care of it," Mike said.

Original Fic Friday: Hunter's Tales Volume One: Billy Price

A/N: Vampires, snark, meta, all manner of good things lie within. Want to start at the beginning? Click here. Want to read it all at once? It's .99 at Amazon.

Chapter 2.
Did I mention I hate high school? I do. There is nothing less appealing than being stuck in a prison-like building, forced to listen to drivel for eight hours a day.
For me, it’s even more fun. "Officially," I’m an eighteen-year-old in search of a few final credits to wrap up high school. The schools hate dealing with me because technically, I’m an adult, so I never have any parents around. Administrators loathe kids with their own power.
Full-on slouch mode.
I walk up to the office in full-on slouch mode. It takes seven minutes for the lady behind the desk to deign to offer me assistance.
“Can I help you?” No greeting or smile, her voice is bored.
“Can you?” Yeah, I’m a jerk when I’m in teen mode. But anyone who makes someone wait for seven minutes while she does paperwork deserves no better.
She rolls her eyes and sighs. “Which teacher sent you here?”
“None of them. I’m Helen Grace. Today’s my first day. I need to get registered.”
“Where are your parents?” See, she doesn’t want to deal with me. Kids are annoying to her, not worthy of even basic politeness.
“I’m over 18 and live by myself.”
“Oh.” She looks startled by that. “Let me find your file.”
“Thanks.” Interestingly enough, if we practice at it, vamps can produce a sort of anti-glamour; I’ve honed it into a razor-edged sarcasm that makes humans want to cry. I used it when I said thanks and noticed the receptionist’s mood crumble into misery. I smile to myself.
After five minutes of hunting around, she finds the manila folder with my name on it. It always boggles my mind how many of these little Midwest schools haven’t moved on to computers. And how many of the ones that have use systems almost as old as I am. Both work to my advantage. Old systems are easier to hack, so when they do have computers, I can insert myself into the system over the course of a night or two. A little breaking and entering, a bit of programming, and I’m a new student. As for paper, hell, it had taken less than ten minutes two nights ago to become a transfer student here.
Five minutes after that, I am in a tiny cubbyhole of an office with my guidance counselor. Guidance counselors come in two main flavors: bloody twits incapable of effectively organizing their own lives or power-mad bastards that get off on controlling helpless kids. Mine is part of the first camp. Lucky him. I don’t kill humans all that often, but one out of three high schools I go to ends up looking for a new guidance counselor shortly after I visit.
What can I say? My tolerance for assholes is minimal. Hannibal Lecter and I would have gotten along.
He finishes up my paperwork while asking about my goals.
I cut that short. I’ve got one goal here. Find the vamp and eat him. I’ll be gone as soon as that happens. I glamour him, get him to put me in every art class they offer, the advanced computer science class, AP US History, AP English, and, so I have a chance to practice, their highest level of French.
One of the things I do like about being a vamp is the chance to learn so much. Granted, I’d rather be at the library (which is why I’ve got a ton of study halls, all of which will be spent there), but it’s still great to have the time to really learn and hone my skills. That’s why I take art classes. If I had lived out my normal life, I’d have never developed more than a pretty hand for bookkeeping. But because I’ve had my normal life and about six others, I’m a skilled artist. There’s even some of my stuff in a few museums these days. And the computer revolution… Well, let me say, I like pixels as much as, if not more than, I did film, and I loved film more than paint, and I loved acrylic more than oil, and…
You get the idea. For me, it’s about the ability to create the end product, not the medium I do the creating with.
I shake those thoughts off and let my guidance counselor know we’re done. It is a bit before lunchtime and he offers to walk me to the cafeteria.
*************
The first day in school is all about getting the lay of the land. My job is to learn faces, watch how and when people eat, figure out who is in which group, and listen in well enough to find out where the teens hang out when they aren’t at school.
And do all that without being seen doing it.
I go through the lunch line and get a Diet Pepsi, a salad, and a soft pretzel. First rule of acting human: eat! Unless, like a few female vamps I’ve met, you intend to use the eating disorder ploy, you have to eat.
We can eat. We just have to chew really well because we don’t digest. What goes in comes out exactly the same. And no, I don’t know precisely how that works. Not like I can turn on Discovery and watch a documentary on it. We eat blood, and we stay strong and healthy. Several hours later, nothing happens. We eat food and a few hours later, food comes out. So, unless we’re around humans or really have a taste for something, we usually don’t bother with it.
I settle down at a sparsely filled table. Geeks: I guess from the clothing and body odor. Geeks have a certain scent all their own, especially the computer geeks. I think it’s a combination of too much Mountain Dew, cigarettes, and not enough showers. From there, I watch the cafeteria for people who aren’t eating. About half to a third of high school vamps don’t bother with eating.
High school vamps like to look a little off. Human enough to pass, but off enough to add to the air of romance. The kind of girl who falls all over herself for a vamp will also notice little details, like he doesn’t eat. He wants her to notice that sort of thing and develop the inkling that there’s something mysterious about him.In a word: Yuck!
I find five options before lunch is done. All of them boys. None of them eating. Two are playing with food, picking it up, touching it, but not actually putting it in their mouths. One has a lunch bag in front of him, but he hasn’t opened it. The other two have no lunch.
I like to stick to small high schools. If there’s fewer than five hundred students, I can scan the room and find the potentials in a few days. Huge schools like they have on the coasts are fun for occasional long hunts. I spent a year in NYC back in ‘07. That was a blast, but it took a full three weeks to even figure out who all the potentials were.
Of my potentials, two of them looked up at me as soon as I walked into the room. One keeps glancing back at me. That gets him booted to the top of the list. Instant awareness of the new girl and not eating: that’s often a vamp.
The other one came over at the end of lunch to offer to show me where my class was. At less than two feet away, I can smell the blood on him. Not one of us. As I look more closely, I notice the large band-aids on his arm and leg.
“What happened to you?”
“Gym class. We were playing football, and I got tackled into the bleachers.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“So, where are you from?”
“Kansas City.”
“Oh. Never been there.” Which is why I picked it. Lots of these Nebraska kids have never been much of anywhere. KC’s big enough that being art girl works, but close enough that me being here isn’t ridiculous. Sometimes I let it slip I’m on my own, so being somewhere nearish where I started makes sense.
“And here we are.” He points me into the classroom that will be my jail for the next forty-five minutes. US History. I enjoyed history classes when I started going to school. It was funny to see how bad they were. Now… Now I understand why people decry modern education.
The teacher is a middle-aged man with a brushy mustache and thinning brown hair. He looks at the paper I hand him and then gestures to a chair at the back of the room. A minute later, he tosses a textbook onto my desk. Obviously, he’s going for the Mr. Charm approach. The textbook is battered; pages are falling out. Flipping through it does nothing to make me think this is going to be any better than any other history class I’ve attended in the last ten years.
A few seconds after the bell stops ringing, he tells the class, “We have a new student…” Yes, draw even more attention to me. Not like they wouldn’t have noticed me in the back if you didn’t mentioned it. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”
“No.” That got a laugh. “But I will. Helen Grace.” Not my real name. Constance Pruitt, my real name, more or less screams 1640, the year I was born. I haven’t used it since the mid-1800s. “I just moved here from KC. I’m wrapping up my senior year.”
“Thank you, Helen. We’re starting on the American Revolution.”
“Wonderful.” I smile grimly at him. I’d been there. Well, for some of it. I was born in Boston and got out of there shortly after I was turned. Providence was close, and no one knew me. Unfortunately, it was tiny. I spent just long enough there to figure out I needed a real city to survive. In 1662, my options for cities big enough not to notice someone like me were limited. Boston, where people knew I was supposed to be dead. New Amsterdam was still under Dutch control. Philadelphia was British and more tolerant than NA. The Virginia Colony wasn’t known for cities in those days. I didn’t speak Spanish then and wasn’t interested in learning, so anything south of that was out.
I headed to Philadelphia and stayed there for more than a century, until it became clear that was where all the traitors were. I moved to NYC and waved a Union Jack when our soldiers captured it.
Obviously, back then I was a Tory. But the Colonials won, and I was stuck. I didn’t have the desire to liquidate my holdings and head to Britain, so I, like many other Tories, became a reluctant American.

No, I didn't know Washington, though I did entertain Cornwallis on more than one occasion. Met Franklin once, too. I liked him. Everyone liked him. It was a pity he changed sides. What, you didn’t know Franklin was a loyal servant of the crown until 1773 or so? Yeah, they gloss over that these days.

While the teacher drones on about taxation and John Adams, I catch sight of someone watching me. He is in a different classroom. There’s a courtyard outside of our room, and the windows look onto it. His classroom is one floor up on the other side of the courtyard.
Bald. That is interesting. Bald teenager is usually a vamp hint. I make sure not to let him see me notice him. I keep doodling in my notebook, taking exceedingly fast glances at him.
He seems to be breathing and blinking. He’s also awfully pale and thin. So, chemo or vamp? Remember what I said about cutting hair? Well, for girls, especially girls from the West, it’s not too big of an issue. Most of us had hair we could work easily with as the styles changed. The guys, not always. Lots of men shaved their heads when wigs were popular. More than a few tonsured monks were turned; just about all of them have shaved heads now. As a rule of thumb: cue ball bald Asians who look too young for male pattern baldness, they’re vamps. You wouldn’t believe some of the styles that were popular back in the Shogun era and before, let alone the more obscure tribal looks.
The other side of the coin is that some vamps shave their heads and pretend to have cancer. Back in the day, they pretended to have TB. Something about a pale, dying man drives a certain kind of girl (idiot gluttons for pain) absolutely wild. They’ll all but trip over themselves to fall in love with a dying boy. Plus, most vamps don’t actually like high school, and cancer gives you an excuse to show up as little or as much as you like.
Quick thing to check, kids who really have cancer have a certain scent to them: bitter and chemical. They also, often, have some sort of IV port and/or scabs from IV’s and needles. If you’ve got a “cancer” patient who smells like nothing and never, ever shows off his arms, it’s time to take his pulse.

Baldy catches my eye and winks at me. I don't remember seeing him at lunch. I'll have to get close enough to smell him to make sure, but he just became the top suspect. 

Grand Gestures and Day To Day Life: 6.14.2

A/N: Mike and Fi at the end of 6.14. Want to start at the beginning? Head here.
6.14.2
"Time to close that book and sleep." Fiona took the atlas off of Michael's lap, shut the cover, and set it on the table in front of him. They're in Schmidt's guestroom. Normally that isn't the sort of thing Mike thinks about, if there's a free room, he and Fi get a bit of privacy. That's just how it is. But tonight, seeing Sam talk about Elsa, the fact that he's got a room to himself, with Fi, while Sam's sacking out with Jesse on the sofas in the living room, weighs heavily on him.
"I can't sleep."
"You have to."
He looks over at her, and notices what's in her hands. "Fi, why do you have a bottle of olive oil and a..." He looks at the glass, and sniffs at it. "Glass of white rum?"
"Because you are going to get some sleep. No matter what."
"How is oil or rum going to help with that?"
"Help you relax, help get your mind off—"
She was about to say "all of this" when he cut in with, "He's in love with her."
"I know, Michael."
"I didn't. I thought she was just the latest sugar mama."
"All the more reason to get some sleep. If you're missing things like that, you're too tired. Remember a few years ago, when you were getting ready to work with Gilroy and I said you were going to kill yourself?"
"Yes."
"I had no idea that was going to be a picnic on the beach compared to what's going on now. You have to sleep, or you'll get yourself, and worse, us, killed." The first time she said something like that to him, she was exasperated. This time she's scared.
"I can't sleep, Fi."
"You've got to." She hands him the drink. "Drink up."
"Hung over and tired is going to be an even worse combination than just tired."
"Michael, do you trust me?"
"Yes."
"Then drink up. You don't have to finish it, but I want to see at least half of it in you."
He takes a long gulp, wincing a bit. He prefers scotch or whiskey over rum.
"Now what?"
"Take off your clothing."
He looks at her, disbelieving. "We're on the run, Riley could be barging in here any second, and you want me to get naked?"
"Yes."
"I really do not want to be running about in just a pair of shoes."
"You won't be."
"How do you know that?"
"I just do. And you better start knowing it, too, or you'll never sleep. So, clothing off and into bed with you."
"This is bad tactics."
"You so tired you can't tell up from down is worse tactics."
"You know, if I actually do sleep, I'll be even fuzzier after."
"Michael, we're not going anywhere tomorrow. Or the day after. We still have to pick a place, get cash in order, and Schmidt has to get the papers ready. We're here, for at least forty-eight hours, and I want to see you sleeping for at least thirty of them. Now, naked, on the bed, lying on your stomach."
Healthy Michael, rested Michael, hell, even marginally functional Michael would have come up with something sardonic or sarcastic. But this Michael, burnt, frustrated, scared, and hurting Michael, exhausted Michael, in the real sense of what that words means, not the more common use of very tired, gets up from the chair he's been sitting on, slowly, and begins to peel off his clothing.
Fi knows he's lain down with her every night, for an hour or two at least, but she also knows that at best he's been catching half hour long catnaps, if not skipping sleep all together. 
She pats the bed. "Lay down."
He sighs and does so. She knows his body language well enough to know he's feeling horrible, with an extra layer of guilty. Sam isn't with his lady. It's his fault. So he doesn't deserve time with Fi. Let alone pampering from Fi. Too bad, you're getting it. You need it. And you're right, Sam needs time with his lady, and he deserves it, too. But right now he can't have it, and you denying yourself isn't going to get it for him. You rested and functional might get it for him, but you're too damn tired to see that, so I'm going to make sure it happens.
 She kisses his shoulder, kneels next to his hip, and pours a little of the oil into her hand.
"What hurts?"
"Besides the burns?"
"Besides the burns."
"Everything."
"Okay." Her hands slip lightly over his back, smoothing the oil over his skin.
"I'm going to end up smelling like a salad."
"You'll survive. I didn't want to ask Schmidt if he had massage oil, so I just grabbed what was in the pantry."
He nods a little, face pressed into a pillow. She's keeping the pressure of her hands light, this massage isn't about working out the kinks or trying to force reluctant scars to melt into soft pliable tissue, this is just about distracting him, relaxing him, and letting his mind get free of reality long enough for him to get a bit of solid sleep.
"I'm thinking where ever we go next should have a beach. Some little cove, with a hammock—"
"I hate hammocks."
She pinches him lightly, but keeps her voice soft, lulling, and her hands smoothly stroking over his skin. "Some little cove, with palm trees, and high rock cliffs to keep us hidden from sight. There'll be a big, soft blanket, and some pillows. A gentle breeze. Shade from the trees. We'll lay about, nap in the shade, play in the water. It'll be warm, and that bright emerald blue green color that some of the islands around here have. And when the sun sets, we'll wander into the little town, and head for the local cafe. They'll have fresh caught fish, conch fritters and ceviche, with homemade beer and rickety tables on the sand. And we won't even need shoes, no suits or no ties, just lazy slow days of sun, sea, food, and sleep."
His body is relaxing nicely under her hands, so with her voice low she keeps telling him about this island fantasy, about the little cottage they'll call home, just a few rooms, with big open windows that let in the breezes, and a huge, plush bed. She talks about how, over time, they'll get soft and plump from all the eating, and brown from the sun. And eventually, they'll have been there so long that no one will remember that they're gringos. They'll just be part of the local scenery. He'll learn Spanish, and her's will get better. And they'll put in a little garden in the back, with a big glass jar so he'll always have sun tea on hand, and she'll plant lemon trees because she likes the way the blossoms smell.
She continues to spin the tale, words coming slower, voice softer as each pass of her hands tells her he's relaxing further. She knows that in reality both of them would find this life horrendously boring after a week or so, but for right now, he needs some serenity, and if she can give it to him with her voice, she's more than willing to.
By the time she's describing the local mercado, the stalls filled high with fresh grown fruits and vegetables, and how they'll walk down each day to pick out what to cook, he's softly snoring. She continues to stroke, and goes from speaking to just humming gently, using her voice to provide white noise until she sees his eyes fluttering.
She lays down very carefully, hoping not to wake him, Michael is a light sleeper to begin with, and when he's on ultra-high alert it gets even worse. 
As Fi closes her eyes, she says a quick prayer, asking God to let Michael get a full night's, and then some, sleep.