What is the chance of two people on my flist having the same birthday? I make it something less than half-a-percent. Yet, today is the birthday of both
delgaserasca and
emptyyourlife! *throws streamers and balloons* I hope both of you had/have a great day.
This is the seventh Life fic I have written since February. I don't mean seven re-writes, I mean seven entirely different stories, each re-written numerous times before being discarded. Aargh, so difficult! This one still isn't The One, but it is The Most Current One, and thus will have to do.
Set post-1.06 "Powerless", vague spoilers, 400 words. Wonderfully non-specific prompt from the wonderfully non-specific
delgaserasca. Warning for language and by language I mean American spelling.
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All Souls' Day
"Maybe it was his birthday," said Crews.
Reese wondered if she should be carrying his knife around with her, so's she could give it back to him if she ever felt the need. Like now. Between the ribs.
"Or maybe," she said, looking pointedly at the framed photographs, neatly stacked records and two guitars in the room, "he played in a tribute band."
The sun angled in through the venetian blinds, turning the sequined suit into a disco-ball of light. Reese, sore precisely because she didn't have a hangover, squinted painfully. So did Crews. The man in the Elvis get-up did not squint. He kept his dead eyes fixed resolutely on the slowly rotating ceiling fan, a look of horror frozen on his face as if the fan was going to fall on him.
Crews shrugged. "Maybe." He crouched by the body, following the dead man's gaze up to the ceiling. "Do you think he knew Jailhouse Rock? I like that one."
On Halloween, when all the flashing lights were gone from her street and she'd finished being sick, Reese had sat outside and watched the sky through her neighbor's jacaranda. It had occurred to her that Crews' infuriating habit of dropping references to his past at unexpected moments was his dumb-ass tough-cop way of saying something else he couldn't say. Like prison doesn't know how strong it made you and the girl's hearing Larson but Dani's hearing drink and Crews is looking at her like take it, take it -
But when she was in the same room as him and he dropped prison like a big old stinkbomb and gave her that goddamn inscrutable expression, nope, she thought, he just wanted to make her flinch.
She never flinched.
Crews was still watching her. The forensics team were assembling in the hall, already attempting epitaphs.
"Shall we take all the puns as read?" Reese interrupted. "The King is dead, Elvis has left the building, this is a real person, and I'd really like to know how and why he was murdered."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Crews standing, arms folded, and she wondered if he was going for the world record of undermining every single thing she ever did.
"So would I," he said heavily, deadly serious. "So would I."
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