Life fic:: a submerged flower, Dani, Charlie, PG, gen
title. A Submerged Flower
author. Mirageofmae
fandom. Life (a show you should be watching if you are not already)
summary. Dani gets a little older every day.
notes. set in an undetermined future, I've seen up to ep 10, Fill it Up, but there are no specific spoilers. Could be read as Charlie/Dani, but it's gen.
rating. PG
---
He's getting that look again. That look that Stark so helpfully described as planning something that he knew you wouldn't approve of. She can tell from the shifty look in his eyes and the way his body is sidling from hers even in a confined space that he's pretty determined to see it through even if he's unsure about how she'll react.
They've come a long way as partners, but sometimes she still wants to throttle him. Before Crews, the biggest demon in her life was herself.
"What are you thinking?" She asks, not even attempting to sound casual. They're on the drive back from rousing up a potential witness in their latest case. The space between leaves plenty of room for her words to echo. It could just be in her head.
He startles a bit, clearly not all there in her car. "You've never asked me that before." Usually she’s telling him to keep his thoughts in his headspace where they belong.
She frowns and watches as he frowns back at her. Then her eyes focus on the little lines creasing around his eyes. She thinks he's laughing at her.
"What are you thinking?" She adds a touch more gravity to her tone. Sometimes it just takes a little pressure and he'll bend. This ignores the fact that he eventually snaps back the opposite way. She really doesn’t like surprises.
"I am thinking," He's definitely humoring her, "that if you see yourself as inside then how can you be asked to enter?" He grins that small inane grin at her while she watches his mouth form more words. The lines around his mouth deepen on his r's.
He babbles the rest of the way to the station. She wrinkles her nose at him, not deterred, but willing to let it lie for now. She’s not sure when, but she’s reached the point where she can tune him out enough to just let the sound of his voice run over her.
Maybe her throttle reflex is getting dull.
---
He leaves early that day. She hacks into his computer (his password is zenish) and wonders what freakish philosophical rant or conspiracy theory he's chasing now. She just finds his unfinished game of solitaire. She moves the 7 to the 8 and watches the deck slide into place.
She thought he liked to finish things.
As she's powering down his computer, looking surreptitiously around to see if anyone notices (or even cares) about her snooping. It's 11 o'clock. Crews is probably getting laid. And what is she doing?
She never used to be this introspective. Some things really suck about being sober.
---
"What are you thinking?" He asks her the next day, letting the inflection rest on the “you.” He's carefully not looking at her and she swears there's the shade of a bruise under his chin. She wonders if it's from getting roughed up on his quest to bring the man down (which one, she'll never know) or if it's from one of his floosies. There's a ninety percent chance that it's the floosie who will be called Veronica and have three pit bulls and a libido the size of Charlie's latest vehicular conquest.
She sneers a little with her mouth, "I am thinking you share a lot in common with my Aunt's favorite poodle." The dog in question liked to carry "presents" to her Aunt, usually the kind that left the house smell along with a burning desire for extra strength Pine Sol.
If anything he just smiles wider at her, "Is it our Buddha-nature?"
---
She spends the next eight hours browsing whack-job conspiracy sites (they seem to have an unusual predilection for prostitute rings and every key figure in national politics) along with the latest news (more of the same, nothing ever changes) in an attempt to follow her partner's latest train of thought.
She finds more than she ever wanted to know about cock rings, hospital visits, and the seedy underbelly of D.C., but she's not any closer to understanding her partner.
She sits back and figures that’s maybe a good thing.
On the drive to her house she wonders at the lines on her hand and thinks about the bar she just passed. It used to be a big deal when she was allowed a sip of wine with dinner on special occasions. Her Dad used to toast. Her hands curl into claws as she thinks about it. She circles the block three more times before letting it pass her by.
---
She really doesn’t like him some days. Like the days when his calm spreads like a storm cloud over a mountain. It’ll brush against her skin and make her twitch. No matter what it looks like, she’s not calm inside. She’s angry and screaming and glaring at the world for being so damn bright. She buys bigger sunglasses while Charlie tips his head back and lets the sun burn more lines into his skin.
“You’re going to get cancer you keep doing that.” She lets the words snap out of her mouth like they’re those little sharp things ninjas throw. She idly wonders if she’s been leaving the TV on too late at night if those are the kind of thoughts her mind produces.
He doesn’t reply, just tugs on her jacket until she’s parallel with him. She tilts her head back like she’s following his line of sight.
The sun is warm. Charlie is calm next to her. She feels like a supernova sometimes and wonders if she can kick him without looking stupid.
---
She stoops so low as to ask Stark what’s on her partner’s mind. He’s taken to making secret phone calls, turning his back to her and hunching over the phone like it’s going to keep his words private. It’s not like she was trying to listen anyway.
Of course, she regrets it as soon as the question has left her mouth. Stark just grins at her, well, leers really.
She waves him away and wishes she didn’t feel like she needed a shower.
Her email is full of reports, requests for information, and one note from her mother asking her if she’s going to come home this weekend, it’s almost the fourth after all-
She deletes the email. She can’t be that daughter anymore. Her partner is staring at her like he knows about the email, about the bar she almost went into last night, and about Stark watching her ass as she walked away.
She flicks a staple at him and hopes he goes away.
--
When she gets to the station the next day, there is a basket of bananas and pistachios sitting there incongruously next to her cup of pens and a very tall stack of paperwork that the L.T. has been hassling her about. She thinks there’s even a card at the bottom, underneath the garish packaging proclaiming the pistachios to be from that Persian store three blocks from her house.
She can feel the eyes of the rest of the station on her. They'll all waiting for her reaction, the gawkers. Naturally, she snaps a pistachio between her teeth and gets started on the first form her pen lands on.
Charlie comes to work an hour later than usual with another bruise under his chin. She finds she doesn’t care where it comes from.
He grins at her. "The lotus submerged is still a lotus." A long pause. She cracks another pistachio between her teeth, letting her gaze fall heavy on him. "Happy Birthday."
finis.
notes. There are quite a few zen koans stuffed into this fic. I found most of them here.
author. Mirageofmae
fandom. Life (a show you should be watching if you are not already)
summary. Dani gets a little older every day.
notes. set in an undetermined future, I've seen up to ep 10, Fill it Up, but there are no specific spoilers. Could be read as Charlie/Dani, but it's gen.
rating. PG
---
He's getting that look again. That look that Stark so helpfully described as planning something that he knew you wouldn't approve of. She can tell from the shifty look in his eyes and the way his body is sidling from hers even in a confined space that he's pretty determined to see it through even if he's unsure about how she'll react.
They've come a long way as partners, but sometimes she still wants to throttle him. Before Crews, the biggest demon in her life was herself.
"What are you thinking?" She asks, not even attempting to sound casual. They're on the drive back from rousing up a potential witness in their latest case. The space between leaves plenty of room for her words to echo. It could just be in her head.
He startles a bit, clearly not all there in her car. "You've never asked me that before." Usually she’s telling him to keep his thoughts in his headspace where they belong.
She frowns and watches as he frowns back at her. Then her eyes focus on the little lines creasing around his eyes. She thinks he's laughing at her.
"What are you thinking?" She adds a touch more gravity to her tone. Sometimes it just takes a little pressure and he'll bend. This ignores the fact that he eventually snaps back the opposite way. She really doesn’t like surprises.
"I am thinking," He's definitely humoring her, "that if you see yourself as inside then how can you be asked to enter?" He grins that small inane grin at her while she watches his mouth form more words. The lines around his mouth deepen on his r's.
He babbles the rest of the way to the station. She wrinkles her nose at him, not deterred, but willing to let it lie for now. She’s not sure when, but she’s reached the point where she can tune him out enough to just let the sound of his voice run over her.
Maybe her throttle reflex is getting dull.
---
He leaves early that day. She hacks into his computer (his password is zenish) and wonders what freakish philosophical rant or conspiracy theory he's chasing now. She just finds his unfinished game of solitaire. She moves the 7 to the 8 and watches the deck slide into place.
She thought he liked to finish things.
As she's powering down his computer, looking surreptitiously around to see if anyone notices (or even cares) about her snooping. It's 11 o'clock. Crews is probably getting laid. And what is she doing?
She never used to be this introspective. Some things really suck about being sober.
---
"What are you thinking?" He asks her the next day, letting the inflection rest on the “you.” He's carefully not looking at her and she swears there's the shade of a bruise under his chin. She wonders if it's from getting roughed up on his quest to bring the man down (which one, she'll never know) or if it's from one of his floosies. There's a ninety percent chance that it's the floosie who will be called Veronica and have three pit bulls and a libido the size of Charlie's latest vehicular conquest.
She sneers a little with her mouth, "I am thinking you share a lot in common with my Aunt's favorite poodle." The dog in question liked to carry "presents" to her Aunt, usually the kind that left the house smell along with a burning desire for extra strength Pine Sol.
If anything he just smiles wider at her, "Is it our Buddha-nature?"
---
She spends the next eight hours browsing whack-job conspiracy sites (they seem to have an unusual predilection for prostitute rings and every key figure in national politics) along with the latest news (more of the same, nothing ever changes) in an attempt to follow her partner's latest train of thought.
She finds more than she ever wanted to know about cock rings, hospital visits, and the seedy underbelly of D.C., but she's not any closer to understanding her partner.
She sits back and figures that’s maybe a good thing.
On the drive to her house she wonders at the lines on her hand and thinks about the bar she just passed. It used to be a big deal when she was allowed a sip of wine with dinner on special occasions. Her Dad used to toast. Her hands curl into claws as she thinks about it. She circles the block three more times before letting it pass her by.
---
She really doesn’t like him some days. Like the days when his calm spreads like a storm cloud over a mountain. It’ll brush against her skin and make her twitch. No matter what it looks like, she’s not calm inside. She’s angry and screaming and glaring at the world for being so damn bright. She buys bigger sunglasses while Charlie tips his head back and lets the sun burn more lines into his skin.
“You’re going to get cancer you keep doing that.” She lets the words snap out of her mouth like they’re those little sharp things ninjas throw. She idly wonders if she’s been leaving the TV on too late at night if those are the kind of thoughts her mind produces.
He doesn’t reply, just tugs on her jacket until she’s parallel with him. She tilts her head back like she’s following his line of sight.
The sun is warm. Charlie is calm next to her. She feels like a supernova sometimes and wonders if she can kick him without looking stupid.
---
She stoops so low as to ask Stark what’s on her partner’s mind. He’s taken to making secret phone calls, turning his back to her and hunching over the phone like it’s going to keep his words private. It’s not like she was trying to listen anyway.
Of course, she regrets it as soon as the question has left her mouth. Stark just grins at her, well, leers really.
She waves him away and wishes she didn’t feel like she needed a shower.
Her email is full of reports, requests for information, and one note from her mother asking her if she’s going to come home this weekend, it’s almost the fourth after all-
She deletes the email. She can’t be that daughter anymore. Her partner is staring at her like he knows about the email, about the bar she almost went into last night, and about Stark watching her ass as she walked away.
She flicks a staple at him and hopes he goes away.
--
When she gets to the station the next day, there is a basket of bananas and pistachios sitting there incongruously next to her cup of pens and a very tall stack of paperwork that the L.T. has been hassling her about. She thinks there’s even a card at the bottom, underneath the garish packaging proclaiming the pistachios to be from that Persian store three blocks from her house.
She can feel the eyes of the rest of the station on her. They'll all waiting for her reaction, the gawkers. Naturally, she snaps a pistachio between her teeth and gets started on the first form her pen lands on.
Charlie comes to work an hour later than usual with another bruise under his chin. She finds she doesn’t care where it comes from.
He grins at her. "The lotus submerged is still a lotus." A long pause. She cracks another pistachio between her teeth, letting her gaze fall heavy on him. "Happy Birthday."
finis.
notes. There are quite a few zen koans stuffed into this fic. I found most of them here.