Fandom/Pairing: The Middleman; MM/WW
Rating: PG-13
Distribution: Nowhere I've not posted it, please.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or the show, and I make no money writing them. Pure entertainment is the only intention.
Word Count: 775
Summary: His chest hair doesn't just grow in a heart shape, the obligatory succubus edition.
Author's Note: Some people claim there's a woman to blame, and her name is The Blue Fenix. A very overgrown entry to the Valentine's Day challenge.
Long past time for some ZZZs
The bed in the loft Wendy Watson shares with an equally cute but controversial fellow artist
The phone call came late at night; guaranteed bad news in Wendy Watson's experience. She sat up and reached for the Middle watch, hoping it was silent because The Middleman was happily snoring. If the emergency was a nicely harmless event like the time her Mom's car conked out and Ms. Watson felt the need to mourn, she would be very grateful to the universe.
“Hello?”
A significant pause told her it wasn't her mother or her boss, which immediately left bailing out Lacey from a confrontational midnight vigil. Promising herself she wasn't going to be angry, Wendy sighed.
“I won't yell. Just tell me what happened,” she said.
“Apprentice, uh . . . Dubbie, is it? Terrible name - but no time for that now. Listen,” Roxie Wasserman's impatient voice snarled at her smoothly. “I sucked The Middleman and he's asking for you. Do you have any gauze?”
“You sucked MY boss?!”
The succubus cleared her throat loudly, and replied with annoying casualness. “Just a scooch, and completely by accident. He'll be fine, but he's bleeding all over the place. I'm not used to that anymore and it's making a huge mess.”
Five minutes earlier, but still no excuse for being up
Where Fashion!!! happens
“Roxie, I don't see why I need a toga fitting now,” The Middleman complained mildly. He was standing in socks, watch and olive green toga, fiddling with the rope belt.
The icy blond wielding a vacuum attachment at a fake fur coat sneered over at him, but explained with exaggerated patience. She stepped away from her work, dragging the the hose along behind her as she stood in front of him and looked at him critically.
“Because the hemline is not supposed to be on a bias, the neckline looks like a plastic rain poncho, and there's never any time to fix it when you're here on a mission,” she told him. “I'm sorry, MM darling, but you simply can't pull it off.”
She leaned a hand on his chest, the vacuum still humming in it. Roxie turned away for a pin, and her grip turned to tip the hose against his bare chest. She dropped the pin as a howl of agony rang out. Her arm knocked the entire bowl of pins, scattering them as The Middleman took a frantic step back and drove them into his foot.
“Aaaaaaaaaauuuuugh! Call Dubbie!”
And The Middleman was down.
Long past understanding, still before dawn
The Middle mobile, version 2.0
Wendy had extracted what was left of her boss from Roxie Wasserman's house of fashion and blood-letting, and bandaged his chest wound thicker than hospitals did after open heart surgery. She yanked pins from his feet and plastered tiny bandages on the soles. His other soul, she was very pleased to find, was entirely intact.
“I'm sorry, Wendy,” he said again.
She sighed. “You don't have to be sorry. You just have to explain why - WHY - you're hanging out with a succubus and getting flesh wounds. WHY?!”
She had some adrenaline running, and he respected that. It would serve her well when he was really being murdered in the night, which happened approximately 2.7 times per year. The Middleman rubbed at his dressing and nodded tersely. It was a very solid bandage. Wendy had been quite intense about making it tight, waterproof and inescapable unless he was cut free. A less appreciative man might call it excessive.
“Roxie was hemming my toga - “
“As one does at o'dark-thirty, quite innocently and without suspicion,” Dubbie interjected.
“And she was also grooming a faux fur jacket. She said it needed a trim, but she had a vacuum cleaner,” he continued. “She left the suction on and was trying to pin my toga when it caught on my-” he swallowed hard, face going pale again. “Chest hair.”
His apprentice was approaching a red light, and she slowed down appropriately. Her lips pursed and her flushed cheeks flooded with even more blood. She signaled quickly and pulled over, breathing raggedly. She unhooked her seat belt, got out of the car and sat on the hood for about fifteen minutes before he got out as well.
“Dubbie?”
She bent forward, muffling herself with her hands. He reached out tentatively but she popped up, giggling helplessly.
“You got Flowbeed! YOU got Flowbeed!”
The first day of never hearing the end of it
Middleman Headquarters
Once Wendy left to return to her interrupted sleep, he hacked off the bandage and saw the void in his chest hair.
“Strawberry Shortcake!”
Secondary A/N: They still make Flowbees. Seriously. Google it now.