All She Wants Is, Ch. 2-Irrepressible (Christmas 2009)-Caskett one-shots, ranging from seasons 1-3
Title: Irrepressible-Christmas 2009
Rating: T
Summary: ""It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it."
A/N: Set Christmas 2009
It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it. How that's surer to get under his skin than pitching the stupid, ugly little thing in the trash, but it's not quite true. The bright color catches her eye now and then. She feels a tug deep down, and she knows it's not quite true.
He has a friend by lunch time. Another hideous little elf, green to his red, waving up at him. She ignores the two of them and the little army that accumulates over the course of the day. More elves, but snowmen and reindeer, too. Creepy silver bells with googly eyes and bendable arms reaching out.
She ignores him. His sly looks and the rope-handle shopping bag he hasn't quite hidden behind her trash can. She ignores the surprisingly delicate porcelain angel suspended above the cappuccino machine, keeping watch.
She ignores all of it. String lights around the vending machine the next day, and the day after that, actual garlands of evergreen studded with crimson velvet bows. Enough to cover the whole perimeter of the fourth floor, blind hallways and all. She keeps on ignoring it. Not saying a word about the little and not-so-little things that appear every day.
He doesn't say a word, either. The sly looks disappear. The furtiveness turns . . . careful, and when she catches him looking at her, that's careful, too. Watchful, and she doesn't understand. There's no challenge in it. No triumph or pride, and it's not even stubborn. It's not like he's gritting his teeth to see it through. However it started for him-whatever it was-it becomes something different in their mutual silence.
She knows what it isn't and wonders what it is. She wonders a lot of things, but she doesn't say a word, and neither does he.
It builds. Every day a little more until they're closing in on Christmas and the place is wall-to-wall with it. Sights and scents and sounds, every single one courtesy of him, though there must be accomplices. There must be a dozen people or more in on it, and she has no idea when they find the time, given the hours she's putting in. The hours she's always put in this time of year.
She wants to be annoyed with him. She wants to be all sharp angles and constant digs. She wants to keep him, of all people, at a distance right now. Especially now, because this is her ritual. It's how she copes with days contracting and expanding again, day by day, minute by minute.
She draws into herself and the few people scattered around her know better than to try to do anything about it. Now they do, anyway, but not him. He doesn't get it. Or he does get it and he doesn't care.
Or he does care.
It's a possibility she can't deal with. A possibility, and she has no idea what it even means for him to care. She has no idea at all, and it's too much this time of year.
It's all too much, and she wants to be annoyed with him, but she ignores it instead. She just ignores everything.
It's the twenty-third when he catches her out. Sweets are the latest assault. They've been around for days. Heaping platters of every kind of dessert imaginable. Rum balls and chocolate-dipped pretzels. Fat peanut-butter patties with chocolate kisses nestled in the deep center thumbprint. Cherry-topped mini-cheesecakes and sticky-sweet walnut cups.
She snatches up a sugar cookie in a moment of weakness. A tree frosted green and she sees his hand in it. Red diagonals of crystallized sugar carefully tapped across its width while it was all still just a little warm from the oven. She pictures him and Alexis in awful holiday aprons, the two of them laughing and dusted with flour. Martha perched on a stool with her glass of wine, directing the whole thing.
She pictures it in vivid detail and the tableau gets her there for some reason. To annoyance. Aggravation. It gets her where she's wanted to be for the last three damned weeks. She breaks the tree in half and shoves one piece in her mouth.
It's heaven.
Buttery and sweet and she practically feels the rush of sugar hitting her blood stream. She closes her eyes, savoring, and it's a mistake. She's swamped by memory. Her mom's hands over hers much smaller ones wrapped around the rolling pin. Ten fingertips and another ten all stained with green and red and silver and gold.
It's agony.
She drops the other half of the cookie. It shatters at her feet. A starburst pattern of green and red and golden brown that's awful. Upsetting all out of proportion.
She stoops to retrieve it. Panics when her vision blurs and there's something scalding the back of her hand. A fat, heavy salt drop and another. She puts her palms flat to the scuffed tile and tries to breathe and all of a sudden he's there when she least wants to see him. When she least wants to see anyone, he's crouched at her side, sweeping the scattered remains of half a sugar cookie into his palm.
She rocks back on to her heels. She wants to run. To turn away at least, before he sees her crying in the break room over a fucking cookie. Before she blurts out that the cappuccino angel looks nothing like her mom, but she thinks about her every time she sees it there, turning slowly. Before she's sobbing on his shoulder and he's letting her, because that's a possibility. Another possibility she has no idea what to do with.
She wants to run, but her limbs feel heavy and weak and there's no point. He's staring at her. Crouched and awkward with one hand full of cookie detritus, he's watching her, wondering what to do. Like she would know. Like she has any idea what to do with this.
It draws her eyes up, eventually. His stillness. His strange, maddening patience in moments like this.
"That bad?" he asks quietly. Solemnly, though there's a smile lancing through the words as he nods down at the remains cupped in his palm.
"No," she says, her voice thick. "Good. Really good."
A/N: I wish you all a good end to this year and a bright beginning to the next.
Rating: T
Summary: ""It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it."
A/N: Set Christmas 2009
It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it. How that's surer to get under his skin than pitching the stupid, ugly little thing in the trash, but it's not quite true. The bright color catches her eye now and then. She feels a tug deep down, and she knows it's not quite true.
He has a friend by lunch time. Another hideous little elf, green to his red, waving up at him. She ignores the two of them and the little army that accumulates over the course of the day. More elves, but snowmen and reindeer, too. Creepy silver bells with googly eyes and bendable arms reaching out.
She ignores him. His sly looks and the rope-handle shopping bag he hasn't quite hidden behind her trash can. She ignores the surprisingly delicate porcelain angel suspended above the cappuccino machine, keeping watch.
She ignores all of it. String lights around the vending machine the next day, and the day after that, actual garlands of evergreen studded with crimson velvet bows. Enough to cover the whole perimeter of the fourth floor, blind hallways and all. She keeps on ignoring it. Not saying a word about the little and not-so-little things that appear every day.
He doesn't say a word, either. The sly looks disappear. The furtiveness turns . . . careful, and when she catches him looking at her, that's careful, too. Watchful, and she doesn't understand. There's no challenge in it. No triumph or pride, and it's not even stubborn. It's not like he's gritting his teeth to see it through. However it started for him-whatever it was-it becomes something different in their mutual silence.
She knows what it isn't and wonders what it is. She wonders a lot of things, but she doesn't say a word, and neither does he.
It builds. Every day a little more until they're closing in on Christmas and the place is wall-to-wall with it. Sights and scents and sounds, every single one courtesy of him, though there must be accomplices. There must be a dozen people or more in on it, and she has no idea when they find the time, given the hours she's putting in. The hours she's always put in this time of year.
She wants to be annoyed with him. She wants to be all sharp angles and constant digs. She wants to keep him, of all people, at a distance right now. Especially now, because this is her ritual. It's how she copes with days contracting and expanding again, day by day, minute by minute.
She draws into herself and the few people scattered around her know better than to try to do anything about it. Now they do, anyway, but not him. He doesn't get it. Or he does get it and he doesn't care.
Or he does care.
It's a possibility she can't deal with. A possibility, and she has no idea what it even means for him to care. She has no idea at all, and it's too much this time of year.
It's all too much, and she wants to be annoyed with him, but she ignores it instead. She just ignores everything.
It's the twenty-third when he catches her out. Sweets are the latest assault. They've been around for days. Heaping platters of every kind of dessert imaginable. Rum balls and chocolate-dipped pretzels. Fat peanut-butter patties with chocolate kisses nestled in the deep center thumbprint. Cherry-topped mini-cheesecakes and sticky-sweet walnut cups.
She snatches up a sugar cookie in a moment of weakness. A tree frosted green and she sees his hand in it. Red diagonals of crystallized sugar carefully tapped across its width while it was all still just a little warm from the oven. She pictures him and Alexis in awful holiday aprons, the two of them laughing and dusted with flour. Martha perched on a stool with her glass of wine, directing the whole thing.
She pictures it in vivid detail and the tableau gets her there for some reason. To annoyance. Aggravation. It gets her where she's wanted to be for the last three damned weeks. She breaks the tree in half and shoves one piece in her mouth.
It's heaven.
Buttery and sweet and she practically feels the rush of sugar hitting her blood stream. She closes her eyes, savoring, and it's a mistake. She's swamped by memory. Her mom's hands over hers much smaller ones wrapped around the rolling pin. Ten fingertips and another ten all stained with green and red and silver and gold.
It's agony.
She drops the other half of the cookie. It shatters at her feet. A starburst pattern of green and red and golden brown that's awful. Upsetting all out of proportion.
She stoops to retrieve it. Panics when her vision blurs and there's something scalding the back of her hand. A fat, heavy salt drop and another. She puts her palms flat to the scuffed tile and tries to breathe and all of a sudden he's there when she least wants to see him. When she least wants to see anyone, he's crouched at her side, sweeping the scattered remains of half a sugar cookie into his palm.
She rocks back on to her heels. She wants to run. To turn away at least, before he sees her crying in the break room over a fucking cookie. Before she blurts out that the cappuccino angel looks nothing like her mom, but she thinks about her every time she sees it there, turning slowly. Before she's sobbing on his shoulder and he's letting her, because that's a possibility. Another possibility she has no idea what to do with.
She wants to run, but her limbs feel heavy and weak and there's no point. He's staring at her. Crouched and awkward with one hand full of cookie detritus, he's watching her, wondering what to do. Like she would know. Like she has any idea what to do with this.
It draws her eyes up, eventually. His stillness. His strange, maddening patience in moments like this.
"That bad?" he asks quietly. Solemnly, though there's a smile lancing through the words as he nods down at the remains cupped in his palm.
"No," she says, her voice thick. "Good. Really good."
A/N: I wish you all a good end to this year and a bright beginning to the next.