Title: The Business of Saving People
Fandom: Lost Girl
Characters: Kenzi, Hale
Rating: G
The Business of Saving People
So, Hale’s the new Ash now.
Kenzi is, in theory, totally down with this. Hale is an awesome Ash. (Okay, so he’s only been the Ash for, like, a month, but whatever). Way better than that Ash-hole Lachlan and the other one with the creepy voice that--actually, Kenzi’s pretty sure she never got his name. But he was a total dick. And Hale is not, so there.
And, y’know, he’s still Hale. He still hangs out at the Dal and laughs at her jokes (“All Hale the new Ash!” she’d said the second she heard the news, and even after the fifth time she makes the joke, he’s still smiling) and he still whistles away her hangovers--Trick mutters something-or-other about how technically, the Ash can’t be giving unsolicited and unwon favors to humans, but Kenzi is a special human so it’s not like the rules even apply to her, right?
But he’s also getting that look, the one Kenzi knows so well. She’s seen it a million times on Bo’s face, and Trick’s, and it’s practically Dyson’s default expression--that weight-of-the-world look, like they’re carrying something they can’t share and it’s going to collapse on them soon. And it freaks her out, just slightly more than it does when it’s anyone else. Because Bo is Kenzi’s best friend but Hale is her buddy in sidekick solidarity, her comrade in lame-jokes-arms, the other half of her secret handshake. And now he’s all political and he gets little frown lines around his eyes--and seriously, in fae years, isn’t he kind of young to be getting crow’s feet? Kenzi worries. Hale is too pretty to be getting all wrinkly and Trick-like already.
And Kenzi does her best to lighten the burden and hey, most of the time she succeeds. It’s easy when it’s her bestie, when it’s Trick, when it’s Mr. Wolf McAngstypants--and apparently Dyson used to be Scottish, so that name is super appropriate now--but Hale’s usually her partner in crime, not the focus of her cheering-up operations. (Which need an official name, like, stat. But not Operation Cheer-Up. That is lame. Something else. Something cool. She’ll think about it later.)
“Yo,” she says one day, flinging herself onto his desk. (He’s set up shop in the back room of the bar, which isn’t even where the alcohol lives, which Kenzi is pretty sure proves how serious and Ash-y Hale is getting. Hence the need for an intervention.) “You need to come with me. Right now.”
Hale sighs, all world-weary. “Kenzi,” he says, in the super-serious tone he’s been using a lot since becoming the Ash. “I’m in the middle of writing up a peace proposal to present to the Morrigan tomorrow. She can kind of destroy me, if you haven’t noticed.”
“You,” she says, using her authoritative voice--because no one can resist the Authoritative Voice--“need to have some fun.”
“I’m having fun,” he protests (weakly, she thinks). “Sensing my imminent destruction by a woman with the scariest eyebrows known to man is fun.”
“Come on,” she says, and it occurs to her that she’s kind of whining, but whatever, she’s a totally cute whiner. She can pull it off. “You’re getting crow’s feet.”
“I am not!” Hale says, horrified.
“You will if you don’t hang out with me. Come on,” she repeats. “One movie. Two hours. Then you can go back to your treaty-thing. Unless,” she adds, “you’re too cool for the little people now that you’re the Ash--”
Hale laughs and stands up, pushing his chair back. The sweet sense of triumph flares in her chest. She can totally do this. She can totally save Hale from the fires of Mount Angst. She’s like a superhero that way.
Hale swings his arm around her shoulders and for a brief moment, something else flares, too. “I always got time for you, lil mama,” he tells her, and Kenzi beams and drags him out into the world.