WIP Amnesty
In the honor of WIP Amnesty Day, I present one of the unfinished WIPs that have been languishing on my harddrive for years. I realize that it will never be finished anyway... *sigh*
Once a Thief WIP
"Talk about lowering your standards," I muttered. It was a cross between the disgusted-talking-to-myself mutter and the yeah-I'm-speaking-to-you-buster-but-I'll-never-admit-it mutter. I wasn't sure whether I was talking mainly to Li Ann or to myself.
This was just *so* humiliating. I hadn't exactly been expecting her to veil her face and join a convent in order to spend the rest of her days in quiet seclusion and worshipful remembrance of my humble self, but this? Playing house with a holier-than-thou cop, smug as she could be, while I was rotting in my grave! Metaphorically rotting. Of course I wasn't actually rotting in my grave because I *had* no grave. I wasn't in fact rotting anywhere even in theory, seeing as I had supposedly been blown to five million sub-atomic little bits. And of course I wasn't dead. Still, it was the principle of the thing. After all, she hadn't *known* that I wasn't metaphorically rotting in my grave.
Annoyingly, Li Ann smiled. She was looking great, not a swollen eye or drawn feature in sight. Unbelievable. Who would have guessed? I'd always known her blood ran ice-cold at all the proper times, but I'd never suspected her sang-froid would extend to cover my death, as well. Oh, well, Mac's been ripped into a million tiny pieces and scattered into the wind, I think I'll have a cup of tea and then perhaps move on to Canada to find me some boring cop with no style and less culture.
"Honestly, Li Ann, you used to have better taste that that!" I yelled. I was now officially talking to her. "What were you thinking? If you had to have a warm body in your bed, why did it have to be some pompous bore with no brains?"
The irritating little smile vanished off Li Ann's face. Too bad if the subject failed to amuse her. I wasn't laughing my head off myself, and I wouldn't be shut up that easily. Not anymore.
"This is not what I - I see you again after all this time and you've -" I broke off because that was not what I'd wanted to say. I had a nasty suspicion that I'd sounded hurt - more hurt than I cared to let on.
She shouldn't have just forgotten me like that, just as though what we'd had had been nothing at all, just as though she could jump straight from my arms into the bed of a staid dumb-fuck of an annoying asshole cop, a dull, boorish, uncultured brute who probably belched and farted and... picked his teeth in public...
Well. Obviously, she could.
Maybe I'd never known her at all. She'd been ready to leave me for Michael, too. Maybe she'd just never been the girl I took her for.
I spun around and stalked out of the room. I’d originally meant to storm out of her apartment, leaving her to agonize over how wrong our reunion had gone and how it was entirely her fault, but I changed direction at the last moment and stormed through a different doorway. Judging from the expression on her face, agonizing wasn’t first on the list of Things To Do After Mac’s Stormed Out. Looked more like it’d be a distant number five-hundred and seventy-six, losing out to things like calling the pompous bore and complaining about Mac, calling the holier-than-thou cop and adressing him as snuggles or tigger or some equally stupid thing, calling the warm body and telling him to get his ass over here cause she was in the mood for sex.
God, I really, really didn’t want to imagine that - *cop* with his hands on her.
So, this was her bedroom - looked just like her bedrooms always did, from the mirrored dresser to the dark blue satin spread. Severe elegance. Impeccable taste. In everything but men, it seemed.
"Mac." She'd followed me and stood right beside me, all soft voice and big, compassionate brown eyes. She was so beautiful, damn it. How could she do this to me? We were great together, we always had been. She'd seen it too, I knew she had.
"I thought you were dead. You have to understand what that did to me. I needed someone, and Vic was there. He's a very warm and caring person, and if you'd let yourself, you'd like him too. Please, Mac, try, for my sake. I want you two to get along."
"Do you love him?" I asked her, not looking at her.
She didn't want to answer. I could tell at once because she opened her eyes wide and looked up at me with beguiling innocence and candor. It was her oldest trick.
I knew her so well. I knew all her moves, her tricks, her annoying habits, her strengths and weaknesses. She was part of me. We had been inseparable and unbeatable, her and Michael and me. She couldn't just traipse off with some stranger! It was all just a mistake, a temporary aberration. Had to be.
"I still love you, Mac, but I'm engaged to Victor -"
"I didn’t ask whether you love me. I asked whether you love *him*."
She looked down and turned around, and when I grabbed for her arm, she whirled out of reach in a dangerous, tight little arch that brought her back to face me on the balls of her feet, a near-snarl curling her lip.
"I don't know, Mac! I didn't at first, but yes, before you turned up I thought I did. Now - now, I just don't know."
Great, now she looked as though she was about to cry, and sure enough, she threw herself into my arms and proceeded to sob onto my shoulder, squeezing the life out of me. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, but not like this, and I was afraid I'd start to cry too, and then we'd really make a stupid picture. I managed to hold out until she wound down enough to let me go, and then I high-tailed it out of there.
I went into the first likely-looking disco I could find and picked up a girl whose name I kept forgotting, but I couldn't get into the spirit of the thing. I was glad when it was over and I could get out of there as fast as my feet would carry me. She yelled something after me as I went - might have been her phone number. Might have been a vicious curse. Whatever.
I had to get her back. From the day we'd first met - snot-nosed, terrified, snivelling little thief that I'd been - Li Ann had been my anchor, my constant, the one good thing in my life, the only person I had ever been able to rely on. I needed her. I *needed* her - without her, there was nothing. Somehow, I had to get her back.
***
I could kill him, of course. It would be easy. Lamb to the slaughter. The only problem was that Li Ann would be sure to find out, and she'd take a dim view of me murdering her betrothed, no matter how much of a loser said betrothed was. That my new boss, who made piranhas seem like cuddly, warm and caring creatures, would no doubt also find out was another ugly complication.
And then of course there was the fact that I wasn't really cut out to be an assassin and didn't actually want to find out whether or not I had the stomach for cold-blooded murder. I didn't think so, and that belief suited me just fine, thank you very much.
Failing homicide, I could make Li Ann see what she had in me, and what she *didn't* have in that fool. Should be easy, right? After all, the man was a boorish, uncultured lump of bone and muscle with neither style nor charm to recommend him to a woman of taste and refinement.
You only had to look at him. Honestly, you'd think we were here to chew tobacco and shovel manure. Cowboy boots? Where did the guy come from, Hick Burgh, Nowhere? Checkered flannel shirts? Shouldn't he be off in the woods cutting down trees? Be more suited to his intellectual level, and I'm sure he'd have fun sitting around campfires with the other neanderthals.
He's a woodcutter and he's okay...
I almost laughed out loud at the image that popped into my head together with the line from the song, but turned it into a choked cough instead. All the same, the sound drew the attention of the shark in hooker's clothing that was my current employer.
"Perhaps you would care to explain just what you find amusing about designer drugs, Mr. Ramsey?"
Oh geeze. "Uhm, sorry. Mind musta wandered for a second there."
That little lapse cost me a week stuck in a port-a-toilet outside of a deserted warehouse, waiting for some mad chemist and his mad chemist daughters to come home from their holidays and begin designing designer drugs again like good little mad scientists. And every hour, on the hour, Victor Fucking Mansfield would drive by in his farm vehicle and check that I was still there. Oh sure, ostensibly he was checking to make sure I had everything I needed and no one had conked me over the head and done unspeakable mad science things to my unconscious body, but I knew better. The smug little smirk the bastard wore every damn time said that he knew it, too, and that he knew full well I knew, and that he also knew I knew he knew, and that he was getting a huge kick out of the whole thing.
Another thing I owed him for... And Ramseys never forget. We may smile and be all flowers and roses, but when we reach out to pat you on the back, you can be damn sure there's going to be a knife up our sleeves for any fucking bastards who've tried to put one over on us. You don't go stealing girls from a Ramsey. You don't grin at them like Robert Redford on acid when they're sitting in a port-a-toilet with a video camera and a cell phone.
Just you wait, Enry Iggins.
***
What I needed was a plan. The first step in any heist was to gather information. Once you had all of the crucial data together, you'd sift it for potential points of attack and then, finally, build a plan playing to your own strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. It applied to this situation perfectly.
So, step one, gather info, find weak spots, things like that.
"Hey, Mansfield."
"What do you want, Ramsey?"
"Look, we started out on the wrong foot, and I'm not going to apologize or anything because I didn't do anything wrong, but we're supposed to be working together, right? So I figure we better make the best of a bad situation. Wanna catch a beer?"
"Drop dead."
Well. So much for that approach.
***
Okay, to take inventory. He was an ignoramus who knew nothing at all about art, literature, music, culture of any kind. He dressed like someone who'd spit tobacco juice without warning, pound you on the back and say inanely stupid things like "aw shucks awmighty" in an accent so thick you couldn't understand him anyway. He had no taste in cars, clothes, food, anything at all. He was a cop, goddammit. Even now he was still a cop, regardless of the fact he no longer had a badge. He'd always be a cop, it went to the bone - no, it went right down to the cell level, printed into his DNA with all of the unattractive qualities that came with it.
To wit: Lack of humor. Lack of imagination. Lack of brain. Inability to think for himself. Slavish devotion to stupid regulations like "don't step on the grass" and "no food or drink allowed". A happy little grunt.
Li Ann wasn't that stupid. There was no help for it, there had to be more, even if for the life of me I couldn't see it. What could it possibly be?
Okay, he wasn't ugly, I'd give her that much. But what did he do with the potential he had? Nothing - less than nothing. Threw it right out the window. His face could have been attractive, and he did have unusually green eyes with long dark lashes, the kind that were great with girls if you knew how to use them. Which, needless to say, Mr. Righteousness did not. He had a good body, as anyone who worked in this line of work did - okay, almost anyone. The Cleaners certainly didn't conform to any notion of attractiveness I wanted to know about, and they did much more than their share in the wreaking mayhem and destruction department.
Anyway. What we had here was a guy with a good body and a potentially handsome face dressing up like Grizzly Adams. I knew Li Ann appreciated style. I *knew* I had a damn fine bod myself, and my face was nothing to sneer at, either. She'd liked it once.
More than that, she'd liked *me* once, and by now we all knew she wasn't Little Miss Faithful, now was she? So what if the guy was still right there and breathing instead of metaphorically or actually being scattered into atoms. Shouldn't really bother her all that much, should it? I'd still been right there and accounted for when she made to go off with Michael, after all. He wasn’t ugly, but neither was I, and I knew how to avoid looking like an Idaho farmboy who’d been hit in the head by one too many giant potato. Just what was the problem here?
"Is he really that good in bed?"
Say what you will about Li Ann, she's not slow. She knew what I was talking about right there, right then. Tried to give me the Big Orphan Eyes, but I wasn't having any of it.
"He doesn't look it, that's for sure," I continued, unable to keep a hint of snideness from my tone. I could see it reflect unfavorably in her expression, but I really couldn't help it, and it was no one's fault but her own for dragging the uncouth lout to bed in the first place. Not that she'd had to drag, I bet. He'd probably grabbed her with one arm, beat his chest with his free fist and carried her off to his lair chanting "me Victor, you Jane".
"As a matter of fact, he looks like the type who considers a football game and honeyed peanuts the ultimate in foreplay and starts snoring the second he comes, to wit, about seventy seconds after he drops his pants and tosses you down. I bet he can’t tell a clitoris from a climatis. I bet he doesn’t -"
She hadn't said anything, but the evil little gleam in her eye made me falter. She was in one of her wicked moods. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. It depended on too many things, and I really wasn't all that certain of where I stood right now.
"You don't know much about men, do you, Mac?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
An eloquent shrug was all the answer I got. That, and her Smug Smile. I had always hated that Smug Smile.
***
Okay, I could go there. Why not? Know thine enemy and all that.
"Hey, Victor."
"What?"
"I was thinking."
"Congratulations."
"Your wit and sophistication blow me away, Mansfield. Did you read that somewhere? Oh, sorry, forgot - you don't read."
"Get the hell out of my way, Ramsey."
"Charming as ever. You wanna go to bed with me?"
"I wish I knew who first lied and told you you were funny. I'd shoot them."
That would be strike two.
***
Once a Thief WIP
"Talk about lowering your standards," I muttered. It was a cross between the disgusted-talking-to-myself mutter and the yeah-I'm-speaking-to-you-buster-but-I'll-never-admit-it mutter. I wasn't sure whether I was talking mainly to Li Ann or to myself.
This was just *so* humiliating. I hadn't exactly been expecting her to veil her face and join a convent in order to spend the rest of her days in quiet seclusion and worshipful remembrance of my humble self, but this? Playing house with a holier-than-thou cop, smug as she could be, while I was rotting in my grave! Metaphorically rotting. Of course I wasn't actually rotting in my grave because I *had* no grave. I wasn't in fact rotting anywhere even in theory, seeing as I had supposedly been blown to five million sub-atomic little bits. And of course I wasn't dead. Still, it was the principle of the thing. After all, she hadn't *known* that I wasn't metaphorically rotting in my grave.
Annoyingly, Li Ann smiled. She was looking great, not a swollen eye or drawn feature in sight. Unbelievable. Who would have guessed? I'd always known her blood ran ice-cold at all the proper times, but I'd never suspected her sang-froid would extend to cover my death, as well. Oh, well, Mac's been ripped into a million tiny pieces and scattered into the wind, I think I'll have a cup of tea and then perhaps move on to Canada to find me some boring cop with no style and less culture.
"Honestly, Li Ann, you used to have better taste that that!" I yelled. I was now officially talking to her. "What were you thinking? If you had to have a warm body in your bed, why did it have to be some pompous bore with no brains?"
The irritating little smile vanished off Li Ann's face. Too bad if the subject failed to amuse her. I wasn't laughing my head off myself, and I wouldn't be shut up that easily. Not anymore.
"This is not what I - I see you again after all this time and you've -" I broke off because that was not what I'd wanted to say. I had a nasty suspicion that I'd sounded hurt - more hurt than I cared to let on.
She shouldn't have just forgotten me like that, just as though what we'd had had been nothing at all, just as though she could jump straight from my arms into the bed of a staid dumb-fuck of an annoying asshole cop, a dull, boorish, uncultured brute who probably belched and farted and... picked his teeth in public...
Well. Obviously, she could.
Maybe I'd never known her at all. She'd been ready to leave me for Michael, too. Maybe she'd just never been the girl I took her for.
I spun around and stalked out of the room. I’d originally meant to storm out of her apartment, leaving her to agonize over how wrong our reunion had gone and how it was entirely her fault, but I changed direction at the last moment and stormed through a different doorway. Judging from the expression on her face, agonizing wasn’t first on the list of Things To Do After Mac’s Stormed Out. Looked more like it’d be a distant number five-hundred and seventy-six, losing out to things like calling the pompous bore and complaining about Mac, calling the holier-than-thou cop and adressing him as snuggles or tigger or some equally stupid thing, calling the warm body and telling him to get his ass over here cause she was in the mood for sex.
God, I really, really didn’t want to imagine that - *cop* with his hands on her.
So, this was her bedroom - looked just like her bedrooms always did, from the mirrored dresser to the dark blue satin spread. Severe elegance. Impeccable taste. In everything but men, it seemed.
"Mac." She'd followed me and stood right beside me, all soft voice and big, compassionate brown eyes. She was so beautiful, damn it. How could she do this to me? We were great together, we always had been. She'd seen it too, I knew she had.
"I thought you were dead. You have to understand what that did to me. I needed someone, and Vic was there. He's a very warm and caring person, and if you'd let yourself, you'd like him too. Please, Mac, try, for my sake. I want you two to get along."
"Do you love him?" I asked her, not looking at her.
She didn't want to answer. I could tell at once because she opened her eyes wide and looked up at me with beguiling innocence and candor. It was her oldest trick.
I knew her so well. I knew all her moves, her tricks, her annoying habits, her strengths and weaknesses. She was part of me. We had been inseparable and unbeatable, her and Michael and me. She couldn't just traipse off with some stranger! It was all just a mistake, a temporary aberration. Had to be.
"I still love you, Mac, but I'm engaged to Victor -"
"I didn’t ask whether you love me. I asked whether you love *him*."
She looked down and turned around, and when I grabbed for her arm, she whirled out of reach in a dangerous, tight little arch that brought her back to face me on the balls of her feet, a near-snarl curling her lip.
"I don't know, Mac! I didn't at first, but yes, before you turned up I thought I did. Now - now, I just don't know."
Great, now she looked as though she was about to cry, and sure enough, she threw herself into my arms and proceeded to sob onto my shoulder, squeezing the life out of me. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, but not like this, and I was afraid I'd start to cry too, and then we'd really make a stupid picture. I managed to hold out until she wound down enough to let me go, and then I high-tailed it out of there.
I went into the first likely-looking disco I could find and picked up a girl whose name I kept forgotting, but I couldn't get into the spirit of the thing. I was glad when it was over and I could get out of there as fast as my feet would carry me. She yelled something after me as I went - might have been her phone number. Might have been a vicious curse. Whatever.
I had to get her back. From the day we'd first met - snot-nosed, terrified, snivelling little thief that I'd been - Li Ann had been my anchor, my constant, the one good thing in my life, the only person I had ever been able to rely on. I needed her. I *needed* her - without her, there was nothing. Somehow, I had to get her back.
***
I could kill him, of course. It would be easy. Lamb to the slaughter. The only problem was that Li Ann would be sure to find out, and she'd take a dim view of me murdering her betrothed, no matter how much of a loser said betrothed was. That my new boss, who made piranhas seem like cuddly, warm and caring creatures, would no doubt also find out was another ugly complication.
And then of course there was the fact that I wasn't really cut out to be an assassin and didn't actually want to find out whether or not I had the stomach for cold-blooded murder. I didn't think so, and that belief suited me just fine, thank you very much.
Failing homicide, I could make Li Ann see what she had in me, and what she *didn't* have in that fool. Should be easy, right? After all, the man was a boorish, uncultured lump of bone and muscle with neither style nor charm to recommend him to a woman of taste and refinement.
You only had to look at him. Honestly, you'd think we were here to chew tobacco and shovel manure. Cowboy boots? Where did the guy come from, Hick Burgh, Nowhere? Checkered flannel shirts? Shouldn't he be off in the woods cutting down trees? Be more suited to his intellectual level, and I'm sure he'd have fun sitting around campfires with the other neanderthals.
He's a woodcutter and he's okay...
I almost laughed out loud at the image that popped into my head together with the line from the song, but turned it into a choked cough instead. All the same, the sound drew the attention of the shark in hooker's clothing that was my current employer.
"Perhaps you would care to explain just what you find amusing about designer drugs, Mr. Ramsey?"
Oh geeze. "Uhm, sorry. Mind musta wandered for a second there."
That little lapse cost me a week stuck in a port-a-toilet outside of a deserted warehouse, waiting for some mad chemist and his mad chemist daughters to come home from their holidays and begin designing designer drugs again like good little mad scientists. And every hour, on the hour, Victor Fucking Mansfield would drive by in his farm vehicle and check that I was still there. Oh sure, ostensibly he was checking to make sure I had everything I needed and no one had conked me over the head and done unspeakable mad science things to my unconscious body, but I knew better. The smug little smirk the bastard wore every damn time said that he knew it, too, and that he knew full well I knew, and that he also knew I knew he knew, and that he was getting a huge kick out of the whole thing.
Another thing I owed him for... And Ramseys never forget. We may smile and be all flowers and roses, but when we reach out to pat you on the back, you can be damn sure there's going to be a knife up our sleeves for any fucking bastards who've tried to put one over on us. You don't go stealing girls from a Ramsey. You don't grin at them like Robert Redford on acid when they're sitting in a port-a-toilet with a video camera and a cell phone.
Just you wait, Enry Iggins.
***
What I needed was a plan. The first step in any heist was to gather information. Once you had all of the crucial data together, you'd sift it for potential points of attack and then, finally, build a plan playing to your own strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. It applied to this situation perfectly.
So, step one, gather info, find weak spots, things like that.
"Hey, Mansfield."
"What do you want, Ramsey?"
"Look, we started out on the wrong foot, and I'm not going to apologize or anything because I didn't do anything wrong, but we're supposed to be working together, right? So I figure we better make the best of a bad situation. Wanna catch a beer?"
"Drop dead."
Well. So much for that approach.
***
Okay, to take inventory. He was an ignoramus who knew nothing at all about art, literature, music, culture of any kind. He dressed like someone who'd spit tobacco juice without warning, pound you on the back and say inanely stupid things like "aw shucks awmighty" in an accent so thick you couldn't understand him anyway. He had no taste in cars, clothes, food, anything at all. He was a cop, goddammit. Even now he was still a cop, regardless of the fact he no longer had a badge. He'd always be a cop, it went to the bone - no, it went right down to the cell level, printed into his DNA with all of the unattractive qualities that came with it.
To wit: Lack of humor. Lack of imagination. Lack of brain. Inability to think for himself. Slavish devotion to stupid regulations like "don't step on the grass" and "no food or drink allowed". A happy little grunt.
Li Ann wasn't that stupid. There was no help for it, there had to be more, even if for the life of me I couldn't see it. What could it possibly be?
Okay, he wasn't ugly, I'd give her that much. But what did he do with the potential he had? Nothing - less than nothing. Threw it right out the window. His face could have been attractive, and he did have unusually green eyes with long dark lashes, the kind that were great with girls if you knew how to use them. Which, needless to say, Mr. Righteousness did not. He had a good body, as anyone who worked in this line of work did - okay, almost anyone. The Cleaners certainly didn't conform to any notion of attractiveness I wanted to know about, and they did much more than their share in the wreaking mayhem and destruction department.
Anyway. What we had here was a guy with a good body and a potentially handsome face dressing up like Grizzly Adams. I knew Li Ann appreciated style. I *knew* I had a damn fine bod myself, and my face was nothing to sneer at, either. She'd liked it once.
More than that, she'd liked *me* once, and by now we all knew she wasn't Little Miss Faithful, now was she? So what if the guy was still right there and breathing instead of metaphorically or actually being scattered into atoms. Shouldn't really bother her all that much, should it? I'd still been right there and accounted for when she made to go off with Michael, after all. He wasn’t ugly, but neither was I, and I knew how to avoid looking like an Idaho farmboy who’d been hit in the head by one too many giant potato. Just what was the problem here?
"Is he really that good in bed?"
Say what you will about Li Ann, she's not slow. She knew what I was talking about right there, right then. Tried to give me the Big Orphan Eyes, but I wasn't having any of it.
"He doesn't look it, that's for sure," I continued, unable to keep a hint of snideness from my tone. I could see it reflect unfavorably in her expression, but I really couldn't help it, and it was no one's fault but her own for dragging the uncouth lout to bed in the first place. Not that she'd had to drag, I bet. He'd probably grabbed her with one arm, beat his chest with his free fist and carried her off to his lair chanting "me Victor, you Jane".
"As a matter of fact, he looks like the type who considers a football game and honeyed peanuts the ultimate in foreplay and starts snoring the second he comes, to wit, about seventy seconds after he drops his pants and tosses you down. I bet he can’t tell a clitoris from a climatis. I bet he doesn’t -"
She hadn't said anything, but the evil little gleam in her eye made me falter. She was in one of her wicked moods. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. It depended on too many things, and I really wasn't all that certain of where I stood right now.
"You don't know much about men, do you, Mac?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
An eloquent shrug was all the answer I got. That, and her Smug Smile. I had always hated that Smug Smile.
***
Okay, I could go there. Why not? Know thine enemy and all that.
"Hey, Victor."
"What?"
"I was thinking."
"Congratulations."
"Your wit and sophistication blow me away, Mansfield. Did you read that somewhere? Oh, sorry, forgot - you don't read."
"Get the hell out of my way, Ramsey."
"Charming as ever. You wanna go to bed with me?"
"I wish I knew who first lied and told you you were funny. I'd shoot them."
That would be strike two.
***