FIC: Thursdays
Title: Thursdays
Author: guardian_chaos
Rating: PG
Words: 2824-ish
TV or Book Verse: TV.
Pairing: well, it’s a friendship fic, but Harry/Murphy if you wish it to be there. *g*
Spoilers: To be safe, let’s just say all of season one.
Summary: Harry deals with the annoyance of having a sprained ankle on Thanksgiving.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dresden Files!Author’s note: This is a post-season one fic, which means that I tried very hard to keep the characters going in the direction they seemed to be going in during “Second City”. By all means, let me know if you think I’ve succeeded. I welcome critique. ^_^
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Harry didn’t like Thursdays. This was the conclusion he had come to after a long, painful Thursday almost entirely spent fighting monsters, in which the only reward for doing so had been the injuries he had received from being thrown against a building by the ten-foot long, scaly tail of a gigantic demon with anger issues and then the fall from said building that had occurred just after that. The ground had only been eight or so feet and a terrified yelp away, but it had still been too far away for Harry’s tastes-as well at his body’s preferences-which was why he held his stomach a little too tightly as he limped on home, disgruntled and bitter about the day in general. His heart soared as the door to his apartment finally became visible, and Harry quickened his steps to get there faster.
“Ice,” he mumbled over the sound of his door opening and shutting behind him. The word was a constant mantra in his mind, beating in tune with the throbbing of his ankle.
Alas, a quick trip into his kitchen revealed a terrible thing as he opened the door to his fridge. The entire inside of the fridge, usually coated in an inch-thick layer of ice, was instead completely clear, and poured water onto the ground as Harry swung the door open.
“What the?” he stammered, looking blearily at the suddenly soaked tile floor beneath him. Evidently, he’d lost the gamble and the electricity his fridge needed to function had finally died out on him. “Aw, damn it!” He slammed the fridge door shut in rage, only to stand up and see Bob fixing him with a look bordering dangerously close to sympathetic.
“Well, we knew the appliance would not last forever,” the ghost told him, a smug smile on his face. The smile quickly fell, however, as Bob took in the disheveled appearance of the wizard. “Bad day?” he added, not so helpfully.
“Oh, you’ve no idea,” Harry muttered, limping to the other side of the kitchen and opening a cabinet to rummage for food. A tin of sardines, leftover from who knew when, gleamed back at him from the corner and he hooked a fingernail against the rim of it to drag it closer to himself.
Nodding in silent acknowledgement, Bob walked into the kitchen and came to a stop at the wall he felt would keep him the most out of Harry’s way. “That being what it is, I suppose it shouldn’t please you at all to know that your lieutenant friend has scheduled an impromptu visit here.”
“Why’s she coming here?”
“She did not say, and I couldn’t pick up the phone to garner further details about the matter.”
Giving the automatic nod he always gave when such potentially sensitive topics arose, Harry checked the “best before…” label on the sardine tin and found it at least tolerable. “Did the message she left say anything about when she’d be here, at least?”
“If memory serves, I believe the stated time was this afternoon at around precisely 4:00.”
“How can it be both around and precisely?” Harry muttered, trying to fit his fingertips into the sardine tin’s tiny metal pull tag and straining to tear the tin open.
Bob raised an eyebrow. “Well. I suppose you have a point, but the fact remains that it is almost 4:00 now and your friend will be showing up any moment now, to see you, looking like that.” Bob offered no explanation for his enunciation of the last word in his sentence, but the shared disgust and pity were both somehow adequately carried over.
“Great.” Failing in his attempt to open the sardine tin, Harry plopped it down beside the sink and then leaned heavily against the counter, shutting his eyes and running a plea for strength through his mind before shoving off of the counter and limping towards a cabinet on the other side of the room. “I’m so hungry. Is there anything left in this house?”
“I believe the majority of your food supply was taken during the encounter you had with the wendigo beast. Good luck with finding anything after that.”
“Why do you have to be so smug right now, Bob?”
“My apologies, Harry. That had not been my intention.” The ghost inclined his head, nodding to the corner of the room. “However, I believe you still have some soup cans over there-no doubt abhorrently dented-just beneath the cabinet you were only a moment ago just rummaging through.”
Relief coursing through him, Harry turned back to the aforementioned cabinet and crouched, but hissed and fell back as his ankle protested the motion. The hiss having attracted Bob’s attention, Harry felt more than saw Bob’s approaching presence before the ghost’s head was peering over his shoulder at the injured limb.
“Sprained?” the ghost guessed, ever so accurately.
“I fell,” Harry said, by way of explanation.
“How far?”
“A building’s length or so.”
“Is that so?” Bob replied, pulling back and fiddling with the ring on his left hand. “Well then, you are incredibly lucky, Harry.”
“Yeah, people keep telling me this,” Harry said, gingerly rubbing a hand across the throbbing of his ankle. A knock at the door suddenly broke through his thoughts and he turned towards it.
Bob also looked up, towards the door, where a head of dark curls could be seen through the glass. Giving a perfunctory nod of acknowledgement, Bob walked through the cabinets and towards the lab, giving a short call of “Better get up now, Harry, and do make sure she’s not a dragon this time,” before vanishing from view.
“Hey!” Harry called to the ghost while using the cabinet to stand. “Maybe you should come back here and act as my fridge for a while! I could use some ice!”
A laugh sounded behind the wall, but it quickly became muted as the ghost made himself disappear.
Shaking his head, Harry braced himself against the counter and shoved off of it. Following this, he staggered towards the door, using the kitchen doorframe, a chair, the wall, anything in sight to help him stay standing as he made his way towards Murphy and opened the door with a grin.
“Hey! Murphy, what brings you here?” he greeted her.
“Hey, yourself, Harry.” The lieutenant offered a tight-lipped smile and then seemed to notice the disheveled state of the wizard. “Harry,” she said, surprised, “what happened to you? You look like hell.”
“Thanks, Murphy. I hadn’t noticed that,” Harry replied, almost tartly. He stepped back from the door so that Murphy could come in if she choose to do so, and she did, giving the apartment a curious once-over with her eyes before finally walking past him to the kitchen.
“We need to get you cleaned up,” she said, spotting the dampness on the floor from Harry’s broken refrigerator and sidestepping it. “That cut on your face looks awful.” It was only as she set a brightly colored plastic bag down on the kitchen table that Harry realized she had brought a box of some sort with her.
“Wassat?” Harry called, limping over to the bag and separating the rustling folds of plastic to peer down at the non-descript, white box inside. The taunting wafts of sweet-smelling things floated up to meet him, dizzying in their perfectly spiced way. “Issat food?”
“Yes, Harry,” Murphy said, tugging him away from the box and pressing a washcloth unexpectedly against the side of his face. “Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you don’t mind eating a chicken today. The other bird wouldn’t fit in the box.”
The mention of the holiday startled Harry, as he had forgotten all about it, but he didn’t have time to question this as Murphy had taken a hold on his arm and was pulling him downwards.
“Now hold still.”
Harry offered a grunt of protest, but eventually allowed himself to be led to a chair and then held still, as Murphy had requested, as she lightly ran the soapy cloth against his cheek, gently removing the traces of dried blood there that Harry hadn’t even been aware of until this very moment.
For being the action of a woman who held such a constantly tough front, the motion was remarkably soothing. Murphy’s touch was almost weightless against his skin and Harry found his eyes slipping shut in appreciation as the gently repetitive motions continued. This, coupled with the wonderfully tempting scent of food on the air was all just too much and he reopened his eyes to find out where the plastic bag was before reaching towards it and dragging it closer to him with a loud rustling of plastic.
“Can we eat now?” he said, expecting his stomach to begin watering or his mouth to become growly any second now. It took him a moment to realize he had flipped the defining terminology, but the scent of a plucked bird decided for him that he simply did not care.
Murphy swapped the washcloth against his shoulder, leaving a gleaming, sudsy wet spot against the wizard’s leather coat. “You have no patience, you know that?”
Harry grinned feebly. “I know. Now, food. Don’t leave me hanging here, Murphy.”
She chuckled. “Fine, open the box and eat the bird.”
Gleefully, Harry ripped apart the plastic bag in his haste to get to the box inside of it. As the cardboard lid lifted, a more concentrated burst of heat and sweet-smelling steam rose up and struck him in the face. “Oh, you really do care,” he teased. “This is just too much. What brought about this random act of kindness for the starving wizard?”
“A sale at the food mart,” she said, turning to go.
“Hey, hey!” Harry protested. “Where’re you going? Sit down and help me eat all this.”
She paused for a moment at the kitchen doorway, but a puppy-eyed look from Harry seemed to melt her and she sighed. “Fine,” she said, retracing her steps and sinking into the chair opposite Harry. “One drumstick, then I have to get home to Anna.” To demonstrate, she reached across the table and took a chicken leg, which she began taking small bites off of almost immediately.
“Ah, the much spoken about mini-Murphy,” Harry said, getting up to bring two plates and two forks to the table. Setting them down, he sank back into his chair with a grateful sigh as the pain in his ankle let up a little and he began to divide the food. “Am I ever going to get to meet her?”
“Who knows?” Murphy said, biting into her drumstick and then peering down appreciatively at the growing pile of cooked food on the second plate. “She’s a little shy.”
“Aw. Well, some kids are just like that. I hardly spoke to anyone when I was a kid.”
“I can imagine. You being a ‘freaky wizard’ and all that get-up.”
“Hey,” Harry said, raising a finger in protest. “Wizardry is a serious, not-to-be-taken-lightly profession, and we do not appreciate you mortals mocking it.”
She giggled-actually giggled-and Harry paused for a second, a smile frozen on his face as he let the last bit of steamed vegetables fall from his fork and to her plate with a soft ‘plat!’. Seeing his reaction, she waved him away.
“What? It’s a holiday. Let me be act like a girl, for once.”
“That doesn’t seem like you,” Harry said, shoving her plate across the table bar-style. As if the plate had nowhere else it would rather go, it slid gently to a stop in front of Murphy.
“Yeah?” The lieutenant picked up her fork and twirled it around, gathering chicken together with the vegetables. “Well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think, Dresden.”
Seeing the not-so-serious gleam in Murphy’s eye, Harry smiled back. “Yeah? Maybe I don’t. How ‘bout that.”
“How about that, indeed.” The lieutenant’s gaze fell to her food for a brief pause, and then back to Harry. “So, how’s your day been? Seems like it’s been pretty eventful.” She gestured vaguely at the wizard, her hand pointing out everything about him rather than any one visibly injured spot.
“Oh, pretty much just the usual,” he replied with ease. “You know. Catch a cab, go to the grocery store, pick up some milk and come home to feed the cat I don’t have.” Leaning back in his chair, he grinned. “So, how was your day, Murphy? Having a good Thanksgiving so far?”
“Not so bad. Better than I’d expected.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” She smirked. “And don’t think I believe you for one second about today.”
Harry looked puzzled for a moment. “I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he said.
“About the cab. There’s no way you could afford something like that. You can’t even afford a decent meal most days.”
“I resent that remark.”
Murphy’s smirk grew dangerous. “You look like you were about to serve yourself a Thanksgiving dinner of one tin of sardines.”
Well, she had him there. He shrugged and then went back to his food with a light murmur closely resembling an admittance of word sparring failure, but not quite coherently enough to count in any way other than the fact that he had at least attempted it. In response, she merely grinned again, an expression that lit up her face quite pleasantly. In Harry’s own thoughts, he idly wished she would smile more often. It suited her nicely.
But going back to his food. As he placed a bite of the chicken into his mouth, he found that it was utterly fantastic, light and malleable against his tongue and flavorful beyond anything else he had eaten in weeks. He sighed, enjoying himself immensely before a piece of broccoli boinked off of his nose and ricocheted onto the table.
“What was that?” he stammered, almost alarmed by the sudden vegetable assault.
“Revenge,” Murphy replied calmly, “for that peanut you threw at me a while back.”
“The peanut?” Harry said, crossing his arms. “Are you serious, Miss Murphy?”
“Absolutely. There is no danger greater than a woman scorned.”
Harry raised an eyebrow, but chuckled anyway. “You’re an odd thing, lady.”
“Says the wizard known to talk to the decorated, life-sized skull he carries around in his bag.”
“What? You know about that?”
“I’ve known about that for months, Harry. You don’t hide it very well.”
“I don’t?”
“No.” The lieutenant stared him in the eyes. “You really don’t.”
“Oh.”
The rest of their conversation bordered on talk very similar to this: never mocking, always teasing and inevitably laugh-worthy until finally Murphy finished her meal and stood up to leave. With the help of the table, Harry stood up with her, his hand outstretched to shake her hand in farewell, but she brushed his arm away and gave him a friendly hug instead, which he slowly returned, a bit confused to have been offered such a thing but not displeased by it, in any case.
Finally, she pulled away, raising a finger to point at him as she walked towards the door, saying, “And get some ice for that ankle, you hear? I want you capable of chasing down spooky stuff as soon as the holiday’s over.”
He nodded, sending a grin back in her direction as he limpingly walked her to the door and opened it for her. “Yeah, I hear you, Murphy. And hey, say ‘hi’ to Anna for me, would you?”
“I’ll be sure to let her know,” Murphy replied, stepping outside and smiling once more at Harry. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around then, Harry.”
“You betcha’. You know my number.”
“It’s on speed dial.” She waved over her shoulder once more and then walked off, her hands deep in her pockets as she went over to her car and drove off, leaving Harry still standing at the door with a fond smile, the likes of which he quickly shook off as soon as he became aware of it.
Turning away from the door, Harry breathed deeply, inhaling the aroma of a meal he still had leftovers to come back to. Suddenly, even the dim lighting of his apartment seemed brighter.
“Hey, Bob,” he called out as he gingerly walked back towards the kitchen. “That ice thing? You think you can actually do that?”
There was a heavy sigh, apparently coming from nowhere, and then Bob said, while rematerializing in the kitchen, “Put the water into a container of some sort and I’ll see what I can do.”
Harry grinned at the ghost. “You’re quite the guy, you know that?”
“Yes,” the ghost drawled, smirking in amusement as Harry retrieved a bowl from his cabinets and began to fill it with water. “So I’ve been told.”
And in that moment, Harry decided that maybe, just maybe, Thursdays weren’t such horrible days, after all.
END.