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Original
December 2007; last modified March 15, 2009. Written for Valerie.
Please see the endnote
for disclaimers, credits and all that good stuff.
|
Bachelor's
Quarters
a Blood Ties (TV) fanfiction
G
by Amy
R.
|
The kitchen light had burned out
again. By the glow of the streetlamps outside his second-floor apartment,
Mike dropped his mail on the pile on his kitchen table and his overcoat on a
chair. He had to either stop leaving the light on when he headed to work
in the morning, or get a timer. He'd given his whole family light timers
for Christmas last year, nice programmable ones with randomizer settings; why
hadn't he thought to keep one for himself?
After replacing the bulb, Mike
flipped on another light on his way to the living room, where he sank gratefully
into his couch cushions and flicked the remote at the TV. A hockey game
came on. Not his team, though. He loosened his tie, leaned back and
stared up at the ceiling.
Today hadn't been anything out of the
ordinary, but the whole week had seemed to hold off its weight only until he got
a little free time, and now it was pushing him down with a will. His own
cases. Vicki's cases. The hundred and one things he should have
gotten done besides cases. He didn't think that he actually ran on
adrenaline all the time -- the job was too much patient paperwork and meticulous
method for that scenario to stand up -- but the way he'd crash sometimes, just
when the pressure lifted, made him wonder.
When the game went to commercial,
Mike groaned and got up. Even with two days off in front of him, he
couldn't justify heading straight to bed. He'd go for an extra-long run in
the morning, instead. Mike changed his suit for a sweatshirt and old
jeans, nuked some leftover spaghetti, and returned to the couch with a bottle of
beer and the week's accumulation of mail. Most of it went straight into
the cross-cut shredder by his coffee table. He used to feel guilty about
all the causes to which he wasn't giving, but the more they sent, the less he
cared. He was a cop, not some dot-com millionaire -- and how did they get
his name, anyway? He had a suspicion that his mom still entered his
address in the parish directory every year; he should look into that.
Stuck between a pizza delivery flyer
and his bank statement, Mike found a plain white envelope addressed in huge
block letters. He grinned until his cheeks hurt at his nephew's
illustrated thank-you note -- doubtless ordered by his sister -- for taking him
to the museum to see the dinosaur exhibit last week. Mike took the page to
his refrigerator and found a magnet. Now that was one cool pterosaur
attacking the CN Tower and wearing a badge. Fitzroy's comics -- apologies,
"graphic novels" -- couldn't be half as creative.
Mike's cell phone rang from his
overcoat pocket. He fished it out and glanced at the caller ID: Vicki's
office land-line. "Decided to take me up on that Chinese food after
all?"
"Actually, no, it's me, Coreen,"
his old partner's new assistant replied. "Hi."
Mike raised his eyebrows.
"Hi?"
"So, um, have you ever heard of menhirs,
the soul-statues of Corsica? Our client told Vicki that he wanted her to
identify who was vandalizing his family's burial plot, but she hasn't answered
her cell in hours, and it turns out that the so-called gravestones may be
conduits for the enslaved auras of defeated Shardana warriors, and
--"
"Text me the address, Coreen.
I'm on my way."
