Woah. Back again. I used to post here way back when there were only 3 pages of G&E fics... No, I'm not telling what's mine... It's a source of shame. I truly sucked back then.

But I missed this fandom... It's really one of my favorites, though I'm sad that Grim/Mandy stories are kind of few and far between. So since Valentine's Day is coming up, I thought I'd try a bit of holiday-themed fluff. It's LIGHT Grim/Mandy, so light it probably won't offend you if you hate the pair.

But hey, you came for the fic... Here ya go!

Romance is for the weak-minded.

It was a phrase Mandy had repeated often before, yet it never lost its effect, simple and all-encompassing.

Valentine's Day was always worse, though... Romance was thicker in the winter air than a swarm of plague locusts, and she was quite glad to be rid of school and the awkward atmosphere of adolescent love.

Perhaps she would have Grim take her to Cupid himself, just so she could wring his diaper-wearing cherub neck...

The front door swung open under her touch and she surveyed her home impassively. Silence hung in the air, her parents either gone or cowering. It didn't particularly matter either way.

She dumped the contents of her bookbag on the couch. Coutless notes and Valentines fluttered out, along with a crumpled bouquet of flowers and a few boxes of chocolate. All from Irwin. She'd already trashed the ones he'd filled her locker and desk with, but hadn't noticed he'd gotten to her bag as well until the busride home. She contemplated shoving each and every one down his stupid, obsessive throat, but decided it was too much work to bother with at the moment.

She looked up sharply, interrupted from her thoughts by the vague buzz of her sixth sense at the back of her neck. She sensed a dimensional portal, and close.

Huh. Must be Grim.

Maybe she'd get him to help her act on her vendetta against Cupid.

But first, she amended as she glanced down with a grimace, out of the stupid school uniform.

A few minutes later, clothed in familiar pink, Mandy wandered back down the stairs. Low muttering and the sound of running water greeted her ears. She followed it to the kithcen and leaned in the doorway.

The Grim Reaper was bent over the sink, scrubbing something, slipping into his old habit of accompaning a constant soundtrack of complaints to anything he did. The scent of lemon dish soap and... copper?... filled the air.

"Doing the dishes all by yourself? Maybe you are trainable after all, bonehead," she commented wryly.

He glanced up, unsurprised to see her although her approach had been silent. He shrugged.

"Trainable, maybe, but not so far as to do your chores for fun," he replied darkly, though at this point it was more for the sake of banter than an actual stab at salvaging his pride.

She saw what he had been washing; the blade of his scythe, which he'd unscrewed from the handle. Pinkish suds clung to the surface. Ah, not copper, after all, but blood.

"So how was... work?" she asked slowly, drawing out the last word to infuse it with sarcasm, but her tone belied a hidden spark of interest.

The reaper grinned as he he finished his task. "Eighteen car pile-up. Pedestrian involved and everyt'ing." He dried the blade with a dish towel. "Paramedics were delayed for a coupla hours, too. Very messy." He held the blade up to the light and ran a bony finger across the surface. "Blasted non-stick coating's wearin' off..."

"Facinating," she droned in so flat a tone that sarcasm could not be distinguished from actual intention. She actually did kind of enjoy Grim's death-and-gore work stroies from time to time, though; otherwise she would not ask.

He held the blade up to the handle and magiced the screws back in, then swung it expeimentally.

"I gotta go back. Coupla peole die in transit," he informed her, another grin creeping back onto his face.

"Whatever," she intoned with a shrug. Billy had gotten his turn at reaping once; she really would have to remember to try her hand at it sometime. She had a few plans she wanted to try...

Grim cut a swath through space/time and turned to leave, then halted and turned back. Mandy stared inpassively at him as he fished in his pocket for a moment.

"Almost forgot... I got somet'ing for ya," he said in a measuredly off-handed tone. "From da scene of da crime." He held out whatever he had retrived from his robe in his fist, palm down, and because it was unexpected and she was curious, she cupped her hands beneath his to recieve it. He dropped something wet and squishy into her palms.

"Happy Valentine's Day," he said with a sarcastic grin, tone positively dripping with irony.

She examined the red lump in her grip and realized it was a human heart, still a few degrees above room temperature and sticky with clotting blood. She looked back up at him with raised eyebrows-- quite an emotional expression for the stoic girl-- only to see he had already disappeared in a glimmer of green light.

Shifting the organ to one hand, she delicately opened a drawer and retrieved a sealable plastic bag with her mostly-clean thumb and forefinger, and dumped the mess inside. She tossed it into the freezer with a sharp and slightly amuse exhalation that was the absolut closest she would ever come to a laugh.

Mandy rinsed her hands at the sink, the bloody water pooling in the unwashed dishes that rested in the bottom.

She headed back up to her room, pausing at the sound of muffled hyperventilation issuing from the closet that let her know her parents were in, after all.

"Do the dishes," she ordered bluntly, to which she recieved a shrill shriek of surprise and hasty assuranced that her will would be done.

Mandy shrugged to herself as if to dismiss her own actions, and climbed the stairs back to her sanctuary. So maybe she would give her reaper a tiny break today... After all, he did just give her the only decent Valentine's gift she'd ever recieved.

Valentine is done/Here but now they're gone...

Heh, sorry. Too much Blue Oyster Cult. Gotta love those guys...

So... yeah. Not the most origional concet ever, huh? The heart thing, I mean. Nergal tried it (Didn't work so well, but whatever...) and Grim Jr. did it in the Grim Tales Valentine's Day comic... Oh, well.

There used to be a CN station spot that was just a view of Grim's scythe blade in the dishwasher (it was one of the cool CG ones they don't do no mo'). It always made me smile for no real reason, other than it was another great juxtaposition of Death and the modern world... Guess I kinda channeled that, too.

Anyway... I HAVE NO REGRETS!

Ciao!

-SN