"I keep forgetting to ask you," Mullins says, around a bite of cheeseburger. "What kind of pie do you like?"
Ashburn glances toward the counter, where the desserts are barely visible through a mysterious, milky film on the display case. They're at Sal's Diner because it's Mullins's turn to pick the place for lunch, and even though Ashburn might have just eaten the best chili of her life, the desserts look suspect. "I don't want any pie. I've got some fresh fruit back at the office, so I'm set."
Mullins rolls her eyes. "I meant for Thanksgiving, dumbass."
"Oh." Ashburn tries not to let anything show on her face. "I'm not really a pie person."
"Come on!" Mullins puts down her cheeseburger. "Everyone likes pie. That's like not liking cheeseburgers."
"Plenty of people don't like cheeseburgers. Vegetarians, for example. People concerned for their heart and colon health."
Mullins shakes her head. "I'm telling you, put any of those posers in a room with no cameras and the promise that no one will ever know? There's not a person alive who wouldn't devour one of these bad boys."
Ashburn squints at the greasy bun on Mullins's plate. "I'm not so-"
Mullins throws up her hands. "Can we please not get into a giant fucking cheeseburger debate?"
"You were the one who brought it up! I was just going to-"
"-tell me the kind of pie you like, that's what you were about to do," Mullins says, dragging a trio of French fries through the ketchup on her plate. "My mother's planning to make pumpkin and apple and I just wanted to check in to see if those were okay or if you had some weird other kind of pie you liked, like mincemeat or something. Because you gotta admit, you are pretty weird."
Ashburn takes a fry off of Mullins's plate. "I'm not weird."
"You're a little weird," Mullins says, which Ashburn has heard before. But Mullins says it differently than so many people before have: matter-of-factly, with a smile. "So what is it? My mother keeps bugging me to tell her what you like, so I've gotta know. Now, does she ask me what kind I like? Of course not."
"Pumpkin, all right? And your mother loves you," Ashburn says.
"Yeah, I know, that's the official line," Mullins says, looking uncertain. Most of the time, Mullins seems like an unstoppable force to Ashburn, elemental and fierce, but every so often this other version peeks through, tentative and vulnerable, and Ashburn remembers: she's just a person trying to figure things out, same as her.
"She does love you," Ashburn says. "I can tell."
Mullins shrugs. "Things are better, but still, I can't face these people on my own. You're coming, right?"
"Yeah, I guess I could," Ashburn says, like it isn't a big deal. She tucks some hair behind her ear and looks up, catching Mullins's eye, and knows that Mullins isn't convinced.
"Well, that was-"
"A fucking nightmare?" Mullins says, wrestling her way into her coat on the cold front porch; there hadn't been enough time to layer up before she decided to pull the ripcord on this particular Mullins family holiday. She hears the arguing from inside crescendo, her mother's shrill voice rising above the rest to make a point about Cool Whip vs Redi Whip and how could anyone think she'd want one when she'd specifically asked for the other, her brothers' shouts over the football game in the background.
"It wasn't a nightmare," Ashburn says, wrapping an orange scarf around her neck. She looks like a strange, Thanksgiving-festive version of herself. Until today, Mullins hadn't seen Ashburn in anything that didn't button down the front, or wearing anything but sturdy shoes. Today she's wearing a brown sweater-dress and narrow-heeled boots, which Mullins can tell are new by the careful way Ashburn negotiates the steps down to the sidewalk.
Ashburn turns her head, her profile sharp in the early-evening twilight, and calls over her shoulder, "The pie was excellent."
"I'm with you on the pie, but otherwise, a fucking nightmare is absolutely the way to describe it," Mullins says, "Hey, by the way, what's up with the outfit?"
Ashburn turns all the way around, having finally reached the sidewalk. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, this whole thing," Mullins says, waving up and down Ashburn's torso. She's even got gold earrings on in the shape of leaves, delicate and pretty. "It's so – fancy. I told you it wasn't a dressy thing. Half my family was in sweatpants."
Ashburn stands on the sidewalk, buttoning her off-white wool coat, looking as out of place here a she had at dinner. Her hostess gift of complicated crystal glassware had looked silly next to the bottles of cheap wine Michael and Mark's girlfriends had each brought. "It's a holiday. You're supposed to dress up for a holiday."
"Not my family." Mullins pulls her fingerless gloves out of her coat pockets and snaps them on more decisively than she needs to. "And did you have to talk about hemo-whatever-"
"Hemorrhagic fever," Ashburn says.
"Whatever it was, that disgusting thing that supposedly killed the Indians, did you have to talk about it in the middle of dinner?"
"Well, I don't know anything about football, or why Sally O'Malley down the block left her husband, so I had to find something to contribute to the conversation, " Ashburn says, tying her belt with a decisive yank. "And you know, the complicated and often tragic consequences of European arrival in this country are not considered often enough when we celebrate the holiday. All anyone talks about is Squanto, and the first Thanksgiving, and all that sentimental crap. No one ever mentions how European disease left Indian settlements vacant for the Pilgrims to raid when they arrived. Or that Squanto was likely murdered a few years after the first Thanksgiving because he was seen as a collaborator by some of the local tribes."
Mullins stares at Ashburn. "Could you be more of a bummer? Seriously, I'd like to know. What's next in the storytelling hopper? Do you have a quick tale about a kitten falling in a meat grinder or something?"
Ashburn looks horrified. "Mullins!"
"Sorry! I'm sorry, okay," Mullins says. She sometimes forgets Ashburn's weird thing with cats, how much affection she holds for them even though she still hasn't taken one home, months after settling in Boston. "But my point stands."
Ashburn looks up at the house. "Your brother Jason liked it. He said he learned a lot. Way more than he did in high school."
"Yeah, well Jason barely made it to any class but gym after ninth grade, so that's not a lot to brag about. And anyway, he thinks you hung the moon since you saved his life and everything," Mullins says.
"We both did," Ashburn says, a correction that always comes anytime someone tries to credit Ashburn with some aspect of the case. She pushes some hair behind one ear, the side she used to wear that annoying barrette on. "I admit, I probably didn't need to go into quite so much detail. The rest of your family did seem a little put off by the story -"
"Put off? Michael had to throw out his cranberry sauce once you explained the whole gross bleeding thing," Mullins says. "I would have too if I hadn't already eaten mine."
Mullins steps off the porch to stand beside Ashburn on the sidewalk. In her boots, Ashburn towers over her more than usual, and when Mullins looks up to say something about how holidays aren't about depressing history lessons or overly-detailed explanations of contagious fevers, she can't get the words out. She's silenced by the uncertain, anxious expression on Ashburn's face, the same expression she'd worn when Michael got up to throw out his cranberry sauce at dinner. Like she knows she's done something wrong but can't figure out why it's wrong, wants to do better but doesn't know how, like a puppy that's never been trained and keeps messing up.
Mullins sighs. Her brother could throw out fifty Thanksgiving dinners over something Ashburn says and Mullins wouldn't give a crap about it; what gets her tied up in knots is this, the vulnerability on Ashburn's face. It makes Mullins feel sick inside, and angry, and like she wants to tear down the world and build it back up with rules Ashburn can understand, or people that understand her.
Mullins shakes her head. "Don't worry about it, it's not a bit deal. I shouldn't have mentioned it, it's just – Jesus fuck. Are you kidding me? Fucking Gina."
Ashburn squints at Mullins. "What does Gina have to do with any of this?"
Mullins gestures toward the end of the driveway. "She fucking blocked me in! I swear she has it in for me, especially lately. A couple of weeks ago she and I realized that I beat her and her sister Tina in a karaoke contest at the Y when we were kids."
"Sisters named Tina and Gina?" Ashburn considers this. "Was there a Nina too?"
"No, the youngest is named Beth," Mullins says, putting her hands on her hips. "Weird, right?"
"Especially when Nina's right there," Ashburn says, looking as befuddled as Mullins has always felt about it. She tilts her head toward the house. "Do you want me to go in and get Gina to move her car?"
"No," Mullins says. "It'll become a huge thing. Gina won't want to move it, she'll try to get my brother to do it and he won't, and they'll scream at each other for a half hour. That is a nightmare I don't need. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I can probably -"
"You are not hot-wiring that car."
Mullins gestures toward the empty space in front of Gina's car. "I'd just move it five feet! She probably won't even remember where she left it. It'll only take a few minutes – I just have to see if I have my-"
"Mullins!" Ashburn grabs Mullins by the upper arm. She's surprisingly strong for someone who sometimes looks like a strong wind could blow her over. "Don't be stupid."
"It's not stupid, it's efficient," Mullins says, . "How else am I supposed to get my car out of here?"
Ashburn shrugs. "Don't. I can drive you home. And then tomorrow, I'll pick you up and we'll come get it."
Mullins thinks about it. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure I don't want you to commit a felony, that I'm absolutely sure of," Ashburn says. Her hand is gentle now on Mullins's upper arm, turning her toward the place where her boring sedan is parked on the street. "Let's go."
Ashburn hears the sirens a couple of blocks away from Mullins's apartment, but only realizes something is wrong when they make the final turn onto Mullins's block: the street is full of fire engines and police cars.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Mullins shouts out the window as they roll up to a police car where a beat cop Ashburn doesn't recognize is saying something into his radio. "Bruntwick, what the hell is happening?"
Bruntwick doesn't look thrilled to see Mullins, but he answers her. "Some structural thing on the south side."
"Jesus! Anybody hurt?"
"No, just a lot of damage, seems everybody got out okay." His radio squeals and Bruntwick turns back to lean into his car.
Ashburn sees a car pull out further down the block and accelerates to take the spot, which offers a good view of the sidewalk in front of the building, full of hastily-dressed people milling around in small groups. Ashburn leans forward when she spots a tall blonde next to an older woman with rollers in her hair. "Hey, is that-"
Mullins opens her door and gets out, already shouting, "Tatiana! You live on the south side, did you do this? Are you messed up with those dealers again? Because I swear-"
"You get the fuck away from me," Tatiana shouts, pointing a finger at Mullins. "Like I'm not already having a shit day, you I do not need right now."
"Oh, you don't need me right now?" Mullins crosses her arms across her chest, looking Tatiana up and down in a dismissive way. "You needed me a few months ago when you were looking to get out of the life."
"See, I knew! I knew you would forever hold it over my head. Why even try to change if I am fucked forever, that is just –"
"Hey, hey, hey," Ashburn says, positioning herself between Tatiana and Mullins, putting both hands out at a soft angle, the way a training classes taught her would reduce tension in a situation by seventeen percent. "You are not. . . effed forever, Tatiana. Mullins is just a little upset because she wants to go home."
"Yeah, well so the fuck do I," Tatiana says. "But can I? No. And it is not my fault, I am not messed up with those people anymore, I told you, I go to nail school now."
"It's actually called cosmetology school," Ashburn says, which earns her irritated looks from Tatiana and Mullins. "To become a nail technician. It's a respectable profession and you should be proud that you're pursuing it. I think it's a real accomplishment."
"I am proud. And so is my mother," Tatiana says, gesturing to where her mother stands silently beside her, wrapped in a bulky maroon coat. The woman nods in a somber way, and Tatiana puts an arm around her mother. The gesture makes Ashburn feel a familiar ache, one she's always surprised to feel return, so many years after she's told herself she's made peace with her lot in life. "And so I would not get mixed up with those guys again. It is not me, it is Randall on the fourth floor that is the problem, he puts in a swimming pool in the middle of his living room and-"
"A swimming pool?" Mullins asks.
"Yes, a fucking swimming pool," Tatiana says.
"You mean a wading pool?" Ashburn asks, holding her feet about a foot apart.
"No, I mean what I said, a fucking swimming pool, he put it up in his living room and filled it up-"
"How did he fill it up?" Ashburn asks.
"With a watering can, how the fuck do I know? Am I Randall? No, I am Tatiana, freezing my tits off standing out in the cold because of that asshole," Tatiana says.
"I bet he used some kind of hose, hooked it up from the sink," Mullins says.
Ashburn nods. "That makes sense."
"Who the fuck cares how he did it!" Tatiana exclaims, gesturing in a way that shows off her electric blue nails. "The point is, one of the walls collapsed and flooded his place, and his living room falls down to 3-C-"
"Jose's place?" Mullins asks.
Tatiana waves her hand. "He's okay, he's in Queens visiting his sister. I know because I water his plants. He is going to be very pissed, by the way, he is obsessed with this fuck-is plant."
"Ficus," Ashburn corrects. "It's a ficus plant."
"Fuck you, enough with the corrections, all right?" Tatiana says.
"Don't you say fuck you to her," Mullins says, tilting her head in a way that makes Ashburn shift her weight to the balls of her feet.
Tatiana doesn't appear to be as attuned to Mullins, because she puts her hands on her hips and says, "I'll say fuck you to whoever I want –"
"Hey, come on, let's get out of here," Ashburn says, stepping between the two of them. She puts her hands on Mullins's shoulders and steers her back toward the car.
Mullins goes where Ashburn leads her, but she turns back to Tatiana when Ashburn moves to the other side of the car to get in and turn it on. "I got a thing or two more I'd like to say to her. I can't believe I got my cousin Maureen to help you into Misty Mavens Beauty School, you piece of garbage!"
"Your nails look like shit!" Tatiana calls.
"Fuck you!" Mullins shouts as she gets in the car.
Tatiana holds her arms out wide. "What, you can say fuck you to me, and I can't say it to her?"
"Those are the rules, you got 'em," Mullins shouts back, through the narrowing open window as Ashburn rolls it up from her side of the car. "I don't know why I did anything to help that piece of garbage."
"I do." Ashburn turns on the heat and looks over at Mullins, who is staring up at her apartment building with a forlorn expression. "Because you're a good cop, Mullins. Sometimes that means putting the bad guys away, sometimes it means helping the bad guys learn how to be better people. You're good at both."
"Oh, stop it." Mullins doesn't turn back from the window, but Ashburn can see that her ears are pink.
"Where would you like me to take you? Back to your parents?"
"That's a hard, hard no," Mullins says. "There's a good chance I'll leave my car there forever. Maybe I'll never go back."
Ashburn tightens her grip on the steering wheel. "You could stay with me."
"All right," Mullins says, more quickly than Ashburn expects her to.
The silence in Ashburn's apartment feels oppressive. Mullins shifts her weight on the couch again, which is comfortable enough. She's just too awake to sleep. She reaches up and turns on the lamp on the end table by her head, looks around for something to occupy her. The only candidate is what looks like a boring magazine on the coffee table.
"Why the hell do you have Good Housekeeping?" Mullins asks under her breath. "Weirdo."
"Did you say something?"
"Jesus!" Mullins drops the magazine and almost rolls off the couch. "I thought you were asleep!"
There's a pause before Ashburn says, "Usually I am by now. But tonight I'm not. I think I ate too much."
"That's the point of the day, you're supposed to eat too much," Mullins says, turning on her side and reaching down for the magazine.
Ashburn doesn't say anything in return, and Mullins assumes she's actually fallen asleep, or is trying to. Mullins flips through Good Housekeeping and starts reading an article about fresh ideas for fall wreaths, which seems boring enough to put her out.
A few minutes later, Ashburn says, "Mullins?"
Mullins pulls the magazine away from her face; she'd been holding it close to see if it's true that people make wreaths out of popcorn kernels. "Yeah?"
"What song did you use to win karaoke?"
Mullins turns her head toward the dark half of the apartment, where Ashburn is apparently not-sleeping in her bedroom. "When I was a kid?"
"Do you compete in karaoke now?" Ashburn asks, which from anyone else would be sarcastic, but from her is an earnest question.
"No, I don't compete in karaoke now," Mullins says. "I just can't believe you're interested in something I did when I was a kid. My song was an old Pretenders song, Brass in Pocket."
"Oh, I love that song," Ashburn says.
"Yeah, you know, I'm proud of it," Mullins says, thinking about it. "Gina and her sister did some awful Kenny Rogers song. Gross."
Mullins can hear Ashburn humming in her bedroom, which makes her smile. Such a dork.
Ashburn stops humming after her first time through the chorus to ask, "How old were you?"
"I don't know, twelve?" Mullins says, turning to the next article, something about looking stylish at the dinner table. She rolls her eyes and has already turned to the next page when the pictures accompanying the article register.
Mullins holds up the magazine to the lamp so she can be sure she's seeing what she thinks she is: the woman in the article is wearing a brown sweater-dress, narrow-heeled boots, and tiny gold earrings. So close to Ashburn's outfit today that it's spooky, and it makes Mullins think of Ashburn staring down the awkward silence at Thanksgiving dinner, her uncertain expression in front of her parents' house tonight, and tons of other times besides, awkward and unsure and alone.
"…don't you think?"
"Sorry, what?"
"Isn't twelve kind of young for that song?" Ashburn asks.
"It's an awesome song," Mullins says. "Why would twelve be young for it?"
"I don't know," Ashburn says, in that hesitant way that means she knows exactly what she thinks, but is a little too shy to say it. "I mean, the song, isn't brass in pocket referring to…"
Ashburn's voice drifts off and Mullins waits, but nothing more comes. Mullins sighs when she figures it out. "Are you gesturing to your vagina right now? All the way in the other room, where I can't see you? Is that how you're trying to communicate?"
"Well it works, because that's exactly what I'm doing," Ashburn says.
"Brass in Pocket does not mean your vagina, Ashburn. First of all, if it did, I'd be worried about the state of your vagina that it somehow wound up in your pocket, and second of all, it means money!" Mullins drops the magazine to the floor. "Like in the music video where she's picking up tips? That's the brass in her pocket that gives her confidence, which is the other thing Brass in Pocket means. It means confidence. Not your vagina. Although maybe it could mean your vagina, if that were something you're particularly proud of, which to be honest-"
"Stop it, I get it," Ashburn calls from the other room, and Mullins can't see her but she can tell she's smiling by the tone of her voice.
"Do you? Are you absolutely positive?" Mullins says. "Because I could-"
"Mullins!" Ashburn says, and now she's laughing, which makes Mullins grin in the direction of Ashburn's darkened bedroom.
"All right, as long as you're sure," Mullins says. "Now I'm going to go back to reading this terrible copy of Good Housekeeping and try to get some sleep."
"You do that," Ashburn says.
"All right then," Mullins says, but she doesn't pick the magazine back up. She rolls over on her side and listens to Ashburn's laughter fade away.
Five days after Thanksgiving, Mullins's apartment is officially condemned pending major structural work that could take six weeks or more; a week after that, Ashburn gets a phone call at her desk at work that starts with, "Okay, so what's the deal with this grocery list? Is it written in code?"
"In code? No, of course not," Ashburn says, shuffling the papers on her desk. She's waiting for someone from the New York office to arrive to consult on a case, and wants to make sure she has everything in order when he comes in.
"It's not? I was sure it had to be, because half of these things are incomprehensible. Here's one: kin-wa."
Ashburn squints. "Kin-wa?"
"Yeah, Kin-wa, you got it right at the top of the list, q-u-i-n-o-a," Mullins says.
"Oh! Quinoa," Ashburn says, emphasizing the proper pronunciation of the word. "It's a grain-like food cultivated in South America. It's a superfood. It's really quite good."
"We'll see about that," Mullins says, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.
"Come on, you liked the stuff I made the other night," Ashburn says.
"Yeah, that chicken thing was decent," Mullins says. "I'll try this too, now where the hell do I find it?"
Ashburn tells her, and explains a few other items on the list, so absorbed in the conversation that by the time she notices Denise, the agent who transferred to the office when Levy was promoted to a job in New York, standing by her desk, it's clear she's been there a while. "Hey, I've got to go, you all set?"
"Yeah, all right," Mullins says. "We'll see how I do on the great grocery scavenger hunt of 2013. This is going to take forever. This dinner better be fucking delicious!"
"See you tonight." Ashburn hangs up and looks up at Denise. "What's up?"
"Rollins in the New York office is in the conference room," Denise says. As she turns to walk away, she hesitates. "And I have to say, you have no idea how many conversations like that I've had with my boyfriend."
"Oh, that – we're not -"
Denise holds up her hands. "Say no more! I know you're private, I've just noticed that you've seemed happier the last few weeks, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm glad. Whatever you've got going on, it's working, so keep it up."
Ashburn sits frozen at her desk for a solid ten seconds after Denise walks away, trying to process all of Denise's words, which are too full of truth for Ashburn to dismiss out of hand. She has been happier lately. Even though Ashburn is the one letting Mullins crash at her place, it feels like Mullins is the one doing her a favor. The weeks since Thanksgiving have been the best that Ashburn can remember, and it's all because she knows Mullins will be there when she walks in the door at night. Ashburn can't even say specifically why that is, she just knows it's true.
Mullins likes staying at Ashburn's place. She'd figured it would drive her nuts after a day, but it turns out Ashburn's apartment is just like her personality: something weird, formal, and off-putting that grows on you over time.
Some things she can't help asking about.
"What's up with the cat picture?" Mullins asks over dinner.
"What cat picture?" Ashburn says, as if she's got more than one. She's been weird and distracted all night. Not even Mullins admitting to liking quinoa has pulled her out of her weird fog.
Mullins gestures toward where the picture sits in the living room. "The one of your neighbor's cat, why do you keep it?"
"I liked Pumpkin," Ashburn says.
"I know you did, but what I'm wondering is," Mullins says, taking another bite of quinoa, which is actually pretty awesome. "Why do you have a picture of your neighbor's old cat instead of an actual cat of your own right now? Your neighbors have one. Why don't you?"
"My ex was allergic, so we couldn't have any pets," Ashburn says. "And since then I've thought about it, it just never seemed like the right time."
"The right time? It's not a kid," Mullins says.
"But it's something you have to be responsible for and take care of," Ashburn says. "And in our line of work, you know, things happen. Things you don't expect. And what would happen to the cat then?"
"You mean you didn't get a cat because you were afraid you'd die in the line of duty and the cat would have to go to someone else?"
"Well, that, and what if someone didn't think to come to my apartment to get the cat? It could starve to death," Ashburn says, like this is a normal worry.
Mullins sits in silence after that for so long that Ashburn eventually looks up from her plate. "What?"
"Your mind goes to some dark places, my friend," Mullins says, picking up her fork again.
"We work with dark stuff," Ashburn says, shrugging. "I guess it rubs off."
Mullins nods like she agrees, but she doesn't, really; Mullins knows that the dark places in Ashburn didn't come from the job.
"Anyway," Ashburn says. "You like the quinoa?"
"I do," Mullins says. "Tomorrow night it's my turn. Ned Devine's."
Ashburn nods. "Clam chowder, right?"
Mullins shakes her head. "No, you gotta say it right. Drop the 'r' on the end that you're hitting so hard you sound like a pirate."
"I do not sound like a pirate! Clam chowder," Ashburn says, sounding almost the same as she had before.
"That was a truly pathetic attempt. It feels like you're not even trying," Mullins says. "Chow-dah. Say it with me-"
"Chow-dah," Ashburn says at the same time as Mullins, getting it close to right, and so pleased with herself about it that she smiles for the first time since arriving home.
The sight of it does something funny to Mullins, some mixture of relief and happiness making her unsettled and almost embarrassed. She squares her shoulders and tells herself it's nothing as she says, "That was slightly less awful. Still bad, but less awful. You'll have to work on it."
"I will," Ashburn says, nodding.
Ashburn loves the chowder from Ned Devine's, and a lot of the other things Mullins introduces her to around Boston – her favorite gun range, the Dunkin Donuts with the best coffee, a hot dog place that makes Ashburn rethink her aversion to processed meats.
"Good, right?" Mullins says.
"So good," Ashburn says. "What is this sauce? It's incredible."
"Piccalilli," Mullins says. "Aren't you glad you listened to me when I said you needed to have it?"
Ashburn nods and takes another bite. "And the baked beans, it sounded like it would be gross-"
"But it's so good, right? See, you just gotta stick with me, I'll take care of you," Mullins says, sliding a few napkins down the counter toward Ashburn before picking up her own hot dog.
Ashburn chews, glad her mouth is too full to say anything, because what she wants to say is something like: that's right. That's what you do .You take care of me. Because even though she knows that's what Mullins does –inviting to her family's holiday dinners, defending her in front of drug-dealers-turned-nail-technicians, showing her the best food around Boston – it's not something she can say out loud to Mullins, who can be prickly when people try to point out her virtues, especially anything acknowledging her kind heart.
And so Ashburn finishes the rest of her hot dog in silence, listening to Mullins tell her about a dealer she busted earlier that day. "And so at the end of it, the guy has the nerve to ask me to – oh, shit."
"What?" Ashburn says, concerned by the way Mullins's face has gone grim.
"Just – this guy, Daryl. He called me, and I kind of never called him back, and I'd hide under the counter or something but he's already spotted us," Mullins says, leaning back on the stool to look toward the door.
Ashburn follows Mullins's line of sight and sees a tall man with a shaved head push open the door. She can't remember the last time she felt such a powerfully negative reaction to someone who wasn't under suspicion of a violent crime. She clears her throat and tries to sound like her usual self as she says, "He's quite tall."
"Yeah, he's got that going for him, if nothing else," Mullins says, wiping her hands on a napkin. "Dammit. I do not want this guy to ruin my hot dog, I have been looking forward to it all fucking day! You can't eat one of these on the run."
"So don't run," Ashburn says. "Why do you have to run?"
"This guy is really persistent. And he's also really sweet," Mullins says, as if that's a character flaw.
"Why is being sweet a bad thing?"
"It makes it super hard to get rid of him," Mullins says, grimacing. "He's locked onto us. He's ordering, but he'll be here soon."
Ashburn looks over her shoulder at the guy, and feels something reckless shift loose inside her. She reaches for Mullins's hand.
Mullins lets her take it, but gives her a funny look. "What the hell?"
"Just go with it," Ashburn says, lacing their fingers together. It should feel weird, but it doesn't; it feels right. Ashburn slides sideways on her stool so she's closer to Mullins and leans in to whisper in her ear, "Do you have a problem with him thinking that we're together?"
"No," Mullins says, but something in the way she's gone suddenly still makes Ashburn feel uncertain. "Of course not. I've been with women before."
"You have?" Ashburn says, almost falling off her stool.
"Yeah, why, do you have a problem with that?" Mullins asks, looking up at her.
"Of course not!" Ashburn says, tightening her grip on Mullins's hand to reinforce her words. "It just – you never said."
Mullins shrugs. "It never came up."
"I guess that's true," Ashburn says, still trying to process this new information about Mullins. It doesn't surprise her, exactly; Mullins isn't the type of person you'd put into any kind of box. But it makes things a little terrifying for reasons Ashburn doesn't want to think about, the same way she doesn't want to think about the source of the recklessness that made her reach for Mullins's hand. How it hadn't just been a desire to help Mullins out; it had been in service of the possessiveness that hit Ashburn a moment after meeting Daryl's eyes, a raw and primal feeling of this-is-mine regarding Mullins. "We've never run into any of the women you've been with."
"Well, it's mostly dudes," Mullins says. "And also, women are better at picking up on stuff. Don't you think?"
"Absolutely," Ashburn says, though right now she feels like she's incapable of figuring anything out, least of all herself.
Things are weird for a while after Ashburn pulls the whole grabbing-hands-thing. Mullins can't tell if it's because she's embarrassed and Ashburn is uncomfortable, or because she's uncomfortable and Ashburn is embarrassed; all she knows is that they both work late every night for the rest of the week, eliminating their usual nightly dinners. Generally it's pretty awful. Mullins had gotten used to the whole talking-about-your-day thing, even when it involved gross things like tempeh reubens, which Ashburn insists on making at least once a week out of the misguided belief she'll be able to find a way for Mullins to like tofu.
Finally, Mullins caves, and shows up at Ashburn's office at lunchtime with sandwiches. She doesn't realize how nervous she is about it until Ashburn looks up from her paperwork and sees her there, and smiles in a way that settles something deep inside.
"I brought you a sandwich, you got time for lunch?"
"Sure," Ashburn says, pushing the papers aside on her desk, and things are pretty much back to normal after that.
Pretty much back to normal, but not entirely back to normal, because Mullins keeps finding herself thinking of things at odd moments, like the way Ashburn's hand had felt in hers, strong and sure and right, or how brown her eyes had been up close. Other things hit her differently, too; stories Ashburn tells about her childhood that used to make her sad for Ashburn now make her furious.
"So hold on a second, let me make sure I'm getting this right," Mullins says, holding her beer up to make her point. "These assholes –"
"They're not assholes, Mullins, they're good people," Ashburn says. "I was just – I was what they call a difficult placement."
"No, they're not good people, they're assholes, because you are not -" Mullins considers her words. "Okay, so maybe you are difficult, a little bit, but in a good way, a way that makes you a kickass FBI agent."
"Thanks," Ashburn says, tilting her own beer in acknowledgement.
"And who cares if you were difficult? Kids are always difficult. My cousin Denny burned down his family's garage trying to make homemade firecrackers, and all my aunt and uncle did was ground him for a month. They didn't send him away."
"But Denny was their kid," Ashburn says. "I wasn't anybody's kid. And I understand now how that essay must have made them uncomfortable. How many twelve-year-old girls choose Jack the Ripper when they're asked to write about an interesting historical figure?"
Mullins feels a wave of something uncontrollable; part of her wants to cry, but most of her wants to throw her beer bottle through space and time at the heads of all the parents who passed Ashburn along. She focuses on the anger and says, "Do you know why not many twelve-year-old girls choose to write about Jack the Ripper? Because most twelve-year-old girls are boring as shit. You were badass and awesome and they should have seen that."
"I appreciate you defending twelve-year-old me," Ashburn says, in a way that lets Mullins know that she means it. "But I'm really fine now, Mullins. I'm okay."
Ashburn says it like she believes it, and she probably does; Mullins does too, most of the time. But other times she's less sure, and furious about it, and determined to do something to fix it.
Which is why she walks into Captain Woods's office when she sees his posting on the station bulletin board.
"I want two of those kittens."
Captain Woods looks uncomfortable. "Why? What are you going to do with them?"
"What am I going to do with them? I'm going to give them a good home, what else am I going to do with them? I've got this friend who's super into cats," Mullins says, when Captain Woods's expression doesn't clear. "It's going to be her Christmas present."
Captain Woods twists the pencil in his hands. "The humane society says that giving pets as gifts is actually-"
"Just get me those cats!" Mullins shouts, slamming the door behind her.
Captain Woods does, and Mullins ends up sitting on Ashburn's couch on Christmas Eve with a cardboard box full of kittens, waiting for Ashburn to come home. By the time she does, she's turned the corner into the kind of fear she's only felt before when facing a gun.
"Sorry I'm late, I got held up with some paperwork," Ashburn says, taking off her coat. "I swear, I'm the only one who fills out the XR-809s properly, everyone else fills in the box for 'pending' when they mean 'postponed' and it's a total mess, but I think I got most of it straightened out. Anyway. I'm done now. What's up with the box?"
"The box is actually for you," Mullins says. "Come on, sit down."
"Oh, are we exchanging now? I got you something too, but it's in the -" Ashburn freezes in place, having heard the same thing Mullins did the whole ride from the station to Ashburn's apartment: a pair of tiny meows. "Mullins, what is in that box?"
"I think you know," Mullins says. "Come on, look inside."
Ashburn sits on the couch on the other side of the box, her face unreadable. "Did you get me a cat?"
"No, I didn't get you a cat," Mullins says, prying open the top of the box when Ashburn doesn't make a move to do it herself. "I got you kittens. Two of them. The toughest of the litter, which means they're both girls, of course."
Ashburn looks into the box, and even though she's not smiling, Mullins can see something in her expression shift, like a light has come on deep inside. "They're so tiny."
"Captain Woods found them under his porch a few weeks ago," Mullins says. "They're all vaccinated and fixed and all that stuff. He put up a sign saying they needed a home, and I thought about how you are the saddest kind of cat lady – a cat lady without a cat – and so I went and picked up two of them."
Ashburn reaches into the box and uses a finger to pet the head of one and then the other, but she doesn't say anything, so Mullins keeps talking.
"Everyone says you should get grown-up cats, and I know that's the right thing to do, but you know, my thought is, everyone deserves to have a kitten sometime," Mullins says. "We had one when I was a kid. Marshmallow. Well-named because that cat got fucking enormous, but it was cute as a kitten. And you never got to have one as a kid, so I just thought, why the hell not?
"And I got two of them because I read this stuff about how everyone thinks cats are solitary creatures because they can act so aloof and tough and everything, but the truth is, most cats do better if they have a buddy cat with them. Which makes sense," Mullins says, reaching in to scratch behind the ears of one of the cats. "Nobody likes to be alone."
Ashburn sniffs and Mullins feels something crack open inside, but she covers it as best she can by saying in her usual voice, "You're not going to tell me you're allergic now, are you? Not after I've gone to all this trouble. I had to actually walk in and ask that idiot Captain Woods for something. You know I hate doing that."
"I know you do," Ashburn says, picking up one of the kittens and holding it against her body.
The one left behind meows, and Ashburn reaches in for that one too, and settles both of them in her lap. Mullins sets the box on the floor and moves over on the couch to sit closer to Ashburn, watching as one of the kittens picks her way across Ashburn's lap and onto her own. "Hey, this one likes me."
"Of course she does," Ashburn says. "Smart cat. I can't believe you did this, Mullins."
Mullins shrugs like it was nothing, like she hadn't been nervous about it at all. "Like I said, saddest kind of cat lady. Had to remedy that."
Ashburn rolls her eyes and wiggles her finger in a way that makes the kitten in her lap pounce. "Consider it remedied."
Mullins pries the kitten off her shoulder and settles it beside the one in Ashburn's lap. She could leave it at that, and part of her wants to. But she knows she can't. "I also – I also wanted to make sure you knew that you could have one, you know?"
Ashburn looks at her in a questioning way, and Mullins goes on.
"I just meant – you're not alone anymore, Ashburn. You've got me," Mullins says. "You know that, right?"
Ashburn nods. "I do know that."
"You've even got my insane family," Mullins says. "But most of all, you've got me."
Mullins stares at Ashburn, hoping that she will be able to see all the ways Mullins means it. She can see the moment Ashburn does, and for a moment it's awful, the waiting more painful than any bad fall she's taken running after a suspect. But then Ashburn leans across to kiss her and it's like the click of a pair of handcuffs, or the closing of a cruiser door: an action that sets something right in the universe and in her heart.
.end.