Fools In Love
A/N: Well, here it is: the promised sequel to "Every Time Two Fools Collide!" More fluff, more angst, more humor, and more donut wars, hence the "general" category! This story is shaping up to be a wee bit angstier than the last one, but perhaps not in the way you might think.
Rating: T for now; we'll see if I have to bump it up later.
Spoilers: As far as the show goes, this is canon through the beginning of 4x11, "The Red And The Blue." Charlene, bless her heart, still does not exist. Snippets of later episodes will appear in this story, some in the same context as the show, some not.
Disclaimer: Despite concerted efforts to obtain them, I still don't own these characters.
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Collider: author, beta-reader, and idea-bouncer extraordinaire!
Chapter One: Moonlight Serenade
The sounds of drunken office workers serenading their fellow bar patrons with slurred, off-key renditions of 80s music had finally ground to a halt, and Detective Lilly Rush sighed with relief as she took another sip of her amaretto sour. Thank God, she thought. Lilly wasn't usually much for listening to other people sing, even people who were good at it, and the parade of tipsy bar patrons somehow convinced that warbling their way through Pat Benatar songs would give their otherwise dull lives meaning and significance had dragged on far too long for her liking.
But on this unseasonably warm autumn night, Lilly wasn't about to let some karaoke caterwauling ruin what had otherwise been a nearly perfect day. She and her colleagues had closed a case that afternoon, ironically, the 2005 murder of a tone-deaf singer with delusions of grandeur, and had elected to celebrate the end of the case by grabbing a few drinks at Jones' Tavern. The fact that it was karaoke night was a surprise, at least, it was to Lilly, though she suspected that certain others of her colleagues had known about it all along.
In an unspoken decision, the detectives had begun going to Jones' together as a group to celebrate the end of cases. Lilly couldn't remember when it had started, or who had first suggested it, but, now that it had become a tradition, she couldn't imagine closing a case any other way. Although she knew Scotty Valens…quite well…outside of work, she hadn't seen much of her other colleagues in a social setting. Never much for mixing business and pleasure…well, not until Nashville, she corrected with a rueful smile, Lilly had been pleasantly surprised by the new friendships and camaraderie that had developed among the squad. Although they were still reluctant to spill their guts to one another, still keeping up carefully constructed walls around their personal lives, they had become even more close-knit than before: looking out for each other, holding each other up when the more horrifying aspects of their job became too much for one person to bear, and laughing with one another at the end of the day. Only Homicide detectives knew what it was really like in their line of work, Lilly reasoned, and the fact that they worked the cold jobs had made them difficult for even the regular Homicide detectives to understand. But, they had each other, and as Lilly looked around at her friends and colleagues, she realized that that was enough. They were a family now, this squad, in every sense of the word. And, Lilly realized, those carefully constructed walls…well, they were beginning to crack and crumble just the slightest little bit as the squad began to trust each other more. Lilly would never have admitted it before, but…she was glad to see that happening. Even within herself.
Across the room, Lilly spied Scotty, where he and Vera were playing darts with Stillman and Jeffries, and tossed him a flirtatious smile, which he immediately returned. Feeling mischievous, Lilly plucked the cherry from her drink and sucked the clinging droplets of alcohol from the plump fruit, which she then popped into her mouth. As Scotty watched her intently, his eyes smoldering and a grin playing at the corners of his lips, she slipped the cherry stem into her mouth, tied it in a knot with record speed, and deftly removed it, her eyes never leaving his. Lilly could feel the heat from his gaze even from all the way across the room…good God, the way he was looking at her, he might as well just…
"Oh, for cryin' out loud," an exasperated voice said next to her, interrupting her lusty reverie. "You two startin' this already?"
Her bubble effectively shattered, Lilly chuckled slightly and murmured an insincere apology to Kat Miller, who sat on the barstool to her right.
Kat sighed in mock disgust and shot Lilly a withering look, but she couldn't suppress her smile. Try as she might to hide it, she was pretty damn happy for her lovestruck colleagues, even though it had meant some shuffling within the squad that resulted in her being assigned Valens for a partner. At first, Kat wasn't at all sure what being Scotty's partner would be like, but she'd been pleasantly surprised at the snarky, yet sincere friendship that had developed between them. And, though Kat would never admit it to anyone, she found that she actually liked having a partner. It made her feel like she truly belonged in this squad, after a year of feeling like the new girl on the block. Her place was now secure, and she knew she was just as crucial to this team as any of the others. Of course, working with Valens did have its drawbacks, namely, his occasional tendency to provide way too much information about his extracurricular activities with Rush, but, Kat reasoned, that was a small price to pay for the knowledge that a pretty damn good fellow cop had her back.
"Guess it ain't so bad," Kat admitted with a slight shrug. "I hate to admit it, but I got a vested interest in you all keepin' this…thing of yours goin'." She rolled her eyes slightly and sipped her beer.
"Yeah?" Lilly asked in reply, glancing over at her friend with raised eyebrows and an expression of surprise. "Why's that?"
Kat chuckled softly and set the beer down on the bar. "Valens is a helluva lot easier to work with when he's happy than when he's poutin' about somethin'," she declared. "And you…whatever it is you do…" she rolled her eyes again, "…you keep him from poutin' quite so much."
Lilly giggled in response and sipped her drink. "Well, I got a vested interest in keepin' him from pouting, too," she reminded Kat. "It's not any more fun off the clock than on."
"Now, that's your own damn fault," Kat retorted unsympathetically. "You just had to go and…do what you did in Nashville," she spat, with a disgusted shake of her head. Taking another sip of her beer, she continued. "And now I'm stuck with him. I'm the victim here!" she insisted. She glanced over at Lilly, hoping to impress upon her colleague the seriousness of the situation, but suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, and the effect was ruined.
"Coulda been worse, y'know," Lilly retorted between her own giggles.
"Yeah," Kat agreed, choking back more laughter as she glanced over her shoulder to where the guys were playing darts. "Coulda gotten Vera."
As if on cue, over in the dart game, Vera managed to hit a decent shot, pumped his fist in celebration, then promptly began gloating, strutting around the game area like a prize rooster.
"Nice job," they heard Scotty congratulate Vera sarcastically, "Your dart ain't stuck in the wall this time."
Stillman and Jeffries laughed appreciatively in response, and Vera shot Scotty a brief glare and snapped back with some retort they couldn't quite hear.
Rolling her eyes, Kat turned away from the dart game, sighed, and took another sip of beer.
"Well, what about you?" Lilly asked, turning to her colleague. "You ever think about gettin' back in the dating world? I'm sure there are some nice guys out there…"
Kat shook her head. "Nah," she replied, not meeting Lilly's eyes. "I gotta be careful. Can't go bouncin' guys in and outta my life. Couldn't do that to Veronica. We need more stability than that."
Lilly nodded in sympathy, briefly wishing that her own mother had been as considerate of her needs as Kat was of Veronica's. With a sigh, Lilly took another sip of her drink. The past was past. What had happened in her childhood couldn't be erased, so Lilly's solution was to just block those memories from her mind and only think about them when absolutely necessary. With few exceptions over the years, that strategy had worked. Or, at least, had seemed to work until recently. Lilly wasn't sure why, but over the past several weeks, she'd found herself thinking of her mother more and more. Little things, like Kat's offhand comment about how her dating would impact her daughter, brought unwelcome memories to Lilly's mind. She and her mother were estranged, not having spoken since Ellen's fourth marriage, to a guy named Jackie. Lilly barely knew him, but he seemed nice enough, much nicer than Ellen's previous two husbands, anyway, and Lilly couldn't help but feel just a bit sorry for the guy. Jackie was clearly smitten with her mother, and it was painfully obvious that he had absolutely no idea what he was getting into. Lilly hadn't even been able to watch.
"Look at 'em," Kat commented, turning her head to look back at the dart game. Vera had apparently just made another decent shot, because he was flexing his arms and roaring in triumph. She heard Lilly giggling beside her.
"Uncontrolled testosterone is a dangerous thing," she mused, grateful for the distraction as Scotty and Vera exchanged a few words. She wasn't close enough to hear what was said, but she noticed that, whatever it was, it was provoking a fierce glare from Vera and a few snickers from Stillman and Jeffries.
"Buncha Neanderthals," Kat declared, polishing off the last of her beer.
"Boo-yah!" Vera exclaimed, flexing his biceps in celebration of his latest shot.
"You call those biceps?" Scotty replied with a teasing grin as he took a sip of his scotch. Perhaps, in the process of lifting the glass to his lips, he may have tightened the muscles in his own arm a bit more than necessary, but, had anyone asked, he would have denied it until the day he died.
"They're bigger than yours…Man Candy…" Vera replied, his eyes fixed on Scotty's right arm as he lowered the glass to the table.
"Oh, what, you, too now?" Scotty asked, rolling his eyes. He had absolutely no idea what had inspired Kat Miller to start calling him Man Candy all those months ago, but the nickname had stuck, and, to Scotty's chagrin, it had apparently spread.
"And the only reason your …biceps…are bigger than mine," he continued, "is 'cause I ain't flexin' fat."
"Oh, bite me," Vera replied with a glare, taking another swig of his beer.
Will Jeffries laughed softly and sidled up to his longtime friend, and boss, John Stillman. "Y'know how you'll be out for a walk, and you'll see a cardboard box with 'Free Puppies' written on it, and how there's always a couple of 'em wrestlin' and carryin' on?" he remarked, then, at Stillman's nod, he glanced in his co-workers' direction.
Stillman chuckled in appreciation. "As always, Will, your observational skills never fail to astound." He then took aim, lined up his shot, and hit a bulls-eye, provoking impressed congratulations from Jeffries, but no response from the younger detectives. The two men turned around to see their colleagues still deeply engrossed in mocking one another.
"Your turn, Mr. Universe," Jeffries commented with a smile, handing Vera a dart. Vera shot his former partner a dark look, took aim, and managed to lodge his dart in the outer frame of the board, provoking snickers from the others.
"I should get extra points for that," Vera insisted, gesturing toward the board emphatically. "Any idiot can land it in the center, but puttin' it in the frame takes real skill. Not to mention strength," he concluded, casting a significant look at Scotty.
Scotty was frantically searching his brain for an appropriately witty retort when his cell phone chirped and vibrated insistently against his hip. He lifted the phone out, checked the caller ID, sighed, pressed the Silence button, and placed the slim black phone back in its holder.
"If it's that important, she'll leave a message," he muttered, mostly to himself.
"Who, Lil?" Vera asked in surprise, glancing over to where the women sat at the bar. "Why the hell would Lil call you? She can just…come over here…" he said, but, upon further inspection, realized that Rush's phone was neatly stowed, and she and Miller were…giggling… like a couple of teenage girls, and Vera couldn't even begin to fathom why.
Suddenly alarmed at this development, he turned his attention back to Scotty with a sly, leering grin. If it wasn't Rush on the phone, and Valens had referred to the caller as "she," well then…
"You got yourself a side dish, Valens?" he asked softly, elbowing his friend. In response to the surprised glare Scotty shot him, he hastily corrected himself. "Oh…my bad…informant."
Stillman and Jeffries, who had been taking aim at the board, turned around, their arms still poised to throw their darts, the sharp, silvery points of which gleamed menacingly in the dim light of the tavern.
"What?" they asked in disbelief, glaring at Scotty, who glanced incredulously from Vera to his suddenly irate older colleagues and back again.
"Oh, for God's sake," he sighed in exasperation, rolling his eyes slightly. "Do you people know me at all?"
"Yeah…we know you," Jeffries replied, without even the slightest trace of a smile. "That's why we're askin'."
"Have I ever, in my life, two-timed anyone?" Scotty retorted, refusing to allow his boss and his girlfriend's partner to intimidate him. "Anyone? Do I need to remind you how long I was with Elisa?"
"He's got a point there, Will," Stillman realized, lowering his dart.
"Besides," Scotty replied, grinning ruefully. "Lil's the best detective I've ever seen. If I was steppin' out on her, she'd have figured it out a long time ago, and Homicide'd be workin' my case."
"She'd prob'ly hide your body pretty good, too," Vera contributed, around a mouthful of peanuts. "Hell, she'd hide it so good we'd be the ones workin' your case twenty years down the road."
"So what's with the phone call?" Jeffries asked, finally lowering his dart, although he continued to study Scotty with a fiercely scrutinizing stare.
"Nothin'," Scotty replied, avoiding his colleagues' eyes, then took another swig of scotch and grabbed his dart. "We still playin' this game, or what?" he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he fired the dart, and it met the board with a defiant-sounding thwack.
"That's the third time today," Kat remarked, glancing over her shoulder once more.
"Third time for what?" Lilly asked as she followed her colleague's eyes to Scotty, who was replacing his phone in its holder and casting an annoyed glance in Vera's direction.
"Third time today Man Candy's gotten some phone call and hasn't answered it. He always answers his phone," Kat replied with a meaningful look toward Lilly.
"Hey…on the job, I only call him about work," Lilly retorted, raising her hands in surrender.
"Uh-huh," Kat replied, studying Lilly as she sipped a fresh beer.
Lilly was about to protest her professionalism, and innocence, when the bartender's voice piped over the loudspeaker, announcing the next round of karaoke.
"Oh, here we go again," Lilly groaned, pushing her empty glass away and cradling her head in her hands, feeling the onset of another karaoke-induced headache. "Think I'm gonna need a refill to get through this."
"Karaoke's not that bad, Lil," Kat replied, thoroughly enjoying Lilly's visceral reaction to the announcement of more singing.
Lilly raised her head and stared at Kat in disbelief. "Have you not been listening tonight? A drunk college girl butchering 'We Belong?' That sixty-year-old Chinese guy singing 'Barbie Girl?' Did you not hear that?"
Kat chuckled. "Course I heard it," she retorted. "That just makes it even sweeter."
"Makes what sweeter?" Lilly demanded with a mystified frown.
"My victory tonight," Kat replied nonchalantly as she took another sip of her beer.
"Victory? What victory? You mean…you're gonna…? Oh, God," Lilly sputtered, burying her head in her hands again.
"I'll have you know I can wipe the floor with these jackasses," Kat retorted indignantly.
"It's not that," Lilly moaned.
"You're rememberin' Fatass and Valens singin' the theme from 'Cops,' aren't you," Kat realized confidently, with a mischievous smile.
"I wish I could forget," came the muffled reply.
"Well, relax, Rush," Kat rejoined. "Tonight's gonna make you forget all about that." Turning her attention away from her traumatized colleague and toward the bar, she called to the bartender. "Hey, Joe! Lemme have a look at that song list."
The bartender, who was shaking up another customer's martini, glanced at her in amused surprise. "Homicide's gonna serenade us again?" he remarked, grinning slightly. "This should be good."
"Cut the crap and hand it over," Kat ordered with a smile. Grinning, Joe slid the notebook across the bar at her, then turned his attention back to the other customers.
Lilly, who had finally dared to look up, glanced curiously at her colleague. "So, why tonight, of all nights?" she asked, not sure she really wanted to know the answer.
Kat smiled mischievously. "'Cause damn Fatass challenged me."
"Oh, God," Lilly groaned again.
"You remember that god-awful Danny Zuko impression he did during that one case a while back?" she asked. Lilly returning her face to her hands was all the confirmation Kat needed.
"Make it stop," Lilly wailed.
"Well, he…reminded me of that today after we got the confession," Kat explained, thoroughly enjoying Lilly's discomfort. "He said he'd bet me anything I couldn't do any better singin' in front of you all."
"Anything?" Lilly asked, raising her head from her hands once more. Kat Miller could resist many things, but Lilly knew that a challenge was about the last thing on that list. "So what're you gonna win tonight?"
"I like your spirit," Kat replied with a smile. "And Vera was willin' to bet me first dibs on the last donut for the next two weeks if mine's better than his."
"Oh, he's gonna regret makin' that bet," Lilly grinned.
"You bet your ass he is," Kat confirmed. "Now help me find a song."
Lilly's eyes widened and she shook her head emphatically, so Kat smiled, shrugged, and turned a couple of pages in the thick, laminated notebook, scrolling down the list with a fingertip. "Too sappy…too girly…too Red state…too hair metal," she murmured to herself, then sighed and turned the page. Reading the next category, she turned to Lilly with a wicked grin.
"Oh, look, Lil," she began, her voice carrying a disturbing amount of perverse pleasure. "They have a Broadway section."
Lilly froze, and her eyes widened in horror. "You wouldn't…" she began.
"I so would," Kat retorted, eyes twinkling with mischief.
"Don't even think about it," Lilly ordered icily, provoking another burst of giggles from her usually no-nonsense colleague.
Suddenly, Kat spied the perfect song and slapped the notebook closed defiantly.
"There it is!" she announced, and without waiting for a reply from Lilly, she rose from her seat and headed down to the end of the bar, karaoke list in tow.
Lilly chuckled to herself, then took a sip of her new drink. Almost as soon as Kat vacated her right side, Lilly was aware of a warm, strong presence on her left.
"Hola, querida," a familiar voice purred seductively into her ear. "This seat taken?"
Lilly felt a sudden flush of heat in her cheeks as she turned around to see Scotty leaning against the bar, smiling flirtatiously, his coffee-colored eyes twinkling with twin sparks of mischief and desire. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in that smile, those broad shoulders, the heady scent of the aftershave he always wore combined with scotch and cigar smoke...
"Go right ahead," she replied smoothly, pulling out the barstool so he could take a seat. Scotty grinned, knowing Lilly was trying desperately to hide the fact that hearing him speak Spanish never failed to provoke a reaction, but, from the adorable flush in her cheeks and the way her eyes had darkened to indigo, he knew she had failed miserably. Judging from the thousand-watt smile she flashed him as he lowered himself onto the barstool, she didn't mind, and he was glad. That smile had been one of the first things that had attracted him to her, and he never failed to feel a secret thrill whenever it was turned in his direction. Lately, that had been quite a lot. He and Lilly had settled into their relationship comfortably, and Scotty had never felt more loved, or in love, in his entire life.
"So how'd the darts turn out?" she asked, noticing the other three guys sidling up to the bar and ordering drinks, Vera grudgingly paying for Stillman's whiskey, griping to whoever would listen as he did so.
Scotty shrugged with a rueful smile. "Boss kicked our asses," he admitted, taking a sip of his scotch. "But at least I didn't come in last."
"Who did?" Lilly asked, her eyes twinkling with curiosity as she twined her fingers with Scotty's.
"That'd be Mr. Universe over there," Scotty replied, glancing up at Vera in time to catch his colleague's responding glare.
Lilly giggled, then turned a sympathetic smile toward Scotty. "Sorry Boss beat you," she said.
"'S'okay," Scotty answered, wrapping an arm around her slender shoulders. "I was kinda startin' to miss you anyway."
"Aha," Lilly exclaimed in sudden realization. "So you let him kick your ass on purpose."
Scotty paused, then fixed her with a lopsided grin. "Yeah…we'll go with that," he replied noncommittally, then changed the subject.
"You and Miller havin' fun over here?" he asked.
"You could say that," Lilly answered slowly.
"Where is she, anyway?" Scotty asked, glancing around the bar. She had been sitting right next to Lilly, but was now nowhere to be seen.
As if on cue, a very, very familiar arpeggiated piano riff pierced through the background noise of the bar, and Vera, who until now had not been paying any attention, rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Tell me this ain't what I think it is," he groaned.
"What do you think it is?" Lilly asked pointedly, arching a delicate brow at him.
"Some piss-drunk software engineer is about to make a giant jackass of himself singin' the most overdone song in the history of karaoke," Vera chortled confidently, popping another handful of peanuts into his mouth. "This oughta be good."
The first notes of the vocal part cut off whatever Lilly might have said in reply.
First I was afraid, I was petrified
Impressed, Scotty glanced over his left shoulder toward the stage. "Hey, this one ain't bad," he remarked.
"No," Lilly replied, equally surprised. "No, she's not."
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side
"Holy shit," Scotty sputtered, nearly choking on his scotch as he turned fully around. "Is that who I think it is?"
"Yep," Lilly replied matter-of-factly, not bothering to turn around.
"Holy…" Scotty began, but he couldn't finish his thought. All he could do was stare in disbelief at the stage.
But I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
A few cheers and "You go, girl's" punctuated the air as Jeffries glanced up, the strong, clear voice he was hearing from the karaoke stage quite unlike anything else he'd heard that night. As he recognized who was standing onstage, clearly enjoying every second, a broad smile filled his face.
"Nick," he said, elbowing his former partner, "you…might wanna turn around."
And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along
"That ain't karaoke," Vera asserted, taking another swig of beer and not bothering to turn around. "Some dame just broke up with her Jackass du Jour and is feedin' quarters to the jukebox."
As the disco beat in the song began to pulsate and people in the front row started to sway in time to the music, Jeffries chuckled softly. "Just turn around," he ordered.
Vera did, sighing in disgust and rolling his eyes. "I told you, it's just the--"
And then he was silent. Rendered utterly speechless by the fact that that song, the most overdone, over-butchered song in karaoke history…was being performed to perfection, complete and total perfection…
…by Kat Miller.
As the song continued, bar patrons began to clap in time to the music, and a few even got up and danced. Kat, up onstage, looked like she was having the time of her life. From time to time, she cast meaningful glances toward her colleagues, who, for their part, were cheering her on. All, that is, except for Vera, who was still sitting on the barstool in stunned silence, his mouth and eyes open wide in total shock.
When the song finished, the other patrons cheered wildly, and Kat smiled in triumph, took a bow, and marched proudly back to the bar, where she sat down, glanced around at the others with satisfaction, then coolly sipped her beer, as if unequivocal karaoke triumph were an everyday occurrence.
It was then, and only then, that Nick Vera managed to close his mouth.