Disclaimer: I do not own In Plain Sight, or anything else references here.
It's Marshall's first day as her boss, and she's determined to give him trouble, just for the fun of it. And also so he gets the message that nobody is her boss. Which he knows anyway, it'll be a shame if he didn't, after spending so many years as her partner and best friend.
She enters the Office whistling loudly, searches for Marshall, and catches a glimpse of him in his new shiny Office, talking on the phone, with Abigail, she assumes. So she heads straight for the coffee counter instead.
Delia joins her there. Looking as chirpy as ever, she leans in closer to Mary like she's about to say something top secret- which only makes Mary take five steps away at the violation of her personal space. What happened to the No-Delia-Within-Three-Feet-Of-Me rule? She wonders, as Delia begins talking softly. "Did you hear that Marshall and Abigail are fighting over their wedding plans?"
Mary rolls her eyes and keeps quiet- her baby woke her up three times last night, and she has a feeling that if she starts yelling now, she's not gonna stop- hoping Delia will get the message.
Of course she doesn't. "I've heard him talking about how much he wants origami to be a part of decoration. Apparently she doesn't. I'll tell you what, if I was Abigail, I would…"
As Delia drags on, Mary grabs her coffee from the counter, takes a sip, grunts at how it tastes, yells out a loud "Hey, Marshall, I think you need to buy a new coffee machine", and then she faces Delia. For the first time, Delia notices how Mary's eyes are sagging and she looks tired. She's about to open her mouth again and point it out, but Mary beats her to it. "Ok, first of all, if I wanted to know about Marshall's wedding, I can just watch the E! special, or ask him, so you can take your gossips to tmz or CDAN or whatever it is that you read, I don't need you to fetch me gossips, about Marshall, about anybody. And second, if your job here is overhearing people's personal conversations on the phone, why don't you get me a decent cup of coffee from that café two blocks away? Marshall will pay."
She rants at one breath, and before Delia can blink, she's inside Marshall's office, intruding into the conversation.
He looks up at her with questioning eyes.
She grins the wicked grin that tells him she knows exactly what's going on and is here to watch him suffer and enjoy. Sitting down on the chair in front of him, she takes another sip from the same coffee, while watching Marshall's eye-brows twitching in irritation, and now it tastes good.
She loves how he can't go further than one syllable, "Look..", "Ab..", "No..", "I'm.." before he finally says he has urgent work and hangs up.
She shoots him a "you will amount to nothing in life" look. "Origami? Really?"
He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. "Delia?"
"Yep", she chirps. "I think this Office needs an upgrade. How about you sound-proof it?"
"We're not sound proofing the Office", he tells her firmly.
"Ok", she shrugs. "Then how about metal doors and hiring aliens as security guards?"
As if to prove her point, Delia peeks her head in.
"Yes, Delia?" Marshall tries his best to sound patient- with everything that's been going on in his life, it's kind of hard- as well as intimidating, since he's the new boss. Of course it only manages to get a snicker out of Mary.
"Mary wanted coffee", Delia states, coming in and placing the creamy cup on the table.
"Wow, you're fast", Mary remarks, secretly regretting not sending her for coffee all this time. Hey, this new arrangement thing can work out- with Stan gone and Marshall as the new boss, there's no one to stop her from ordering everyone else around, she can virtually run the whole damn place!
"No, actually, I made this myself." Delia starts excitedly, "It's from my grandmother's secret recipe. She used to-"
Mary cuts her off. "-Does this mean Marshall doesn't have to pay for the coffee?"
"Of course not, this one's on me." Delia says sweetly, and then looks at Marshall. "Do you want a coffee too? I can make you one from helps relieve stress. I know that all the wedding stuff-"
"-No, thank you", Marshall tells her, along with a glare.
This time, she gets the message, she leaves quickly.
"Can you believe she will become a US Marshall someday?" Mary wonders out loud.
Marshall shrugs, trying to be politically correct, and optimistic, as always. "Well, she has her abilities."
She scoffs. "Like what? Making coffee and pastry? Please, Annie Frank is better than her."
"Annie Frank is awesome." Marshall protests.
She scoffs again. "She's a blond little US Marshall who's running after fugitives. She's a lame ass version of me. Someday I'll sue the producers for copying me so improperly." She finishes with a shrug, and tosses the now empty coffee cup into the trash can. "Speaking of lame, what's up with origami?"
He sighs. "Abigail doesn't want origami on our wedding."
Mary nods. "Good. At least one of you is half normal."
Marshall ignores her insult, having grown resistant to them over the years, ever since he figured out that her "The man called Inspector Marshal Marshall Mann" joke stopped when he stopped reacting to it. His jaw tenses, and his eyebrows knot together to form a V. "I've wanted it all my life. It's not just her wedding, it's mine too. It's just a little thing. Marriage is a combination of little things like this."
"Oh my gosh", she whines not too quietly. Here comes his sappy little lecture on human beings. What is he doing at Witsec again? He needs to be the new Doctor Phil.
He continues, ignoring her, once again. "It's about compromises, and putting the other's needs above yours." He pauses, thinking about how she doesn't get his friendship with Mary. His father had a best friend too- though male, and more polite than Mary- and his mother always understood. So why doesn't Abigail? He wonders. "If she can't deal with this, then… I don't know."
"See why I didn't get married?" Mary grins. "Who's the loser now?"
He grins back, momentarily forgetting his own problems. Finally he's got her. "Oh, but you did marry."
"Yeah, but the guy didn't want origami!"
He shakes his head in disagreement. "You would have let him put origami if he really wanted it." He challenges.
She huffs. "Yeah, and then I would have taken my gun and put a bullet hole through each and every little one of them on the wedding day."
"Ha-ha-ha", he says dryly.
She gets up, pushes the chair back in with a half-kick, and looks at him, locking her eyes with his. His jaws relax somewhat, and his eyes soften around the corners. She gives him a half-smile. "Look, just explain to her how much you love that stupid thing. I'm sure she doesn't know that- she hasn't seen your making origami every day at the Office. Once she knows, she'll understand. She's a reasonable girl, isn't that part of why you too are so good together? And that steady and stable and boring crap?"
She nods, he nods back, and they talk in their unspoken telepathic language- that Delia can never hear, take that, Sunshine! Mary thinks in the back of her mind.
When she leaves the room, of course Delia is right there. She doesn't even try to pretend she wasn't listening. "You're a good friend, Mary," she tells her.
"Best friend", Mary corrects, and then just to prove how fluent she is in the language of sarcasm, adds. "Didn't you see us get matching tattoos and bracelets?"
It's a lazy day, there's not much to do, just paper work- no witness has broken the rules and gotten into trouble yet, and she still hasn't had the privilege of finding out what it feels like to travel without Marshall all the time.
Mary sits in her chair, her hair tied up in a messy ponytail, as she tries to keep writing and fight back the yawns. She hates paper-work, and she actually wishes some would screw something up just so that she can go out.
It definitely has nothing to do with the fact that Marshall's desk is missing from across hers after all these years, and she can't shoot off insults at him every time she feels bored.
Her phone rings, and she groans, answering it, hoping it's not bad news. "What now, Brandy?... No, you will absolutely not dress her up… because dressing up is stupid… I don't care if you're the aunt, I'm the mother!... you dressed up the dog… Abigail likes stupid things. Can't you see it? She's marrying Marshall… I don't care, you'll not… not till I get home and see what you have in mind…. Good, let her sleep… play with whatever you want, she has enough toys… ok, look, I have to go, be careful with her, and yourself, ok, squish?"
She hangs up and lets out a frustrated sigh. Around the same time, Marshall comes out of his Office and sits in front of her. "Is everything alright?"
"No", she half-pouts, half-frowns, "Brandy wants to dress up Norah."
"That's cute", Marshall smiles.
She gives him a glare that makes him raise his hands up in surrender. "What are you doing out of your Office?" she asks, as he places some file on her desk and begins reading it.
He shrugs. "I was getting kind of bored in there, all alone."
There's a warm tugging in the pit of her stomach, a kind of fluttering in her heart, and she realizes that she's missed him, missed having him sit on the desk across hers and blurt out useless little trivia that made her aim her pop-corn at him instead of Delia. It's good to see that everything isn't changing. She hates changes, has hated it ever since her dad went away and everything changed.
She doesn't really know what to say to that. And before she can think of anything, there's someone in the Office.
"Dad?" Marshall asks, as both he and Mary stand up from their seats. "Is everything alright?"
His father nods, aiming another nod at Mary as a form of greeting, "I just came in to see how your first day as the new boss was going."
"Oh", Mary relaxes, plopping back down on the chair, and grins. "I thought you were here to talk about the Bachelor's Party. Can you believe he wants it to be Star Trek themed?"
Marshall pleads her with his eyes not to do this, not to makes things awkward for him like this, and immediately changes the topic. "It's been a slow day here, there's not much to do. Why don't you come inside my Office for coffee?"
Mary gives him a glare, mouths a "I'll get you", and returns her attention back to the boring file-work.
Marshall and his father go inside their Office. Delia follows after a while, with the coffee. And this time, Mary is curious to know what they are talking about.
Delia doesn't disappoint. She brings Mary another coffee and sits down in the chair in front of her. "They are talking about the wedding. And something about you."
"What about me?" her eyes go wide open in panic. "Please tell me Marshall's dad doesn't want me to wear a dress or something. I went over this with Marshall already. I like my jeans." She says, patting her thigh as if to emphasize her point.
"I don't think it's about that", Delia reassures, patting Mary's hand, which only get a weirded-out "why-the-fuck-are-you-touching-me" look from Mary. Seriously, can she stop with the PDA? "I heard his father say "It should be Mary." I don't know what they are talking about."
Mary shrugs, some kind of weird restless gnawing feeling suddenly starting in her arms and legs. "They're probably talking about who his best man should be."
Delia disagrees. "But a best man is a man, and you're a-"
Mary gestures with her fingers for her to leave, and thankfully, she does so without finishing the sentence that would have led to coffee cups swinging here and there.
Once again she's left alone with paper-work, but this time her thoughts are dominating her mind.
She has had only one real female friend in her life, and before she died, she had told Mary, "It should be Marshall."
Funny how Marshall's dad sounded exactly like this. So maybe she has an idea what this whole thing is about, and maybe-
Her thoughts are interrupted when Marshall and his dad come out. She stands up- again- mentally cursing at how her back hurts from bending down and picking up her baby all the time.
"Marshall told me you broke up with your new guy?"
She's a little taken aback to see Inspector Mann discussing her personal life with her, so much so that she has to look at Marshall to verify if she heard it right. "Uh, yeah. He had a pesky little kid. I hate kids."
"You have a kid." Marshall points out.
"Oh, shut up, don't call the child services", she snarls. "I love my kid, it's my kid. But seriously, babies are just a bunch of little annoying devils that only eat and crap a lot. Who needs to date a guy who comes with that baggage?"
Marshall shakes his head in disapproval, Mary mutters a "what?", and suddenly remembers that the two of them are not the only person in the room, it's crazy how sometimes the whole world seems to disappear and her focus is solely on Marshall. She turns to Inspector Mann again. "If this is about taking a date to the wedding, it's ok, I'll hire somebody."
"That's not necessary", Marshall Mann reassures her, and gives Marshall a look that makes him divert his gaze to the wall. She wonders what he means, what is going on.
They exchange goodbyes, Mary asks him about the curling iron one more time, and Marshall finally escorts him out of the building, leaving Mary with her thoughts, again.
And paperwork. "Delia, coffee!"
A/N: do you like it so far? Should I continue? Review and let me know!