But You Wouldn't Want to Live There
(Season One: A Nice Place to Visit tie-in)
Face had a problem.
Amy Allen.
Amy - triple A - pain in his butt Allen.
The little sister he'd never wanted; the little sister he'd ended up caring for as exactly that.
And therein lay his problem.
The Dawkins brothers had driven the team out of town and dumped them by the roadside, leaving Amy and Trish defenseless back at the farm. Well... not entirely defenseless. The boys had taught Amy well and she was able to fend off the very determined Deke and Harold, who had fully intended to get into the house and then into the womenfolk. The dust kicked up by their escaping truck barely had time to settle, before the team skidded into the driveway of the Brenner farm in their hijacked convertible. Leaping from the car, the team raced en mass to the front door of the house with Face and Murdock in the lead. Both men were thinking the same thing: if anything had happened to their little sister and their friend, there would be hell to pay. Savage, bloody, Dante's seven rings-style hell.
Face hammered on the door, his gullet swelling with fear as it failed to open straight away. There was the scrape of something heavy being moved inside and the door had finally burst open. The two men barreled inside, almost tripping over one another in their haste, before getting an armful each of terrified woman.
Face had always enjoyed the relationship that he shared with Amy, it was simple, it was fun, it was honest and it was absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, 100% platonic.
Or so he had thought.
Amy had wrapped herself around him and he'd hesitated before bringing his arms around her. That should have been his first clue. She'd clawed her fingers into his shirt front, her nails scraping the skin of his chest with the action and a frission of completely inappropriate heat had shot through him. There was the second clue. If that hadn't been evidence enough that something was wrong, she then looked up at him with eyes wide enough to swallow him and he felt something in his chest shift.
The conscious, alert, soldier part of his brain went into autopilot, taking in the environment, scanning for further threats and listening to the colonel. The unconscious mind however sank into the delicious sensation of holding the trembling woman as she clung to him. This was different to the feeling he had when a woman was clutching him in the throes of passion, this was deeper, protective, innocent. It was dangerous.
He wasn't given any more time to process what had happened, as Amy was sent to return the car and the team made preparations to hit the Dawkins, while Hannibal went upstairs to collect Ray's weapons. It wasn't until much later, when the murderous family where safely locked away and the team were enjoying Trish's hospitality at the farm, that Face got chance to evaluate what had happened to shake his usual cool.
Making sure no-one was looking at him, he surreptitiously watched Amy as she sat on their host's sofa. The two women had their heads together, chatting about the baby and trying to work out whether it would look more like Ray or Trish. Glancing around again, he looked hard at Amy, searching within himself for the fleeting emotion that the rescue had prompted. It seemed to have disappeared now things had gone back to normal.
Here was the next level of the problem.
To explore the moment or to ignore it...