Title: Ted Earley likes a certain type.

Fandom: Life

Characters/Pairings: Ted, Charlie (pre-slash if you tilt your head just right)

Author: gyuumajo

Rating: T

Disclaimers: Life owns me.

Warning: Un-beta'd. Taking some creative licensing with Teds ex-wife's hair and eye color.

Ted Earley likes a certain type.

He knows he likes a certain type. His friends know he likes a certain type. Hell, they were the ones who realized he likes a certain type even before he did.

They had noticed how his eyes would always scan the bar and always rest on the cute redhead chatting with the bartender or some other cute redhead laughing with her friends. It was them who very wisely lubricated his gut with enough alcohol to make him interesting and sent him on his way to the other side of the bar armed with only his beer-induced courage.

Only when he got closer to the redhead in question did he realize hes actually got a condition pegged to his previously widely-acknowledged type.

Those blue eyes framed by a crown of copper curls, twinkling with wit & humor were irresistible. So much so that he ended up dating a few and being wed to one.

But when they sent him packing into Pelican Bay and her packing with the kids, he realized his type was not the type who would stand by him and that made him swear off cute redheads with intelligent blue eyes forever.

Or so he tells himself.

As he stood in the middle of the rowdy dining area with his first tray of prison gruel, he found himself taking in the sea of faces and settling on the only redhead amidst the black, brown and blond. The redhead who wasnt laughing or chatting with anybody else. The redhead that made him feel safe despite the aura of unfriendliness he was projecting from his lone perch at the darkest, most remote corner of the room.

He knew he should find a seat and sit down before the guards make him sit right where he was. Smacked in the middle of the two meanest, burliest ham-fists who were eyeing him like a pair of cat eyeing a canary. Between those two and the redhead, Ted would rather take his chances with the redhead.

But his friends were not with him. His friends were not here to load him up on lager and sent him on his way. He would have to summon the drunken reserves of all those years long past and make his way across the room by his own power, armed with a smile and the words "Is this seat taken?"

~End~