Safe as a House
Are you somewhere safe as houses?
Close your eyes count one, two, three.
Run and hide now, are you ready?
Ollie, Ollie in-come-free.
For some people, there is no where safer than their own house. All of the comforts and one's worldly possessions in a neat, clean (or messy, depending on the type of person one is) place with four sturdy walls, a floor, and if you're lucky, surrounded by neighbors that don't blast music at 4am, and don't share their place with their crazy drunk of a mother or flirtatious little sister.
Mary Shannon was not one of these people. She knew too much about the real world to know that a house was not as safe as everyone thought. It allowed unwelcome guests, pests, more often than not. But in her line of work, it allowed darkness to enter, like the plague. They hid that darkness among the light. Bad people mixed in with good, hardworking ones on a day to day basis. Years passed, and still she could find herself worrying, whenever a lull came along, that today would be the day they'd hear about one of those innocent light people murdered by one their hidden pests.
Yes, every choice had its consequence. Sacrifice one, save a million. It was the pests like Horst—well, "Lola"—that tried to slip through like a serpent—pretending to be all innocent and naïve, until they tried to get you to take a bite of that forbidden fruit. Eps, similarly, had done the same in a roundabout way. He pushed her when she was at her most vulnerable point, and found a way to take advantage of that. Regret inevitably had followed that action all those months ago. But now, she was mad at Raph, mad at Brandi for liking Raph, mad at Jinx for crashing into her house with her attempted good intentions, knowing that she'd never end up helping anyway. Mary spent so much energy into avoiding her house, that she had chalked the Eps encounter up to her "irrational choices" when they'd met.
And she was still angry, irritated, decaffeinated, and half-starved since her green juice diet idea she'd decided too take up with again. Maybe, possibly, that's how she ended up here.
Here being Marshall's house. She was still fuzzy on the how and when, but the why was easy. Three sleepless nights in the office, up and awake constantly working on a particularly large stack of paperwork while figuring out a location for two sets of witnesses, sipping the vile juice without any real sustenance, had made her go just a little bit batty—or out of character, as Marshall had stated when she'd tried this fad the first time. The morning of the fourth sleepless day, they'd been going through the WITSEC handbook of rules to a future family of three innocent bystanders, she'd managed to snap at Marshall to even his tolerance limits—rarely was he the first one to designate the silent treatment; he was the peacekeeper and referee between them both, the one that built bridges in her honor, whether she deserved them was the true question. She'd momentarily gotten up to grab a few sodas for the family (and Marshall) from the vending machine around the corner of the hall when the first wave of vertigo hit her like an acid trip gone awry—how she knew that she refused to acknowledge—while her head pounded in agony. It was bad enough she hadn't slept, couldn't speak without jumbling simple sentences, and her eyes felt glued together at the lashes. But she stuck it out.
Two cans of Dr. Pepper had fallen from the vending machine, and she'd just dropped two more quarters into the slot, trying to recall which soda Marshall would want more, when the edges of her vision seemed to fade away, and everything felt light and airy. She wasn't standing anymore. She was falling.
And it felt good.
Now she smelled pancakes. It was a weird thing to smell, she thought originally, because no one cooked at her house. Ever. Jinx drank. Brandi…well Brandi did whatever it was she did. Rarely did anyone come over, unless it was a special friend of Jinx, and generally Mary ate out. Mary opened her eyes now, stretching.
Then she shot up, regretting the quick movement. This wasn't her house.
She couldn't have been abducted. Right? She tuned her hearing into the sounds around her. Humming. Someone was humming. Mary stifled a laugh. Marshall hummed?
Ever so carefully, in an attempt to not repeat a second wave of spinning, she stood and walked into his adjoining bathroom. This was weird. Three years, and she'd never been inside Marshall's house? She felt a pang of sadness at that. He always came to hers, helped her unpack hundreds of boxes when she'd bought her house, but he'd never invited her into his domain. Or, she thought with another twinge, she hadn't been listening if he had. She was a horrible friend. And horrible friend as she was, he was still building the damn bridges, he was making pancakes.
Cringing at her disheveled appearance, she grabbed his comb and ran it through her blonde hair, used his toothbrush, and washed her face. Taking a second glance at her rumpled work clothes—when was it she'd changed last?—and pulled a tee shirt and pair of shorts, turning the waistband over three times, from his neatly folded chest of drawers.
His bedroom, from the looks of it, was painted a shade of blue, with grey and blue plaid patterened sheets; the wall had handmade bookshelves nailed to it, lined with books ranging from Russian literary authors to various poets to the art of learning sign language and guidebooks of foreign countries. Philosophy, psychology, astrology (which threw her), astronomy, geometry—basically all of the '-onomy' and '–ology' sections were covered; medical text books (which gave her insight into his knowledge of how to keep himself alive after he'd been shot), pop culture, joke books, fiction, non-fiction—the man had an endless appetite for learning. Mary smiled.
"It's like Barnes & Noble threw up in here," she said quietly to herself, reaching her finger to trace the well used, cracked spine of Pride & Prejudice.
"Barnes & Noble has nothing on me," Marshall said from the doorway. Mary, startled, knocked Pride & Prejudice from its post with a resounding thud, recoiling her hand.
"Sorry, didn't hear you," she mumbled, grabbing the book. He laughed.
"If you want it you can have it."
She knit her brows in confusion. "Have what?"
"Pride & Prejudice," he nodded to the book she clutched tightly to her stomach. "You can keep it. I've read it enough to have memorized it."
"Oh!" she laughed. "It's just…I never read it. I always wanted too, just, too busy taking care of Squish when Jinx was drunk to read it in high school." Her smile was tight, but he knew everything there was to know about her and her family anyway. She was surprised he never gave her the look of pity other people used to, the ones that had known her over the years. Pity the girl with the drunk of a mother, the wild sister, the gambler of a father that drove them into debt until the day he disappeared. She hated that look.
"Well, consider it yours." She smiled, but a happier smile now. "Now, you have to be starving. Stan told me to tell you not to come back until you decided to eat people food. You scared the hell out of the Robinson's, by the way," he paused. "And me."
She eyed him, ready to defy Stan's concern, good boss as he was, but her argument died in her throat at the last two words. "What…happened?" she asked curiously.
He went about his kitchen—wood cabinets and white countertops, not the strange modernist chrome she would have expected, which she found comforting—piling bits of this and that, and put two plates down on the small table. Chocolate chip pancakes. He'd make her chocolate chip pancakes, with whipped cream and powder sugar generously covering the top, a side of bacon and sunny-side eggs. The same amount rest on his plate as well—whether to encourage her to eat or that he actually ate that much, she didn't point it out.
"Well, after your tirade of anger and resentment, and once your bottle of green juice was gone, you went to get sodas for the Robinson's. I went to tell you their daughter couldn't have soda, and you were just…lying there," he finished, staring blankly at the wall behind her. "Your pulse was thready, and Stan told me to take you to the hospital. I brought you here. Wouldn't want you to wreak havoc on a few poor nurses when you woke up because you were a little bit stressed out. Besides, I knew you hadn't slept in a few days, and your crappy diet is making you edgy. And weak."
Mary grimaced. "I'm sorry, about the lashing out part. Things are…rough at the house right now. I haven't been back there since I told Brandi and Jinx to get out. Plus the Robinson's relocation, and paperwork from the last few cases, I just figured if I stayed up I'd get more done. Bad idea I guess. And thanks…for not taking me to the hospital."
He shook his head, shoving a few bites of the pancakes into his mouth. She did the same. They were delicious. "Just…don't tell Stan. I think I he figured I'd take you to your house. But Mary…seriously…" he caught her gaze. "You can stay here for a few days. If that's what you need. Your mom called your cell a few hours ago and I told her we were in the process of transporting witnesses. That covers at least two days."
"Are you sure?" she asked cautiously. Her easy agreement surprised him, but he didn't let it show.
"Positive. I told Stan I wasn't coming in tomorrow anyway," Marshall said like he'd already known her answer.
"Thank you."
They ate the rest of their dinner of breakfast food in comfortable silence. Something Mary never knew really existed.
Something, she thought oddly, she liked.
(The lyrics are "Safe As Houses" by The Weepies…and this is my first multi-chapter fic. Next installment…soon…)