Notes: Written just after Episode 6 aired, set just after the events of Episode 5 (so, one year before Daisy, Tyler and LouAnne are on the run from the Widowmaker's thugs). This fic assumes that Tyler and Daisy's boss is female, which I don't think is a great stretch of the imagination considering that pretty much all of the principal characters in the Girltrash! universe are women. Concrit is welcomed. Rated for language, implied violence and sexual content. All pairings are F/F.

Thanks: To Alicia, an awesome friend and fellow Girltrash! fan, without whom this fic would be made of epic suckage.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Angela Robinson/Girlpop Productions and Ourchart.

Who does she think she is? Fucking Judge Melinda fucking Cragen. Does she think I don't know my own mind? God, I don't even know what she thinks. Or if she thinks at all. The woman must be insane. That's the only reason she'd be sneaking around on her husband with LouAnne Dubois. Only reason she'd be thinking Dubois is worth all that cash. As if all the cash in the world could make LouAnne stay with her for more than five seconds. It's common knowledge that Dubois sleeps with everything that moves, and some things that don't.

Fucking queen bitch Cragen. Slapping a wad of cash as thick as my arm onto the bar, ordering me to go outside and tear Tyler and LouAnne apart. Like she thinks if she barked at me to jump, I'd be all, "Ooooh, how high? And also, can I lick the mud off your shoes?" Like she thinks she's got something on me, or- something. Does she think I'm scared of her? Does she think I'm crapping my pants with fear right now, terrified that if I don't do exactly as she says next time we meet, she'll blab my deep dark secret to Tyler?

I'm not scared. Not one tiny bit, because there is no deep dark secret. I'm not scared, just stumped as to how someone can be that stupid and get to be a Supreme Court judge. It doesn't say much for our justice system.

How could she think I feel that way about Tyler? Did I give off a vibe or something? Did I- I dunno, look too happy when I walked into the bar with her? Did I laugh too loud at her jokes? I put my arm around her when we sat down. Maybe that was what Cragen saw?

Well, so what? Plenty of chicks hug their friends in public. I put my arm around her one time, and instantly it means I'm in love with her? Fuck that. Who does Cragen think she is? Who does she think I am? Some lovesick sap without a life of her own, pining after her best friend? Fucking fuck that!

I have a life, thank you very much. Not only do I have a life, but I also have a love life. A sex life too, come to that. I've had a crapload of girlfriends. Maybe not as many as Tyler, and definitely not as many as Tyler's new squeeze, that walking STD LouAnne Dubois, but a decent amount. A few times Tyler and I have liked the same girls. Sometimes they go for Tyler, other times they pick me instead. Tyler and I don't let those ones get in the way of our friendship. (Although Tyler still gets pissy whenever Joyce's name crops up. She took that one hard.)

My love life is perfectly fine. I have no reason to be lusting after Tyler, let alone being in love with her or anything.

Still. To tell the complete truth, I don't get… y'know, romantic about my girlfriends. Not in the traditional sense, anyhow. Tyler gives me all this shit about it, tells me I'm a cheapskate because I don't blow my entire cut on every single job showing girls a good time. That was a particularly sore point with her when that whole Joyce thing was going on, as she couldn't see why Joyce would choose to date someone who wouldn't spring for a nice hotel room. That, and the fact that Joyce and I broke up after a week and a half. I pointed out that it meant she was in with a shot, but she told me to go fuck myself sideways, all, "You expect me to take your goddamn leftovers?"

I don't know how she can get all high and mighty about me supposedly being cheap. I mean, I buy her drinks whenever we go out. I've bought her breakfast a bunch of times in the last month too. Not to mention lunch and dinner. Managing her money isn't one of Tyler's strengths. I mean, why do you think she lives out of her fucking car?

I've always been good with money. When I was a kid and I used to go through people's wallets, half the time it wasn't even because I wanted to rob them or anything. Most times, it was just me having fun seeing how quickly I could count the bills, figuring out in my head how much junk I could buy with the notes in my little girl hands. What can I say? I was a weird kid.

I'm good with money because I'm good with- I dunno, logic and shit, I guess. That means I've always been good with women as well. I can count the number of dates I actually paid for in high school on one hand. My philosophy was, why fumble with notes at the ticket booth outside the movies when it made for a way more memorable date to try and sneak in? That's always been my goal: to make the best of things for myself, while making things as interesting as possible for the people who are along for the ride. I don't like to be too comfortable, you understand. I want to live.

Seeing as Tyler continually gives me shit about my severe "romantic retardation" (as she calls it), I caved this one time and sent flowers to (which one? Carrie? Delilah?) one of my girlfriends, just to prove to Tyler that I could be romantic too. Tyler mocked me without mercy for months. I should've seen that coming. Even Tyler doesn't go so far as to send gifts.

With Tyler, I'm damned if I do, and I'm damned if I don't. I can't fucking win.

I couldn't be in love with Tyler. For starters, she's my best friend, which kinda goes without saying, but the real point is that we're so close she knows lots of ways to make me blow up. Example: we attempted to live together a few years ago. She's the only person I ever wanted to move in with. A few of my girlfriends have brought it up in the past, but I always changed the subject. I can't help it; I just like my space. Still, I thought, maybe because Tyler was a girl who was a friend rather than a girlfriend, it'd be kind of cool to live together. Sort of comfortable, and not threatening. Like living with my kid sister Colby, only Tyler doesn't whine constantly and call me at all fucking hours of the night, begging me to come and pick her up from parties.

It didn't work out. Tyler and me, we drove each other crazy. I mean, we drive each other crazy regardless of whether we're living under the same roof, but she kept moving all my stuff around and swiping my smokes. Which would have been bearable, had I not come home to find her doing some girl on my kitchen table.

Jesus motherfucking Christ. It wasn't as if they didn't have plenty of other places to do it- as in, maybe, places where there wasn't every chance I would walk in on them in the next three seconds? My building has a laundry room, and there's a perfectly good fire escape just outside the kitchen window if they wanted to be kinky about the whole thing. It wasn't even as if I was making her sleep on the couch. Tyler had a bed. It was a single and all, but she had a bed! And yet she chose to do it with this chick on my kitchen table. I had to eat off that table!

I like to think that I was very cool about the whole deal. I'm a grown-up, I understand about having needs and shit. I mean, I don't think I would've been upset if Tyler had just been discreet about it, brought a girl home and done her semi-quietly in bed. Seeing them on the table, though…

I backed out of the kitchen without making a peep. I don't think they even realised I'd walked in on them. I went and sat in the living room, turned up the TV to try and drown out the sounds of loud energetic sex coming from my kitchen, and sat there with my eyes fixed on the screen. I didn't so much as flinch, not even when they came stumbling out of the kitchen half-dressed, all giggly and sex-haired (although with Tyler, you can hardly tell the difference). Not even when they made out by the front door, for about ten minutes at a stretch. You can't say I'm not a good friend.

Then Tyler's sex buddy left, and shit went down. We had this humungous fucking argument. Things were said, objects were thrown (unbreakables), guns were drawn (but not fired), Tyler stormed into the laundry room and kicked one of the washers so hard it still has the dent to this day. I sulked, she brooded. Eventually, we made up. We don't usually, y'know, do the whole formal apology thing unless we've had a big argument. This one was a doozy, so it called for the exchange of "I'm sorry"s. She quietly moved out the next day. I put the kitchen table out on the curb the day after that.

It's not like we've put a complete ban on sleeping under the same roof. This one time Tyler was going through kind of a rough patch. This girl she was actually getting pretty attached to broke it off with her for basically no reason, and then Tyler's car started acting up. There was something wrong with the exhaust, as I recall. The fumes didn't go out the exhaust pipe like they were supposed to, they were cycled back into the car- the two of us nearly got gassed to death sitting in a fucking traffic jam. Tyler couldn't drive the Grand Torino until we could get it fixed. Couldn't sleep in it either, because it was at the garage. The look on her face when they took it in damn near broke my heart. What kind of monster would I be if I didn't offer my best friend a place to crash? She looked kind of doubtful when I first suggested it, seeing as it hadn't even been a year since the sex-on-my-kitchen-table incident, but the second time she stayed with me went pretty smoothly if I do say so myself. That was only for four days, though. Four days seems to be the limit.

That was what made me figure it out. Tyler and me, we're as close as two people can be without sleeping together. Sometimes we need that little bit of space, otherwise it'd get kind of scary, having somebody who knows you as scarily well as the two of us know each other.

I like my space. So does Tyler. How could we be in love and still have that space? It wouldn't work. It'd freak us out, and then it'd all just be completely fucked. Judge Cragen doesn't see that, and that's why she thinks I'm in love with Tyler. She just sees us having a drink together, me laughing at her jokes, and she just jumps to all these stupid conclusions… My point is, Cragen doesn't know about the crucial issue of space.

I'm not completely unreasonable. Make no mistake, Judge Cragen is now officially a lifer on the Daisy Robson Shitlist, but I can see how some people might assume there's something between Tyler and me. The staffs at all our usual haunts know us as a pair: Tyler and Daisy, Daisy and Tyler. They see us come in together, leave together. I'm sure there a few people around who are convinced that we must be fucking in secret.

I guess- in some bizarro world, I could picture caring about Tyler in that girlfriend kind of way. And you know what? Crazy as it might sound, I can sometimes imagine her caring about me that way too. She might have a lot of girlfriends, she might have a lot of sex, but there are some things about Tyler that I've seen, that she wouldn't dream of letting her girlfriends in on.

Like the first time she ever had to kill someone. The boss wanted us to take care of this guy for her, and she thought her newest employee- Tyler- ought to do it as a show of loyalty. Tyler put a bullet in the guy, no problem. I was pretty freaking proud of her, let me tell you. It was only when we had got a good way away from the crime scene that I realised that she was white as a sheet, and hadn't spoken a word since she'd pulled the trigger.

"Hey, are you OK?" I asked her.

"Fuck," she muttered, and ran her hands through her hair. "Oh, fuck," she said again, and started fumbling for her cigarettes.

Back then, she and I didn't know each other that well. We'd only just started hanging out together outside of work hours. The boss had given me the job of showing Tyler the ropes. We got on all right. Back then, it was all just casual. As casual as, say, LouAnne Dubois' sex life.

"Dude, are you OK?" I asked.

Tyler blurted out, "I need a drink."

"I'll buy you one," I said, clapping her on the back.

"I need a lot of drinks."

"Well, you can buy a lot of drinks now," I said cheerfully. "I mean, how big did the boss say your bonus was gonna be?"

"That was intense," Tyler muttered. She was trying to regain her balance, trying to do her patented Tyler strut, but as far as struts go this one rated about a four out of ten. There was something throwing her off. I stared at her, and then I realised was it was. She was shaking.

"Tyler, are you sh- OK?" I asked. I couldn't bring myself to actually say the word "shaking." That was just way too creepy and up-close and personal for me.

"I'm fine. I just need to keep walking."

I rolled my eyes. "You need to sit down and breathe." I hauled her over to the curb and made her sit. "Breathe. Clear your head."

Tyler sat and breathed in and out, and then, to my shock, buried her face in her hands. I waited for her to burst into tears, but she just stayed like that. I admired that she didn't start bawling. Still, seeing her that way… was so, so different to the way I'd known her the previous few months. We were both so young, and yet she was this total badass who could outdo chicks who'd been in the business for longer than she'd been alive. And there she was, sitting on the curb and looking like I'd cracked her over the head with a sledgehammer.

Finally, I ventured, "You can get out of this business, if you want. Like, if you can't handle it…"

"I can so handle it!" She gave me her murderous glare of death (another patented Tyler Murphy original). Then Tyler faltered, and said, "I just didn't think it was gonna be like that."

As far as executions go, that one had gone off without so much as a hiccup, so I didn't really know exactly what Tyler was wigging about. I reminded myself that I had been new to it once, and said, "It's different for everybody."

"Does it get better?"

I shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

We sat there for a few more minutes. "I think I'm OK now," she said finally.

I jumped to my feet. "There, what'd I tell ya? So, can I buy you that drink?"

"I'd like that." She got up from the curb, ran her fingers through her hair again, and then said, "You're not gonna tell anyone that I freaked out, are you?"

I promised I wouldn't. How could I not? The last thing I wanted was to cramp her style. She had it in spades, even back then. The very next time we had to get rid of someone for the boss, I actually suggested that she wait with the car. Tyler refused, saying, "'Preciate it, man, but I gotta be a grown-up about this." She led the way into danger and straight back out again. She was the one who blew the target away, right in front of me. I was impressed, let me tell you. Later, when we were celebrating a job well done, she put on a brave face in front of her date. Her date thought Tyler was the coolest chick who ever lived. So did I, but I was the one who saw her looking silently furious with herself at odd moments. She'd catch me looking, and she'd throw me a grin, acting like everything was cool. If her date had spotted those little furious moments, Tyler would've denied it like crazy and broken up with her so fast the girl's head would've been spinning. Tyler's OK with me seeing her at her weirder moments.

And she's OK with me hearing her weirder ideas, too. This past New Year's, the two of us were sitting out on the front stoop of my building, a line of liquor bottles on the step between us. I managed to blurt out, "Now, this is important, Tyler. What are our New Year's revolsutions- reversations- fuck it, you know what I'm talking about."

"Yeah, OK," she said, nodding. "All right, I think I got one. I'm giving up my vices. Going on the straight and narrow."

We didn't stop laughing for about five minutes at that one. I managed to calm down long enough to blurt out, "Here's mine, OK? I'm gonna- I'm gonna, like… I dunno, not call Colby a dumbshit- to her face."

She cackled. "I'm gonna join Oprah's book club!"

"I'm gonna start taping Dr Phil!"

We rolled with the joke, making as many stupid New Year's reservations as we could think of. The two of us were trying to recover from giggles when Tyler said, seriously, "I think I've got one. A real one."

"Oh, yeah? So tell me."

"No more killing people."

Somehow, all the laughter in me just died when I saw how serious she looked. Serious, and sad. She'd gone from a rowdy, laughing-like-a-jackass drunk to a gloomy drunk in all of four seconds. "No more killing?" I repeated.

"No more, man," she said firmly. "And if I swear not to, you have to swear not to, too."

I thought about this for a minute. "What about- you know, self-defense?"

"Self-defense, sure. But not for money. It's lame to kill for money."

"Since when?" I demanded.

"Since now!" She snapped. We stared at each other for a second, and then Tyler turned to look at the street. She said, almost too quietly for me to hear, "It keeps me up at nights."

I gaped. "Seriously?"

Tyler flinched. I don't think she intended for me to hear that last part. She said, "If you tell anybody that, Daisy, I swear to God your life won't be worth living."

"Stop stressing. I'm not about to go put on a billboard that you're getting all squirrelly about killing people. You gotta know, though, Tyler- it doesn't exactly keep me lying awake at nights."

"Please, Daisy? We've gotta present a- what do you call it?- a united front to the boss about this. She could get rid of me. Or both of us. There's a lot of two-bit hacks in this town who can do everything we do, plus they throw in the bonus of offing a guy for two hundred bucks or less."

"Woman wouldn't get rid of us!" I shouted, thumping my fist against the step and making Tyler snicker. "Killers for hire are a dime a dozen, but there's only one Tyler Murphy and Daisy Robson."

Tyler laughed. "True, true. We are pretty fucking special."

"I didn't know you felt so bad about it," I said. "All these years? Jesus, Tyler, you should've said something. I feel crappy now. You made me feel crappy at New Year!"

She didn't say anything.

"We'd be taking a pay cut, Tyler."

"I know. I don't care about that. I just- really need your help with this."

I gave this some more thought. I thought about how I'd never have to see her get all silent and angry and brooding again- at least, not about that particular thing. There's not a force on earth that can stop Tyler brooding when she gets pissy.

"OK, fine, I'm in. No killing anybody for one year. We'll make the- the, what is it now? - resevalation again next year too. It can be our Every Single Year's revelation."

"No killing?" She was already looking relieved.

"No killing. More tequila, amiga?"

So you see, Tyler tends to let me in more than she does her actual girlfriends. Or her friends, even. I've got the honour of being the only one of Tyler's circle of friends to meet her mom since she was seventeen. You know how Tyler is so cool and collected, just going on her merry way, making sly little jokes- until you get her angry, and then she's a fucking force of nature? Well, Mrs Murphy is like an older, quieter, somehow even scarier version of Tyler. And she liked me, she really did.

Tyler didn't make a big thing out of introducing us. We walked into the kitchen of Tyler's mom's house- can't even remember what we were there for, now. There Mrs Murphy was, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Mrs Murphy gives us the stinkeye, so Tyler gestures between me and her mom, saying, "Mom, this is Daisy. Daisy, my mom." Then she went digging in the refrigerator for a beer.

"Hey," I said. "Can I bum a smoke?"

Mrs Murphy looked at me for ages, and finally pushed one of the more bent ones at me. I sat down opposite her and lit up. As I was puffing away Tyler's mom said, completely out of the blue, "So you're the famous Daisy."

Tyler looked over her shoulder at her mom, annoyed. "Mom," she said, "shut up."

Mrs Murphy felt the need to tell me, "Tyler never shuts up about you, you know."

Tyler was rolling her eyes to try and cover up the fact that she was cringing. I grinned at the info. "Oh, really?" I said, smirking at Tyler. "What does she say?"

"Never you mind what I say. Don't you say a word, Mom."

"That's Mrs Murphy to you," she snapped, glaring Tyler's way. She fixed her gaze on me. "And to you too."

"Sure, Mrs Murphy," I said, shrugging.

"Hey, Mrs Murphy," Tyler said sarcastically, and nudged the box she'd set in the doorway with her foot. "We brought you a new toaster since your old one committed electrical suicide on you. You gonna thank us?"

Mrs Murphy stubbed out her cigarette; moved over, picked up the box, and looked at it from every angle you can think of. Then she nodded, said to Tyler, "I can tell I like this one.", put the box back down and shuffled off to go watch TV.

Tyler joined me at the kitchen table. "Brown-noser."

I sneered. "Just 'cause your mom likes me more than you's no reason to call me names, man."

"In case you didn't catch that, she just gave us her blessing."

"She- what? She did? Shit, I thought she was talking about the toaster. Your mom knows we're just friends, right?"

"I've told her repeatedly. Let's bail, the goodwill visit's over."

"Dude, no way am I leaving now! I'm just getting started. Your mom got any embarrassing childhood photos of you around the place?"

She grinned. "We, uh, didn't own a camera growing up."

"Liar."

So I've seen her at her least cool and I still think she's got insane amounts of style. Big friggin' whoop. So she feels that she can trust me with private stuff. Who cares? So I have reason to believe that a bunch of people, including Tyler's mother, think that we're already an item. None of that means that I have feelings for her!

It's not like I'm being completely stubborn about all this. If we could just revisit that loony bizarro world for a second, I'll admit that in Bizarro Land, I could be attracted to Tyler. It's OK for me to admit that to myself, because I don't fixate on the little details. I just calmly acknowledge the entire package. If I were to start, say, obsessing over her blue eyes or her killer grin or the way her long fingers look when they're bringing a cigarette to her lips, then I'd know I was in trouble. But I don't. Thank God.

… I mean, I'm around her all the time. I'd have to be blind not to see that Tyler's good-looking.

I suppose that, in a bizarro world setting, Tyler could be attracted to me. I happen to know that she likes blondes. Also, she checks me out when she's drunk. And when she's not so drunk, if you get my meaning. I don't mind it because, y'know, it's nice to have a hot girl look you up and down, and smile just a little bit at what she sees. It's good to know that someone who's been around you so much, for so long, is still motivated to take notice. It's an ego boost, is all.

And that is all. I mean it! I cannot feel that way about Tyler. We- we work together, for Christsake! It's dangerous work. Us just being good friends is more or less toeing the line of what's professional. We're already too involved as it is. It would be a complete fucking disaster, working with someone you loved that way. Anybody could intimidate you into doing exactly what they wanted, just by holding a gun to your girlfriend's head. Can you imagine how much shit you'd be in, if it got out that you were dating your partner? Everybody would be looking to take advantage.

Fucking Cragen. Fucking LouAnne. All of this is their fault. I wouldn't even be thinking about any of this if it hadn't been for them. Tyler's pissed at me 'cause I lured her away from LouAnne before she could even get her number, so she's gone off to brood somewhere and I'm stuck by myself, trying to think of what it could have been. What was the thing that made Cragen think I'm in love with Tyler? She doesn't know about me witnessing Tyler's less cool moments or meeting her mom or getting let in on her private stuff. She only saw us for two minutes, in a public place.

"Does your friend know that you're in love with her?" That's what she said. Does everybody who sees us together in public think that? Do they all think that I'm in love with Tyler, and that Tyler is… not necessarily feeling the same way?

God, this is gonna drive me out of my mind. I've got to figure out what it was that tipped her off.

I looked psyched when I walked in with her. I put my arm around her. I bought us drinks. I laughed at her jokes. I… wait a sec. I offered her a hundred bucks not to go after LouAnne. Oh, that must've been it! Some would say that goes a little above and beyond the call of duty. I'll admit it's a little extreme, but they're nuts if they think it means I'm in love with her. Am I not allowed to look out for a friend now? Like, is it against the law to not want your friend to get syphilis?

Yet- suddenly I'm thinking of how Cragen offered me two grand to keep LouAnne away from Tyler. She was so desperate to keep LouAnne all for herself. Maybe she thinks I'm the same way about Tyler?

It's probably not like that. Cragen was just manipulating me, pure and simple. I wouldn't put it past her. Perhaps she came over and accused me of being in love with Tyler to manipulate me. It was just a shot in the dark. I mean, I could've been Tyler's sister for all she knew, but she said it in the hope that she would actually be on the money and I would go outside and split up Tyler from LouAnne for her. In the hope that I would react like somebody who was in love with Tyler.

Which is exactly how I reacted.

I'm an idiot. Why do I do this to myself? I shouldn't have been thinking about any of this. I've spent the last hour thinking up reasons why people might think I'm in love with Tyler even though I'm actually not, and thinking up reasons why I could be in love with Tyler just so I don't look totally unreasonable. Now, after all that… I think I might be.

… Fuck.

I wonder if everyone can see it.

I wonder if Tyler can see it.