Continues from Our Night. Maybe read it first, but methinks you can start here and pretty much get it.
Chapter One
Lena Adams Foster looked at the clock. They really hadn't got much sleep the night before. She smiled when she remembered why.
Her wife had fallen asleep with an arm draped over her waist. She could hear the soft sound of Stef's breathing and hated to have to wake her up. The curly-haired woman rolled over and watched the blonde half-smile with her eyes shut.
"When did you wake up?"
"About fifteen minutes ago. Had this amazing dream about us being in a hotel...and ice."
Lena kissed her nose. "That wasn't a dream, Mama Tiger. I have the extremely-private hickeys to prove it."
Stef opened her eyes wide as her cheeks began to burn up.
"Honey," Lena sighed "we have two hours to get to work."
"I thought we were going home first."
"Of course we are. I'm not going to a staff meeting dressed like I was last night."
Her wife laughed. "Well I always keep a spare uniform in my locker, so I technically don't have to go with you."
"We only took one car, remember?"
Someone's phone buzzed and lit up. It was Stef's.
"Mike says he's making breakfast for the kids. Looks like he stayed the night."
"This might be weird coming from me," Lena admitted "but I'm glad he was there with them last night. Now, how do we punish Mariana?"
"Thank you for ruining the morning cuddle."
"I'm serious," the curly-haired woman insisted "we can't have Mariana giving out our address to the internet. There are a lot of crazy people out there."
"And not to mention we have two hours to get to our jobs, which almost always require us NOT to stand out too much."
Lena kissed her. "One hour and fifty-five minutes."
"Stop counting or it'll go by faster."
"...and fifty-four minutes..."
"Fiiiine," the policewoman pulled away from their embrace, reluctantly stepped out of bed and stretched.
"Looks like I marked you too," her wife smiled.
She lay on her side with her hair cascading down her shoulders. The pre-dawn light made her brown skin glow as the rays bounced off the curve of her unclothed body.
"Ya'know," Stef proposed "we'd save more time, and water, if you joined me in the shower."
"You were AWESOME, Moms!" Mariana chirped as they walked into the kitchen.
"Yeah!" Jesus agreed as well "That guy went down like a...thing that goes down pretty fast."
"Good to see Timothy's English classes have been paying off," Stef smirked as she and Lena headed upstairs.
Mike looked out of place in an apron, but he made excellent coffee. Which the kids were drinking, despite their not being allowed to.
Lena walked back down to confiscate Jude's mug and went upstairs again.
Callie pointed at something on Mama's shoulder blade while Mariana squinted to see what it was. And then she had grimaced.
"What?" Jesus asked when the woman had left.
"She has a hickey."
"She has like three of them," Callie added.
"GROSS!" Jesus complained as he lost his appetite. "Old people shouldn't be giving people hickeys. It's like illegal."
"You guys know they're younger than I am, right?" Mike raised a thick eyebrow at them.
Mariana's phone rang.
"Yeah, this is she. And before you think of tracking this cell phone, I've disabled the locator chip AND used an app to fool your spyware. I bet you think I'm speaking from a police station right now. It's exactly where you'll end up if you keep harassing me."
"You need me to take care of that?" Mike asked her "There are some pretty sick people out there."
"Oh no. I want them to keep calling me back. The more elusive I am, the more I get paid for Moms' information."
"That's just wrong," Jude shook his head.
"I agree," Stef walked into the kitchen and took her daughter's phone, which she slipped into the back pocket of her uniform trousers.
"Mom!"
"You're not getting this back for a month," came the verdict.
"But what if I need to call people?"
"Consider it a history lesson," Lena remarked as she walked into the kitchen "reliving a time before cell phones were invented. How...ever...did...we...survive?"
She said the last parts while confiscating the other phones at the table.
"No fair!" The rest of the kids complained.
"What if we need to, like, call you guys or something?" Mariana argued.
"We're going to spend the whole day in the same compound," the Vice Principal shrugged "I'm sure you could manage to stop by my office."
"Plus you're all grounded," Stef added right after that as she snagged a piece of toast off Mike's plate.
"It was HER idea!" Four teenage voices – and index fingers – shouted.
"And you LET her do it," Mom continued "why do you think Mike came here last night? To share some pizza with you guys?"
"Why DID he come here anyway?" Mariana asked "Sorry to sound rude, Mike."
"No problem," he answered "and if you must know: I had to keep an eye on you guys. Reality TV people can be pretty cruel."
"But me and Brandon can guard the house," Jesus insisted.
"Yeah, totally," the musician agreed "we just lock all the doors and leave Jesus outside without his pills."
"You're grounded for making that joke," Lena informed him.
"Wow," everyone else at the table chorused.
"What?" The curly-haired woman asked, looking puzzled "Did I grow a beard or something?"
"You NEVER ground people," Brandon replied. Like everyone else, his mouth hung open when he didn't need to speak.
"I suspend and expel them, sure. Which one would you rather take?"
"I gotta head out," Mike got up.
"Thanks for making breakfast," Jude said.
"Good thing we waited for the kids to leave before we did this," Lena remarked as she placed the final phone on the driveway.
"It's not like they're not getting brand new ones when we're done," Stef said as she walked into the car.
She started up the engine and carefully reversed over the devices. Mariana's phone rang for a final time before it was crushed.
"No no no no no," Stef insisted as she dove out of the car "I'll do that."
"I've swept the driveway before, Stef."
"And now I want to do it," the policewoman insisted "after all, I made the mess."
"Look, let's both do it. Saves time, right?"
The blonde blushed and winked at the memory of the time-and-water-saving they had done in the shower earlier.
"Behave yourself, Stefanie Marie," came the warning, with the wagging finger.
Mike called when they were about to drive off.
"There've been...more videos," the man sighed "guys down at the station said they surfaced late last night and early this morning. One with singing waiters or something and the other with you guys in some kinda hallway. And Stef seems to be carrying you into a room or something."
"Oh no," Lena hid her face in her palms.
"Can you get them taken down?"
"Someone sold them to the Real Housewives. It's officially their property now. Plus they've stayed away from your home."
"Much good that does," Stef grunted "we're going to be identified. And someone's probably given them our address by now."
Lena anticipated what would come next, and decided to call her boss.
"I completely understand," Sanchez finally agreed "go to the police station first. The meeting's not until eleven thrity anyway."
"Thank you so much," the Vice Principal thanked, and hung up.
"How did you know they were gonna ask you to come down to the station?" Stef looked at her wife in wonder.
"I'm married to a cop," Lena shrugged.
"Captain Roberts is waiting for you guys," Mike continued "she says you should both go straight to her office."
"Why do I feel like I'm in trouble?" The curly-haired woman asked as Stef drove them to her place of work. "Do you know this is the second time in twenty four hours that we're going there?"
"Welcome to my world," the blonde sighed as the streets rushed past them.
"The videos have gone viral," Captain Roberts informed the women seated before her as she ran a hand over her neat afro.
She only touched her hair when she was thinking deeply about things. And very few things could make a woman with her experience in the force think that deeply.
"These things don't last, right?" Lena asked the room.
Stef and the Captain were the only others in there, and they both nodded.
"But before they die out, they can get pretty nasty," Stef added.
"Your address has been posted on reddit, 4chan and 8chan. Most of the posts about you focus on how good you look together. The rest are basically pornographic, and mostly sick."
"But it will die out."
"Evan Markham senior is a really rich person. I'd say this is more about him than it is about you."
"Then why isn't anyone posting the address to his McMansion on redchan or whatever it's called?" Stef asked.
"Because he can pay for the best security, and you can't," the Captain informed them "now don't get me wrong: the guy is a scum bag. But you guys are too easy to take down. From what I can see in the online activity, especially in the past hour, there's a conspiracy that's been hatched about how you could both be involved in the case. That you're somehow in cahoots with the Markham triplets to take their father down."
"Oh come on," Stef complained.
"Smack the father in the head with a shoe, then wind up at his restaurant with his son singing to you an hour later?"
"It was a coincidence," Lena defended "we made that reservation weeks ago. And does everyone know who owns each place they eat at?"
"The people in these chat rooms are unstable," the Captain continued "they're looking for someone to pick on. And it looks as if the reckless multi-millionaire isn't going to be the one they swarm after."
"So what do we do?"
"Confiscate your kids' cell phones."
"We crushed them in the driveway this morning," Stef replied "Lena's idea."
"Good," the Captain agreed "the next step won't be so...appealing to you."
Hello, all. Please review. And thanks for the support you showed for Our Night.