Dying sunlight of a late November afternoon was lazily lighting up the firehall, making dust dance in its rays. No one was around except for the Ghostbusters' secretary, currently busy talking on the phone. She kept the earpiece balanced on her shoulder as she filed her nails and almost dropped it when whoever was at the other end of the line gave her huge news.
"No kiddin'? Forreal?"
She barely noticed the garage's doors opening and the car being parked in its usual spot, so much she was enthrilled.
As Ecto1's engine was turned off, the guys could hear Janine's voice raise in a joyful laughter and as they tidied up the car, a variety of giggles and delighted squeals hanging in the air.
Call ended, Peter sat down on Janine's desk, right next to the phone. - "That sounded like an interesting call."- his finger slid in between the phone's buttons, digging up dust and making him hastily rub it against his leg. He grimaced. - "Wasn't some rich client, was it?"
"No, Dr V, it wasn't"- the secretary replied nonchalantly as she set aside the file and resumed feeding data into the computer - "It was someone much more important."
"Define 'important'"- he interposed his face between Janine's and the monitor, noticing how her eyes still sparkled.
Erupting from her chair, she locked him in a deathhug- "It's so wonderful!"- she shrieked in delight.
Her reaction made the other men gather up around the desk.
"What's wonderful, Janine?"- Ray ventured, cleaning his hands with a rag.
"My friend just called and she's gonna get married!"- she announced letting go of the psychologist, who seriously risked rolling off the desk.- "I'm so happy for her!"
The auburn haired man's face lit up almost to match hers and produced a big smile- "That's great news! Give her our best regards!"
Wiston was about to say something when his eye caught a glimpse of the physicist slowly walking towards the stairs. He suppressed a smile, pretending he didn't see nothing.
"Thank you Ray"- Janine quickly combed a stray lock of hair into place, regaining composure before shooting a dark look to the man on the stairs, pinning him where he stood- "Although I'd have preferred to hear those words from someone else."
"Gotcha there"- Winston finally allowed himself to laugh, meeting Peter's amused look.
"Uhm..."- Egon leaned over the handrailing. On Earth as well as on a couple of parallel dimentions there was a small number of entities able to make his voice unsteady; Janine happened to be one of them.- "...Greetings?"
She shook her head, inhaled deeply and went back to her data feeding task- "You really don't get it, do you?"- she sighed in an undertone, letting the matter drop.
"You really ticked her off earlier"- Peter casually slipped in during dinner. That omelette surely was one of their worst culinary experiments.
"I believe it's none of your businness, Doctor."- dryly replied the physicist as he donated his share of food to an extremely happy Slimer.
"Hard to admit it, but Pete's right"- Winston put in, moving aside just in time not to be slimed by their ghostly friend. Peter produced a protesting sound, but his face was amused: Egon was already starting to look uneasy. Winston resumed talking- "You gotta accept that since Ahriman attacked us your relationship developed a lot. Don't you think it's normal for her to start to feel the need to create a new family?"
Egon's face would have seemed perfectly neutral to anyone, but they noticed one eyebrow slightly contracting. His mind wandered through those past two years: the news of her friends getting married always left a bittersweet shadow in her eyes. News of them having kids left her closed up in a weird mutism. That day they decided to have a stroll at Central Park and he noticed her glancing to the many young couples playing with their children.
A dry "Oh." escaped his lips the moment it all got to him.
Before anyone could make any kind of remark, he excused himself muttering something about some experiment he absolutely had to finish and exited the room a tad too quickly.
Another sunny day passed, then a rainy one came, then again a sunny one.
Janine hit the 'save' key and closed the writing program. Billing was such a boring task, especially on such a warm day. The street door was closed, no one called in hours. She stretched her arms and yawned, reaching then for her purse. Looked like a good moment to take a break and take care of her nails. Then maybe a good coffee.
She nodded mentally and got rid of her shoes, resting her numb legs over the desk. Doing so she accidentally hit the purse, that rolled on one side: a photo slid out and she commanded her abs to do her a favour and let her grab the piece of plastified paper before it flew off the desk – possibly without falling to the ground herself in the meanwhile.
It was a pic from the latest family dinner held at her parent's place. Egon was there aswell and the shutter caught the exact moment he made an amused smile to her youngest niece, offering him her doll.
"He does like kids"- she thought to herself- "And he's good at dealing with them, so why just couldn't we..."
She shook her head- "Stop this immediately, Melnitz." - she mentally commanded to herself- "You're borderlining obsessive here. Took the guy a lifetime to realize his dream, you know a family would hold him up." - she sighed- "Yeah, the guys are family. They are to me too... Why can't I just erase this thought?"
Drawing out her pocket mirror, she critically looked at her face- "Well, that's cause you're gonna be thirty soon."
Her monologue with herself couldn't continue further as she was distracted by the garage door opening. She took her legs off the desk and quickly tucked away the photo and the mirror. Lifting her head to perform her usual scan of the guys made her blood freeze.
They evidently had just gone through a bad bust. The car was a mess of mud and dust, and its occupants looked as messy. First one stepping out of Ecto was Peter: his left wrist was bandaged. He helped out of the car their occultist, whose forehead carried a long cut. It wasn't bandaged so the secretary assumed it was superficial, although looking bad. They were followed by Winston – his hair grey with dust- and Egon, carrying a forming bruise on his right cheekbone.
She let out a sigh of relief. No serious wounds taken that day and luckily bad busts had decreased over the years, thanks to their growing experience.
She stood up and walked towards them for her ritual close-up checkup - "You ok, guys?"
"Don't worry, Janine"- Ray smiled, immediately regretting it because a scratch on his cheeck sent an itchy wave of pain to his system.- "It's only a couple of bruises."
"This is no bruise."- Peter muttered massaging his injured wrist, he had an angry look on his face.
The woman eyed him with a shade of worry- "What happened?"
"Bastard made me lose my balance and I fell at the wrong angle."- he put up his standard grin and patted her shoulder as he walked towards the stairs- "Shower's mine!"
Janine wondered how stupid accidents like such always made his blood boil. Cause that's when you get hurt the most. She turned to the guys again to ask for more information about that bust, but before she could ask Winston filled her in.
"We failed to trap the gooper on first try and it bounced right out of the trap and bumped into Peter."- He paused a second to dust off his head- "His thrower slipped off his hand and a loose stream made a ledge fall on us."
Janine stepped back as Ray helped the black man freeing his hair from layers of lime. She needed a good motive to risk ruining her favourite shirt, afterall.
"I might be out of spare glasses"- Egon stated, drawing a pair of shattered glasses from his front pocket. Those glasses had seen better days.
"Just be glad it didn't happen to you, man".
Egon smiled at Winston's down-to-earth remark and threw the useless glasses into the trashbin.
"You should ditch glasses and start using contacts on a daily basis, y'know?"
Janine commented while awkwardly straddling Egon on the couch, trying to get a drop of artificial tears to fall clean on his eye- "Can't you stop blinking? C'mon!" - she giggled, losing her balance for a scary second.
The man steadied her by grabbing her shoulders- "Hey! You almost poked my eye out!"
"That's cause you kept blinking!"- she started laughing, bracing herself on his shoulders as she shifted position.
"I'm blinking cause these contact lenses hurt!"- he tried not to, but he ended up laughing with her - "Hand over your weapon!"
She shook her head and brought the little bottle to her chest- "Mine."
Her eyes sparkled in a playful amusement. When they first started dating she could never ever imagine one day she'd be having a tickle fight on an old squeaky couch with uber-serious, uber-controlled Egon Spengler.
She'd usually lure him with the promise of dinner or to accompany him to any event of his liking and then try to get him to her bedroom. Sometimes she'd win, sometimes she'd lose. Sometimes they'd even end up in a tie, when someone would fall asleep on the couch even before game started. Offcourse that someone was never her, but couldn't blame the guy for being dead tired after an intense day.
She stopped wondering about their nights together when she found herself restrained with her back on the couch and his arms tightly holding her still. She hoped for a romantic exploit.
His lips came real close to her ear, to the point she could feel his warm breath.
"This thing will break if we keep on abusing it with childish games"
Barely holding a sigh to his obvious missing of a good chance of romance, she turned her face to meet his eyes- "You know, you just missed your kissing cue, Egon."
"Oh. I apologize." - he was having a hard time learning not to miss vital cues.
She smiled the same smile her mom would give her when failing on a school test and sat up, pushing him up with her. The couch gave an alarming loud squeak.
"This couch needs to be thrown out asap"- she moaned, feeling a hard lump pushing against her thigh. Probably a spring gave up and came loose.
He remained silent and she thought he was taking the chance to lubricate his eyes while she was busy poking the spring back into its original place, but the atmosphere felt a tad too heavy.
"What's wrong?"- she looked at his face. It was dangerously serious.
"I... I am sorry, Janine"- he said.
"No need to apologize, I was just joking."- the redhead slid an arm around his waist. - "I didn't mean to..."
"No, not about that."- he faintly smiled. Was that a shade of bitterness on his face?- "I'm just sorry it took me so long to understand your feelings."
"My feelings.."- she echoed, feeling lost.
"I thought back to the last year we spent together."- he glanced at her for a second, then resumed looking at the coffee table- "About the times you talked about your friends getting married, about the times you'd talk about their children or about your niece..."
She mentally slapped herself. She should have guessed he'd go there. "Stop this immediately"- she cut him off- "True, I dream of a family of my own. I don't deny it. But it's also true that I want it to be with you."
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but she placed a finger over his lips- "Your pace. We can do it, your pace."
He looked relieved and smiled, moving a bit aside to hold her against his chest.
"I hope I'll be still alive by then"- he whispered to her hair.
She shivered, holding him - "Egon... What's going on?"
He'd never make such statement if he didn't know something was seriously wrong. Ghosts had been all kinds of weird in the past weeks. Was some demon coming up?
"Tolay is coming to take his revenge on me."- he couldn't believe it himself, but the readings couldn't possibly be lying.
"You and the guys took down any kind of demon, god and demigod these past years. You'll win this fight too."- Janine's voice was absolutely confident.
He smiled, playing with a lock of her hair- "I hope you're right."