Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Note: Uh oh, so this one's another WIP. And it's not a romance, despite what the summary may suggest. Reviews, feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. Enjoy!

Oh, and this one's . . . strange. I'm a little nervous about posting it; it's partially a nonlinear narrative.

Characters: Buzz McNab, Francine McNab, Karen Vick, Carlton Lassiter, Juliet O'Hara, OFC, OMC

Rating: T

Official Entry for the 2010 Whumpathon on psychfic (dot) com

Location: Side of the road/deserted tattoo parlor

Whump: Bruises, stab wound, blunt force trauma

Whump Tool Kit: Blue ballpoint pen (Bic) and brass knuckles

Recipient: Buzz McNab

Summary: Did he make a mistake looking at her? Going to her car because she looked stranded? Didn't he know how much could love hurt? That it could kill?

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It Matches Her Eyes, When She Cries

A Psych Story

by silverluna

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Chapter One: Just The One Two Of Us Is Counting On

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They didn't bother to learn his name.

Names, to them, were never important. They knew the labels, believed in the stereotypes, and when it came down to it, the actual body of a human was a much better prize than the one or two words his parents had breathed on him upon his birth, shaping him from that moment, into what the name or names suggested.

They'd even adopted aliases, though these never changed. For as long as they both could remember, the names they'd given each other had stuck to their personalities with some kind of Super Glue. The names were never coming off. The labels were permanent, the stereotypes a given. They knew what they were: what they had always been.

# # #

Clyde leaned forward against the guardrail, almost able to make out the shape of her face, the outline of her nose, forehead, lips, chin, the curve of ear peaking from her dull, shoulder length hair, its whisper of "help"/"let me out" a muffled blur against the green, stagnant water below her. Of course, she did not really believe her ear had a voice of its own, but wasn't it sweet to think about it as a little face, like the one behind the bars, pleading with the eyes only: "Let me out."? Wasn't it sweet?

"Love hurts," she breathed.

In Santa Barbara, a woman Clyde had never met was getting out of bed, casting a loving glance towards her husband's side of the bed; he had left for work an hour before, but the shape of him, and his smell as well as some short hairs from his head still remained on the pillow next to hers. For her, love had not yet hurt to the point of her quitting it all together—even when she and her husband, then only her boyfriend, had only be kids arguing over what movie to see or in despair at being separated from one another during holidays. This woman remembered, briefly, her heart on a skewer, the thoughts in her head on a slant as if they were climbing up a mountain without her, when Buzz had first mentioned the Police Academy—selfishly, she had not wanted to lose him. They'd talked about it, then disagreed, then argued and fought viciously . . . until they'd both cried over his decisions. But he hadn't backed down. She knew she would have hated him forever if he had.

# # #

The instances Clyde considered to be pounding, screaming, and life threatening heart "attacks"—love at first sight—were not the moments more than a handful of the population would consider to be actual heart-stopping, ecstasy inducing bouts of chemical attraction set straight on a path of true love. But Clyde liked to be in love, liked those first moments of setting eyes on an attractive man, liked feeling warm, fuzzy, whole. She loved both the ones who played hard to get and the ones who came right over to buy her a drink, make small talk before inserting a line to satisfy their own lust.

As their game plan changed from year to year, she found adaption to new rules easy, since at her core, she still played the same games. Spot the target, widen your eyes, flutter your lashes, purse your lips seductively until . . . there, he looks right at you. He smiles, or turns away in disgust, or makes a lewd gesture, or gets up from his seat. Fall in love, right at this moment, now, have a reaction similar to fear, but make it warm, not cold. She always knew what to say.

"Want a ride, baby?"

"Want to dance?"

"Want to get out of here?"

They hardly ever said no, weren't as wily or street smart as their body language proclaimed. Many were easy to trick, to drug, to use, to leave. Sometimes, love killed.

This game was different, more on the fly and ad-libbed than their usual set. They had played with cops in other towns, but since that last speeding ticket, what her brother had on his mind was much more personal. Though, her in-love-out-of-love flurry of fury just might get in the way. . . .

# # #

Why . . . did everything hurt?

He remembered, for a moment, a patch of shade he'd stepped into after a walk through bright sunshine and crossing a double yellow lined road, leaning towards the radio on his shoulder, reaching for a weapon on his belt. He missed, in the heavy gray which followed, the boring safety of his air-conditioned patrol car.

"I need to speak to the person in charge." Pausing, breaths. "That you, babe?" Hiss. "As long as I have him, you'll be at my mercy." Carefully stated, thick with confidence.

Buzz listened groggily, maybe from the floor, unable to move. His limbs felt soldered to his body in twisted positions, and his ribs ached and he felt the weight of other pain pressing on his skin from underneath. Had he . . . gone into a forced sleep? Before, there were no metallic voices making demands. He remembered gradually, but each moment came with stabs of pain. The thoughts which came to him were scattered at best: Francine, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear; the ache of his large arms followed by a strange tingling in his toes; a food item he'd eaten last that had a shape and a name but he couldn't recall either for the life of him. For the life . . . of him. A swath of figurative darkness edged across his consciousness, and his ears hummed and he wanted to frown, or cough out loud but he couldn't.

Buzz recalled, with some vacancy of mind—was it a side effect? an after effect?—a smiling face of a young motorist, her skimpy clothing not the least bit alluring though he had admittedly looked. And looked. Her claim to be stranded. To this day, he swore that Francie was the only woman he ever loved, as if she were here, wagging her finger in his face, as if he were some bad dog. . . . He groaned. He couldn't see, speak, or move anything but his phalanges, a word that struck his as odd—the young woman had mentioned it with the lilt of an accent, too faint, too faint. He was cold then, and his thoughts stilled. The metallic voice was no longer speaking somewhere above him, but . . . was someone breathing, a focused breathing as if the face were turned in his direction, watching?

# # #

Sharp blue eyes, a sting of a kiss under his eye. "Don't be late," she said. She had woken up just to tell him this, her lips like talons, her voice a hush of reminder. (As if they hadn't talked for days, for weeks, about this special appointment.)

She had gone back to sleep almost immediately, falling back against the pillow as softly as a fairy tale heroine, primed to look delicate. Buzz McNab sighed, taking the extra seconds he'd need to sit in traffic to look her over with love, with an ache that he had to leave at all. He loved his job, but the love between the two of them was obviously much different.

# # #

He shifted, dully worried that his whole body moved worm-like against the hard surface of floor he was lying on. He forgotten for a moment what was going on. His limbs seemed . . . fused, together, against him. Again he moved and his body followed. He couldn't tell where any of his body parts were. He'd . . . had them all this morning, hadn't he?

He couldn't be sure what was real; he couldn't tell the difference between the moisture on his face to what may have also been on the back of his hands—was it all sweat? Could have been paint, or blood, though within his nostrils an unusual artificial odor was trapped, a berry smell, like Kool-Aid, flavored sweetener, or preteen lip gloss. His nose wrinkled at its unpleasantness, and he wondered what could smell like that and just from where he was smelling it.

"Officer," a sultry voice breathed over him, and he flinched. Nothing followed, like a chuckle or a step forward. All he knew for sure was that a woman's voice was somewhere above him and if it was attached to a person in the room with him, this person was not lifting a finger to help him. It didn't make sense—none of it, nothing . . . made sense right now. Buzz closed his eyes again.

Was it . . . at the car? The hood lifted, the young motorist bent sideways to accentuate her perfect curves, the blue laced corset pulled across her breasts very revealing. . . . In artificial darkness, Buzz felt his cheeks flush red, trying to imagine himself explaining to Francie that he'd only sauntered towards the woman because it was his duty and not because he was lustfully attracted to her. Was it . . . the oldest trick in the book he'd fallen for? When he'd been standing next to her and her innocent looks, innocently looking—at the engine—had he been as aware as he should have? Was the sunny day as naturally deceiving as always?

No . . . it wasn't quite right. They were waiting for a tow truck, standing off the road? But why, then had he reached for his gun?

He couldn't remember being hit, but he figured it was possible. At least, he wondered if he might have been hit on the head because he could feel something sticky along his hairline. But how could his ribs also hurt? Was he punched? Was there a fight? Could this be why the back of his hands, his knuckles felt almost wet too? When Buzz moved his head, his neck tingled up to his temple, stopping just under where he felt the stickiness. He moaned, taking his time with the sound the more he realized its hollow sound was due to something tight around his mouth. He started here and mentally traced his way down his body, letting the seconds, the minutes, maybe even hours pass as he fought for understanding as to why his limbs would not respond when he tried to move them.

At the back of this throat, the taste of orange. Hadn't she turned to him, offered him the dimpled orange skin sitting in her cupped palm, her eyes squinted in the sun, her small red lips hinting she was some kind of modern, vampy Eve? Buzz gulped, squinting under the blindfold, wondering with dread if the pulp had been spiked; this seemed absurd.

# # #

It always had to hurt, parting, and this was something they could agree on—they being the two women who had never met, yet before the day was done, they would.

Francine McNab would never grow accustomed to living the last day together each day, but she also refused to live her life, and his, in fear. Their life together was to be enjoyed, savored, never wasted. And though she would hold him tight, begging silently that he not be taken from her, she knew his job was what he wanted, and she had to let him go. But, only until the night, when his tour ended and he'd come home again. Or if he was away through the night, in the morning, he'd open the door to their bedroom and snuggle in beside her, holding her tight for those few hours until she needed to awaken for her work.

# # #

How were they going to find him? One call, one breath directed specifically to the SBPD, hissing, teasing, but only once. The voice who could be male or female (too hard to tell). That was all they got—no positive identification, no proof of life, just these simple words that may or may not be telling the truth through a distorted, mechanical voice.

The voice hadn't been recorded; it was barely etched into the tired head of the officer who'd answered, who'd patched the call to Karen Vick (the caller had asked to speak to the one in charge), who had sent it back, telling him to field it.

He had, and had given her the message immediately. There was doubt; which of her officers hadn't checked in when he or she was supposed to . . . he? The voice had said "he". And "mercy", which Vick suspected there was none, and wouldn't be, especially not for a person who'd premeditated an attack on one of her officers.

It was only a short time later that they discovered who—possibly discovered who—when Francine called, trying hard not to sound upset. Karen couldn't tell if she had already cried, if her chest had tightened and she'd felt lightheaded, because Mrs. McNab sounded strong like oak or steel over the phone. But Karen could also tell it was hard for Mrs. McNab to hold this shield, that its weight would crush her if she didn't let it go.

"I'm coming down there," Francie said.