Lame title is lame.

So, just as a little warning...I've kind of grabbed continuity (and discontinuity) from wherever I wanted to. This is kind of a mash-up between the movies and the cartoon. I've ignored Janine's chickification completely, though

I put it in the RGB section, cause I went with those character designs.

Anyway, herp derp here have a story!

Typology

"Morning, Dr. Spengler." She trilled. He handed her two traps, still warm and smoking.

"Janine, would you mind taking these down to the containment unit? I need to wash up a bit." Egon Spengler picked a glob of ectoplasm (Purple this time, very interesting.) from his hair and smeared it into one of the petri dishes he had been carrying around in the breast pocket of his slate-blue flightsuit.

"Right." She said, shifting the traps to one hand and wiping some of the same slime off on her mini-skirt. "Good thing I wore a black skirt today. Early bust, guys?" She had planned on getting in before they even woke up today, but by the time she made it to her reception desk the Ghostbuster's base of operations had been empty. "Thanks for leaving a note, Egon."

"We wouldn't want you to worry, Janine." A second man in a similar suit walked up behind her and brought a heavy, slime covered hand down on her shoulder, which was contrarily clad in lime green silk. That was definitely gonna stain.

"Well, Dr. Venkmen, if anything bad had happened, at least I would have known that you were out there…" She smiled sweetly at Peter. "Just as dead as the rest of them."

"Aww, I didn't know you cared." He ruffled her hair with the same hand, for good measure, and darted up the stairs before she could clock him with one of the traps.

She collected empty traps from Ray and Winston as well, with reassurances of "No no, I've got it, you guys go clean up." She would usually grumble about anything outside of her job description, but with all that slime on them the boys were looking rough.

"Thanks, Janine. You're a peach." Winston said, patting her on the cheek with a dark, blessedly clean hand. He scrutinized the slick spot on her shoulder. "I'm sure we've got an extra shirt somewhere you could borrow."

"Maybe we ought to install a secondary shower." Ray mused, on the way up the stairs after Peter, who had called dibs on the bathroom before they even made it home.

"Or a decontamination pod. You know in five years, I've never once remembered to ask what long-term exposure to this stuff can do to you."

"Actually, there are a lot of theories." Ray said, enthusiastically, and the voices of he and his fellow 'buster faded as they reached the upper levels of the firehouse.

When she returned from emptying the traps in the basement, Egon was still standing behind her desk, studying the petri dish full of slime against the backlight of her desk lamp. The light shone off his glasses, giving him that mad scientist look that fit him so well. (And was probably pretty accurate to his personality.) He had pulled out her postage meter and a hand held microscope he had stashed in a drawer of her desk, and he looked about ready to sit down right there on the hardwood and perform a full spectral work-up.

"You sure you wanna get that stuff on the floor? It's a pain to clean up."

"Hm?" He looked up, then seemed to recall that he still had on his full kit - proton pack, uniform, utility belt, and layers and layers of ectoplasm - as if it were a simple thing to forget. "Right." He set the dish down, and hefted the pack by its straps, but somehow managed to get his hand caught under one of them in an awkward angle, with an "Ah, ah, ah…" Janine hurried over to help.

She freed his hand, so he could effectively remove the pack the rest of the way and then, being handy, she removed his utility belt and unzipped his uniform for him.

"Ah, thank you." He said, startled by the close quarters. And there, there… just for a second. He was focused on her with the same inquisitive scrutiny he usually reserved for parapsychic effluvia and slime molds. She imagined maybe she could detect a shakiness to his breath, so she blinked innocently and pouted discretely for good measure. He scrambled the rest of the way out of the uniform, dusting off the button-up shirt that was beneath it, shaking out his pant legs, then rotating his shoulder a couple of times.

"You all right, Eee-gon?" She said, trying to make her tone as saccharine as possible without letting it sound obviously contrived.

"A minor strain." He said. "Occupational hazard." She collected his slime covered uniform and folded it over her arm, hugging it slightly to herself, (No use pretending this shirt wasn't ruined anyway) and giving her cleavage a little boost in the process. He seemed to study her clavicles for a moment. And then, suddenly, his eye caught the petri dish again and he was gone. "I'll need to analyze this sample further. Perhaps Ray and I can use it to test out the Field Spectralmeter when it's complete."

"Right, right." She sighed, giving up and shooing him off towards the stairs. "Wash out your hair, first." She called after him. "You don't know what that stuff will do to you."

"Actually, there are a number of theories…" she heard him say from the second floor, before she returned to her desk to fire up the old Tandy 1000 and check the voice messages from the night before.

"Ah, uh, Dr. Venkmen? When you have a moment, I'd like to go over our company inter-office frat-nization regulations."

Louis Tully had poked his little round head into the lab, where three of the four Ghostbusters had gathered. Egon and Ray were at their usual work station, the tall one wrist deep in a snarl of wires and being supervised by the shorter. Peter had situated himself just far enough away to avoid shrapnel. He leaned against a windowsill with a photocopy in his hand, chewing on the end of a BiC. Without paying attention to what the man had said, he replied "Louis! Just the guy I needed. These jerks here won't help me with any of the crossword answers."

"Oh, I… I'm not really." Louis stammered "Words aren't my thing."

Peter looked up at and blinked at the accountant-slash-lawyer-slash-whatever-else-they-needed-him-to-be-as-long-as-he-could-handle-it owlishly. "Wouldn't have guessed." He set the paper aside. "It's all right. I wasn't getting anywhere, anyhow."

Louis restated himself softly "Um, our company inter-office fra- uh, regulations. I was wondering."

"Regulations. Guys, do we have those?"

The other two men didn't answer. Egon was attaching wires to a circuit board with a soldering iron, actively trying not pay mind to Peter's words. Ray's attention was divided between the blueprints he was holding and the equipment taking shape before him. He was ooh- and aaah-ing over the implications of whatever new technology the two of them had devised. Peter pouted a bit from the lack of attention focused on him, and decided he might as well try to attend to Tully's request. "What's the reason for the refresher on company policy, Lewis? Wait, Fraternization? I can assure you I outsource all of my sexual harassment. Unless…" He gasped. "Ray, it looks like he's found out about us."

"Ah, no, no, it's-" Lewis muttered, picking at the corner of a file folder he was carrying and wandering further into the room.

Egon cleared his throat gently at his approaching footsteps. "Would you mind moving this party elsewhere, Peter? I'm working with very sensitive and volatile equipment…" He slid the finished circuit board into a slot in a half-completed hand held device, and attached a gator clamp to a hidden lead on the other side of it.

Peter had recognized the opportunity for a spiel, though. "In a way, I'm relieved." He said, reaching out and drawing Ray into a crushing, one-armed embrace. "Our passion burned too brightly to be kept in the dark."

"Ha, ha." Ray replied, and then "Eugh, stop." when Peter decided to give him a dog-like lick on the cheek.

"No, no, it's actually, I had some questions about the policy?" Louis straightened up a bit, looking with something not entirely unlike defiance at Peter, who was too busy wiping his tongue with his shirt collar to notice. "Ah, actually-"

Downstairs, Janine could hear a muffled thud. The windows rattled, and a distant alarm went off. Winston looked up from the open hood of the Ectomobile and wiped his hands on his coveralls. Janine sighed.

"I got it." Winston said, picking up the fire extinguisher by the lockers and heading upstairs.

Louis was straightening his glasses across his now soot-smeared nose. "Oh, gosh! I'll, I better… uh. I have the emergency evacuation plan downstairs somewhere."

"It's okay Louis. We got this." Peter said, just as Ray reached the extinguisher on the wall, and Winston came through the door with the one from downstairs. We certainly have the timing down, he thought. We should work on a comedy act some time. He fanned the smoke away from his face with his crossword.

"Why don't you take lunch, and we'll revisit the policy later."

"Uh, are you sure? Cause I can help! If you need me to, um, help."

"No, Louis. Go."

"Louis, huh?" Peter said, when the accountant and some of the smoke had cleared out. "Well, she's got a type."

"Excuse me?" Egon asked, side-eyeing him.

"Um… glasses?" He shrugged back.

When Egon had "Hmm"ed and turned away, Peter dramatically mouthed "Neeeerdssss" to Ray and Winston behind his back.

"Wait, Louis and Janine?" Winston replied, catching up. "Well, dang. I always expected…" He could hear a faint "Shit." from Egon, who was surveying the damage to his workspace.

He decided not to finish the thought out loud.

"Janine, I was, uh… thinking of getting some Chinese food. You wanna come along?"

Janine looked up from beneath her thick eyelashes and a cliff of red hair that approximated bangs. Her oversized earrings made a delicate noise as they swung and collided with her neck. She glanced at her watch, surprised to find the whole day had gone by without a second bust. Well, things had been quiet since the river of slime episode.

"There's this place not far from here that does an all you can eat buffet. You have to make an effort, but if you can get three plates in it's really worth the money. They also have fifteen-cent eggrolls and all sorts of specials if you were thinking of something lighter. Um, you in?"

"Nah. Thanks, Lewis, but I was gonna try to get some more of this paperwork done." She gave him a sweet, conciliatory smile, and pulled the collar of the extra large Columbia t-shirt she was now wearing back up on her shoulder.

"Okay. Maybe tomorrow then? The specials are different on Fridays, though."

"Sure."

"Oh, okay. Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight, Louis." She dropped her chin into her hand and sighed, staring absently after him as he made his way to the front of the firehouse. Louis Tully. Poor, sweet Louis Tully. Bless his soul.

Two months ago she had spent an evening with poor, sweet Louis Tully on Dr. Venkman's couch, of all places. It was New Years Eve and she had agreed to babysit. (That was what her life had come to. She was married to her job, and now she was taking care of her job's ex-girlfriends' children, as well.) "I hate going out on New Year's Eve." she had lied to herself and to Louis in passing. Well, it wasn't that so much as she just couldn't remember the last time she had reason to enjoy it.

So when he had made a clumsy pass at her, practically in the middle of traffic, she thought "Why not?" And, well, it hadn't really been a challenge… but she was relieved to see she could still get a reaction out of some people.

But now poor, sweet Louis Tully was following her around like a poor, sweet little puppy… and she felt terrible about it. She knew what it was like to be on the other end of the unrequited deal. And to be true to herself, she wasn't sure he was entirely unrequited. He was clueless and awkward. He was kind of short. He certainly wasn't who she saw herself with, but maybe it was time to give up the ghost on that whole idea. She didn't dislike him, in any case. It was nice to have some take to her give. (And he was a surprisingly good kisser.)

And in any case, he was a stupid sort of brave. He was quiet and bumbling but he made grand, foolish gestures when he got the idea to. She had seen that when he rushed off to save the guys later that night, wearing a proton pack that he barely knew how to use. (She probably shouldn't have given him the idea for that particular grand gesture, but the situation seemed dire.) She hated to think what he might go off and do to get her back, if they started something - really started something - and it didn't work out.

Nothing to do but decide...

Next to the front doors, he had only just gotten through the process of pulling on a pair of bright yellow rain boots. He would spend another five minutes fighting with his winter coat and scarf, she knew. Once he was done (Really, she could have timed it) he gave her a meek little wave, which she returned, and he stumbled out into the snow.

Tomorrow, maybe.

A polite cough, to her left, made her almost jump out of her skin. Egon had appeared at her elbow. Tall Egon. Blond, perpetually preoccupied Egon… Egon whom she adored. Quiet Egon, apparently. How long had he been standing there? She hadn't heard him approach at all.

The man was like a ghost himself, sometimes.

No bother, of course. Egon spent plenty of time at the front desk. Just a couple of feet from her elbow, usually seated on the floor and leaning back against the filing cabinets, within the warm circle of light her desk lamp cast about the area. It seemed to be his favorite place to make adjustments to the PKE meters aside from the lab, which after four hours was probably still airing out. (He had changed from his usual salmon-colored shirt into a dove grey one after the explosion, but she had still been catching whiffs of metallic smoke off his suspenders all day. She wondered how many times a day he had to wash soot or slime from his hair, usually, and whether it did that crazy pompadour thing by itself or had to be styled every time.)

She had asked him once, optimistically, why he liked that spot at her feet so much. He muttered something about quality of light in response.

She probably didn't even register on his meter. That would have been fine if only she could actually tell, after all this time.

Nothing to do... Sighing again, she looked back down at the crossword puzzle… paperwork she had yet to finish.

After about thirty seconds though, Janine saw that Egon wasn't there to adjust the PKE meters. Sure, he had arrived with a PKE meter in one of his hands and a Phillips-head in the other, but she had yet to hear the comforting sounds of tinkering and deep contemplation. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that he was still standing at the edge of the desk… and he was looking at her.

She shuddered and a chill ran through her. Just like a ghost, she thought.

Generally, she would take this (or any) opportunity to flirt with Dr. Egon Spengler. Add that extra lilt to her voice, maybe lean forward a bit too far. Hope that at the very least she could make him make that uncomfortable face and scurry off. (Generally, she took what she could get.) But today she was feeling lackluster, depressed by another almost-hit this morning, worried that she had made a terrible mistake two months ago. (Or even worse, a pretty good mistake. That the real mistake had been everything before.) And Egon was looking at her, if she wasn't imagining it, with a touch of disapproval… a slight wrinkle of the nose and lift of the lip, as if he too was smelling the smoke on his clothes. Really, as normal expressions went, his looked completely neutral, but she had become familiar enough with his face to very nearly catch these little nuances.

So she was a bit, just a bit, annoyed when after turning to him and lifting her eyebrows in question, he didn't ask whatever it was he obviously was there to ask her.

"Can I help you with something?" She said, with a touch of the catty tone she usually saved for Dr. Venkman.

He shook his head slightly, so she said "All right," and looked back down at the crossword. "The theme is science. Ten letter word for 'A real fun guy' question mark?"

"Mycologist."

She considered the answer, failed to understand it, but filled the spaces in nonetheless.

"So, you and Louis seem to be… getting along." He said, before she could follow up with "Is that with an I or a Y?"

She looked at him in surprise, then lowered her eyelids. "Yeah, he's a nice kid. We hung out a couple of times."

"Hmm." He said.

Her jaw slackened, as she noticed that faint aura of disapproval solidify into something very near to an expression. He had an appraising look in his eyes. An I-know-what-you-know look. What the fuck, was Captain Oblivious here actually picking up on a form of sexual tension, for a change? Great time to start paying attention, buddy. She thrilled briefly with the idea that that look might be his heart breaking just a little bit, but that hope was quickly replaced by a growing irritation at his new-found ability to clue in on her interest in people, as long as those people were not him. If her mild flirtation with Louis Tully was more instantly obvious to him than the fairly blatant lust she'd been displaying for the last five years, then he was either completely dense or he'd just been politely ignoring her until she went away. She bit her lip at the idea.

She had such a headache.

"We made out a bit." She admitted to him, bluntly, just daring that disapproval to become full-on disgust. "What's it to ya?"

"Ah, nothing." He finally turned away, leaned a hip against the desk and started unscrewing the panel from the back of the meter.

"I looked over the company policy. We don't even have anti-fraternization regulations. We barely even have regulations at all. Besides, he's on the books as a freelancer."

"It's not office politics I'm worried about, though inter-office relationships can be complicated." Or so you've heard, she brooded, unfairly. "But I don't trust him not to do something foolish, when…"

"When it doesn't work out, huh?" She grumbled, annoyed that that was the assumption, and doubly annoyed by the fact that he was echoing her own thoughts of just fifteen minutes ago.

"I wouldn't want another mishap like the Paul Smart fiasco." I should stop talking, he thought, but something was picking away at the back of his mind, and his pride was still smarting, almost as much as his shoulder, from earlier. It was infuriating him even more for the fact that he was irrationally infuriated by it, and that he suddenly couldn't seem to keep his mildly worded opinions in check. She's got a type, my ass.

"What's Paul Smart got to do with this?"

She really believed he had been jealous that time. Of course, they had found Paul Smart out to be a hideous, equipment-stealing slime-bag only interested in her for the files behind her desk. (And not in a euphemistic way, either.) Of course Egon had immediately gone back to status quo after they busted Paul and his ghost-killing robot scam… leaving her to wonder if he really hadn't liked the way Paul looked at her and kissed the back of her hand, or if he simply hadn't liked Paul's face in general.

Egon had been saying something, but she was too busy fuming over his selective indifference and her past foolishnesses to catch it. When she did catch his words again, he was saying:

"Frankly, you can do better."

They both froze in place. He swallowed thickly, realizing the peril he had just put himself in. I said that out loud, didn't I?

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her eyebrows sink and her ears turn bright red, to match her hair.

She fumed, and grumbled. "You got a lot of nerve... 'you can do better.' You know why I went out with Paul?" She said, abruptly raising her voice to address him directly. "Because he seemed like a nice guy, is all. So I got terrible taste in men. Go figure." Her eyes narrowed. "Scratch it. The reason I went out with Louis? Because he asked. 'You can do better.'" She repeated, forgetting to mumble this time. "I've just about had it with what I've ended up with, thinking I can do better."

"Well." He said, suddenly looking at her with scientific scrutiny instead of disdain. (His gaze made her stomach flip, but in a sickly way this time) He had never really been interested in psychology - that was was more Peter's field - but any sudden realization at the science behind a case was of interest to him. "That's… terrible." She was shooting eye-daggers his way. "That's how you feel about yourself?" He suddenly recognized that he hadn't previously even considered that she wasn't just playing, that she was honestly trying to make something of these outside flirtations. (He also suddenly recognized how much consideration he had put into these outside flirtations.) Almost to himself, almost more as a statement than a question, he asked "It's not just an attempt to make me jealous?"

She stood up and, in the same motion, picked up her keyboard and slammed it back against the desk. It came down with a loud bang and a noise like a handful of springs tumbling across a smooth surface. "Oh, why would I try to make you feel jealous?" Her voice rose an octave, no doubt reaching the third floor. His stomach fluttered at how livid her face turned, and he reflexively adjusted his grip on the PKE meter, even though the back was hanging open now and some of its wires inside had already been disconnected. "What would be the use? I'm still trying to figure out if you. Do. Feel." Her words were punctuated with such spitting fury, they forced him back against the filing cabinets. "I swear, sometimes you can be the coldest-" She balled up her hands, but instead of punching him, as he entirely expected, she turned around and dropped heavily back into her chair. Her knuckles were white against the desktop, her shoulders plastered with frustration.

"Janine."

He realized he had been holding his breath.

"I... I don't-"

It took work just to get his mouth to move, and when it did he wasn't entirely sure he controlled what was coming out. His jaw and tongue and most of all brain seemed to be working out of sync.

"Don't mean to... I-"

She blew the contents of her lungs out in one long stream, and the tension in her shoulders left with it. "I know." She said, her voice leveling. "I know, I'm overreacting, I'm being foolish. I know exactly what I should expect by now."

Dispassionately, she said "You're a good man, Dr. Spengler. You've always treated me very kindly, and I'll always consider us friends." She swiveled back towards him, and he found her lack of affectation a little more frightening than the rage that had just left her face "I'm just... giving up. Not quitting my job, not leaving, just giving up." She stood up and crossed her arms in more of a warming gesture than an angry one. "It's something I should have done already..."

After a few seconds of silence, she couldn't hold his gaze. (Confusion and bewilderment were not well known to his features, and the combination of the two on his face was especially unnerving.) He seemed unable to form any sort of response, so she looked down.

"Of course. We're both gonna pretend you don't know what I'm saying here. Well anyway," I must be cold, she supposed. My teeth are chattering. "You should be relieved."

He moved his hands towards her face, letting out a soft sound that nearly become a word.

"Hey," She said, cutting him off with a sudden, too-bright smile and skipping backward lightly. Her tone twisted, suddenly turning breezy and conversational. She was the spitting image of Happy Janine. The only indicator of her outbreak, of any disagreement or dissatisfaction with the way of things, was a fleeting (and possibly only imagined on his part) fatigue around her eyes. "I gotta get going, I got like four trains to catch."

She grabbed her coat from the back of her chair and was off, only stopping briefly at the front door to glance back before disappearing into fog and light snow.

When his fingertips stopped curling in the vacuum she had left behind, he took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a moment of silence, when his mental functions congealed slightly, he asked, "How much of that did you catch?"

Peter's head appeared behind the partition that backed the front desk. He draped his arms over top the filing cabinets and he rested his chin on their tacky maple laminate. "Enough."

"Swell."

"You didn't say anything." Peter pointed out, laconically. "To stop her, not a thing."

Egon was groping at the fabric near his waist, making a barely-conscious effort to use it to clean his glasses in a casual manner, and failing miserably. He managed to pull a shirt tail out but gave up on actually wiping the spectacles down. He was still staring at the firehouse doorway.

"You know, I know this is cliché... but for a really smart guy you're pretty dumb."

With the lack of response, Peter started to turn away. The other man was either in shock or deep contemplation, and it wouldn't be much use to talk to him in either case. Egon Spengler was stoic at his best and breeziest, saving up his really chatty moments for explaining how it was they were going to save the world. Trying to communicate with him when something interrupted the meticulous circuitry of his mind was like pulling teeth.

Considering his previous experience with these particular group dynamics, Peter thought it probably wouldn't be much use to mention it further anyway.

"Even if I felt I could..." Egon nearly whispered. Well, even if I could finish that sentence, He thought. "She's come to a decision… and Tully… Pulling her back from the direction she's chosen wouldn't be fair."

Venkmen didn't know if the other man was speaking to him or to himself, but something in his gut twitched, and suddenly he didn't really care. "Oh, don't give me that crap. You'd just have to make it fair. What isn't fair is forcing her make a decision based on misinformation." He rounded the partition and stood between Egon and the front door without any real hope of interrupting the taller man's line of sight. "Those are terms you can understand, right? Look, you can hide this shit from her, or yourself, or whatever… but not me. Trained psychologist, remember? The body language alone-" Finally Egon tore his gaze away in order to give his friend a scornful look.

"Screw Tully. Do you really believe they've… what? Gone steady?"

Egon fumbled to put his glasses back on.

"You've got the opportunity here to make the both of you really happy, you know? OR you could save both of you a whole lot of trouble. Either one. I've got a preference here, but it's not my call. You've just got to make the decision and... here's the kicker... stick to it." Generally he would leave it at that, if anything, but he was feeling honest and not a little brutal. He would openly admit to wanting to see his oldest friend happy… he was less likely to admit how the defeat in Janine's voice had set his teeth on edge in a way that her Brooklyn rage never did. "That means running after her, right now, or that means letting her have her Paul Smarts and Louis Tullys, for better or worse, and not saying boo about it until they've actually done something like stolen our top secret equipment and given you a legitimate reason to dislike them."

As an afterthought, he added. "And no, not being good enough is not a legitimate reason."

Whether the words actually sunk in, Peter couldn't tell. Egon stood, transfixed, for a good two minutes before saying "...Right."

"Right." Peter sighed, turning to leave. "For what it's worth."

"Peter..."

Venkman stopped halfway up the stairs without looking back, making a gesture as if to wave away the coming 'Thanks for this remarkable advice that I won't at all take to heart'.

"What's the quickest way to Brooklyn?"

"Ladies and Gentleman, we will be standing for approximately ten minutes, while work is done on the lines. Thank you for your patience."

She had done pretty well up to that point, ignoring the bodies packed around her in favor of the contrast between ink and a softly yellowed page. Her brain hadn't really let her get past this one paragraph, but at least looking at the text was soothing. She had spent most of the ride studying the shifting hues of the paper as the florescent light above her head shorted out in rhythm with the train's movement. But with the announcement she felt her chest tighten a little, her stomach churn, her throat go sore. Claustrophobia, she hummed. The idea of having to wait in a cramped space. That must be it, never mind that she had never been afraid on the subway before… not even of the things on it that should scare her.

Water dripped onto the pages of Janine's library book, and she looked up to find the source of the leak before realizing she was crying.

Nothing to do but decide...

None of the above, she decided. There wouldn't be another return to the status quo, at least. She would have to find a way to let Lewis down easy, though. He would be too much right now.

She would have just be Janine Melnitz, secretary extraordinaire, for a while. See where it took her.

Well, at least none of the usual weirdos will bother me tonight, she supposed, as her shoulders shook. As salt water slicked down her face and a number of people edged away from the obviously mentally unstable young woman sobbing openly next to the train car doors.

Above ground again, she was able to regain composure. The fog and snow turned her face damp and pink, blending away the tear streaks. The only things left behind were the little balls of ice that had frozen to the end of her eyelashes.

"Oh, what is this?" Janine spotted the dark but familiar silhouette of the Ecto-1a as she neared her apartment building. "Peter..." That was how it went after all. Egon unwittingly did something to upset her, she stormed out, Peter found out and came to beg her back at a pitifully negligible raise in pay. (How many times would it take before she was actually earning a proper wage?) She kicked a hubcap fiercely. "I said I wasn't quitting this time!"

Footsteps echoed around the corner, and she turned to see a more elongated form than the one she expected.

"Egon?"

By all accounts he was the cause of her terrible mood. She should really be even more pissed off to see him. She should really continue giving him pieces of her mind. She was just too startled by his presence to even hold on to the anger and hopelessness she had been nursing during the five block walk between the subway station and her door.

"I thought you were already home" He said, motioning awkwardly towards her building. "You didn't answer the bell, but-"

"The train had delays."

"Ah."

"You must have gotten here pretty quickly, though. Traffic's a bitch this time of night." Unable to decide between anger and the false cheer she had left him with, she tried for being civil. It was the easiest to do until she scoped out what last word it was he wanted to get in. "With this weather, especially."

"I used the siren."

She glanced up at her apartment in alarm, not having considered that as a reason for his presence. But then she looked back to him and noticed the lack of suit, pack and... well, the other guys. "Not a business call, though?"

"No."

The snow had turned to sleet. It was leaving charcoal colored spots on the grey of his shirt. His red suspenders seemed the only color to him, in the snow. His face and hair seemed washed out. He looked to be lacking a coat as well.

"That's... unlike you." She observed.

He was also bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. She assumed it was from the cold. His shirt's untucked, and everything. He looks a mess.

Good, part of her reflected. And then she felt a pang of guilt.

"Yes, well." He said.

He closed the distance between them with a long stride, and paused to clear his throat. Then she was crushed, momentarily, between the car door and his lips. He was stiff either with terror or frost. Possibly both, with hopefully a little lust thrown in. Her cheeks were wet again, this time from the sleet that dripped from his nose and hair. Their glasses clicked against each other, softly, and she could feel the car door handle digging into her hip.

It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable position she had ever been in.

She was practically vibrating with pleasure.

His fingers brushed her neck. Before they could reach her hairline, and before he could really relax into the kiss, he pulled away.

"I had a more articulate argument thought out," he explained, looking concerned, "In the car on the way over. I, ah… can't quite remember what it was." He helped her up, unsteadily, and picked up the purse she had dropped. Instead of handing it to her, he held it hostage and twisted the straps of it between his hands. "I love you." He said. "…That was part of it. And, uh… I'm sorry."

By now, even her own thick wool coat was starting to let water through. His shirt was completely soaked, plastered to his skin, and his pompadour was weighed down with snow melt. His teeth were chattering.

I did always have a thing for the poor, sweet little puppy types.

"Well." She said, a bit breathlessly. "You better come inside."

At around three in the morning, Peter Venkman stumbled into the kitchen to see if there were any snacks left that hadn't already been claimed by the firehouse's resident Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor. He opened the fridge door and then, after scratching his head and scratching his butt, closed it again and drifted towards the stairway to the lower floor. There was something. He pondered. Something I'm forgetting.

"Huh." He said, descending the steps.

The Ecto wasn't there.

Peter smiled, ambled to Janine's desk, and picked up the phone. He dialed and waited until it rang five, six, seven times.

"Louis, pal! Hey, did I wake you?" He waited less than a second before interrupting the response. "Yeah, yeah, Look, I found a copy of our Fraternization Thingy Whoozis." He, for the most part, ignored the sleepy tones coming through the receiver. He threw a "Yap." in there every now and again, then cut the voice on the other end off again mid-sentence. "Yah huh. Listen, sorry man, it's not looking so good for you two…"

Peter nodded at what ever the phone was muttering in dejected tones. He yawned, and hung up.

He scratched his butt again thoughtfully, pulled a post-it from Janine's organizer and stuck it to the desktop after scribbling a brief note on it.

Then, happy with his work, he headed back to bed.