Thank you for all your comments :)
Here is the second and last part of Rusty and Sharon's April 1st misadventures, aka the part in which Rusty learns a lesson in consequences, and Sharon learns a lesson in vigilance.
More Fool Me, pt. 2
"I have four kids and six grandkids," Provenza said without looking up from his crossword puzzle. "Whatever it is, I've seen it before. "
Rusty paused in his tracks, momentarily deflated but not daunted. Okay, so Lt. Provenza would've probably been a bad idea anyway. He was kind of grumpy on the best of days.
The boy began to look around the murder room. Sharon always said to consider options, didn't she? Well, so she was being the worst sport ever and making him leave her alone, but like, there were options. Right?
(and anyway, he'd already gotten her like, five times, which was probably why she was being all unreasonable about this.)
His eyes landed first on Det. Sanchez, who must've felt his gaze because he glanced up from his desk – and Rusty immediately looked away. No way. Uh-uh.
Lt. Tao seemed pretty relaxed… he'd have probably made a reasonable 'option', only half of Rusty's ideas were things that Kevin had suggested, so the lieutenant probably knew it all already. Hm. Det. Sykes? But Sykes could be a little scary, too, he'd learned. Plus, she and Lt. Flynn weren't even in the murder room at the moment, anyway. And Sharon had kind of told him to leave the rest of the team alone, too, which was totally unfair, by the way, but…
It was then that Emma walked into the murder room, the clicking of her heels announcing her presence before she'd fully come into his line of sight.
Rusty smirked.
The DDA stopped near Lt. Flynn's unoccupied desk. "Where's Captain Raydor? There's a problem with your suspect's background, I need some more answers before I can present our deal agreement to a judge..."
The boy walked up to her. "Emma. We're friends, right?"
"What?" She frowned, confused.
"Like, you know how you said you'd like to try to get along better? Like, friends…?"
"Okay…? I mean, yes…" she was still giving him an odd look, but nodded. "Yes, Rusty… we're…friends. Sure…"
He grinned. "Okay, great. Thanks." He paused for a second, then adopted a solicitous mien: "So I was just gonna go get a soda. Would you like me to bring you one, too?"
At his desk, Provenza rolled his eyes.
On her way back from electronics, Sharon heard Emma's high-pitched shriek from the hallway, and let out an exasperated sigh.
Half an hour, one exploding soda can and a truly unhappy DDA later, Sharon had abandoned all hope that reason and parental authority would triumph over Rusty's supernatural determination to see his pranks through at all costs. (if only he could have shown this much dedication toward his schoolwork.)
" – left the rest of the team alone like you told me to, Sharon, but you didn't say anything about Emma." Rusty was arching his eyebrows at her. "You should like, be more specific about what you want."
"I was extremely specific when I said 'be kind'," she retorted, "and persisting in your childish pranks at the expense of adults who are too considerate to pay you back in similar fashion, is the exact opposite."
"Okay, how exactly is just joking around 'not kind'? I didn't actually do anything to anyone, and you should've seen your faces…" He grinned again at the memory, and looked at her almost pleadingly. "Come on, Sharon, I've been thinking about today for like, months, and I have about two hundred ideas and…"
Was he honestly asking her for permission to pull more pranks?
Sharon shook her head. Sometimes her foster son was so smart and grown-up and one of the most admirable people she'd ever met in her life, and other times…
…well, other times he was pacing her office wearing splatters of exploded Diet Coke on his shirt, holding a hairy toy tarantula and asking if he could possibly please continue to play practical jokes at her expense, because it was April first and wasn't that like, the law or something?
" –like, seriously, Sharon."
She rolled her eyes. "This is your last warning," she told him emphatically.
Rusty paused, then, and cautiously inquired: "Last warning before what…?"
Sharon crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat. "Pull another prank and you'll find out."
And damn it, he looked like he was actually contemplating if it was worth it!
"Okay," he said after a moment, "can we negotiate a –"
"No."
"But like, if I can –"
"No."
"But Sharon, it's April –"
"Rusty." She leaned forward again and gave him her best warning look. "This isn't up for debate. No. More. Practical jokes, is that clear? No one's enjoying them as much as you are," she told him seriously, "they're disruptive to everyone's work, and frankly, this kind of thing inevitably ends up backfiring, and I'd much rather you quit it before that happens. Understood?"
Rusty let out the world's longest-suffering huff. "So basically, I'm not allowed to have any fun, like, ever," he grumbled.
"That's right," she agreed with a pleasant smile. "And to compound your suffering even further, you can go back to working on your homework. And behave."
At which point, there may have been some more words thrown around, such as 'abuse of authority' and 'childish decisions', and Rusty may have informed her again that it was poor sportsmanship to make him stop just because she fell for all his pranks (the nerve!), and Sharon may have in turned informed him that forever was a long time to be grounded.
Then he offered to get her a cup of coffee and what did he think, that she was born yesterday?
Apparently he did. Because despite her repeated warnings and instructions which left zero room for interpretation, he continued to make conspicuously helpful and harmless offers, and only grew more disgruntled as Sharon informed him that no, she didn't want another packet of sugar for her tea and no, he wasn't allowed to go ask Buzz for help with that problem and no, he couldn't go get a snack, either.
But dear God, he was unrelenting.
"Hey, Sharon...?" He rolled his eyes at the suspicious glare she shot in his direction. "I'm doing homework, okay? Look–" he pointed to the notebook in front of him with and arch expression, "homework!"
And fair enough, he was; she'd even checked what he was scribbling, and it was calculus. As opposed to say, a Wile E Coyote-like scheme, which also wouldn't have surprised her much at that point.
"What is it?" she asked eventually.
"Did you ever sign the permission slip for that day trip thing on Friday?"
Permission slip? What permission slip?
"You never gave me anything to sign." Her eyes narrowed even more suspiciously, but Rusty just shrugged.
"Oh... well, Sister Anna wants them tomorrow."
He was clearly not-saying more than he was saying, and seriously, worst poker face ever, but she couldn't tell what he wasn't saying. Was he trying to get out of the day trip? Was this another scheme? What was he trying to make her sign?
She turned the little note he gave her on all sides, read every word carefully twice over and even held up the paper to the light to make sure there wasn't any invisible ink or something, while Rusty stood there rolling his eyes and smirking and did she want to test it for explosives too? She glowered warningly, because if he'd been less terrible today, she wouldn't have to waste ten minutes making sure his permission slip wasn't booby-trapped!
"You're not gonna find anything, it's just a piece of paper, Sharon," he announced, but damn it, his words said one thing and his poorly-contained smirk, another. And he was enjoying himself way too much watching her overexamine the slip. "Do you want me to like, call Lt. Tao in, too? Have him dust it for prints or something? Or–"
"Don't tempt me," she muttered, and after one last glance at the untrustworthy piece of paper, she finally grabbed the pen from her desk.
Mistake.
Rusty's face threatened to split in half from his self-satisfied grin. "Told you the permission slip was just a piece of paper."
Sharon gave him her most threatening look, though the overall effect was probably hurt by her rapid shaking and wriggling of her fingers. Her hand was still tingling from the electric jolt that had shot through it when she'd clicked the god. damn. pen.
How had she not noticed that it wasn't her own pen? How?
Her foster son was looking so goddamn proud of himself. "Misdirection," he nodded wisely. "Works every time."
"Sharon – the internet isn't working."
Over three hours had passed without further incident, before Rusty marched out into their living room, with an urgency worthy of the world ending. At least.
Sharon looked up from the thick case file she'd been studying, peering at him calmly above her glasses. "What do you mean, not working?"
"I mean, it's down… no connection. I can't get online. I'm going to check the router, maybe we need to reset it."
Frowning, Sharon checked the laptop that sat next to her on the sofa. "Mine seems to be working fine…" Her eyes narrowed. "Rusty, if this is another prank –"
"What – no! I'm serious."
"Step away from that router," she ordered immediately.
Rusty's shoulders slumped. "Sharon! This is serious. I can't connect to the wireless, okay?" He gave her a persuasive look. "Just let me see if I can fix it."
"There's nothing to fix," she told him. "I can connect just fine, so maybe it's your computer."
"It's not."
Sharon shot him one of her looks.
"Just let me try this," he pleaded, and finally she pursed her lips and waved him over to the router.
"This had better be a real problem," she warned.
Rusty rolled his eyes. "Honestly." After half a minute of fiddling with the router, he went back to his room, only to return five minutes later with his computer in his arms. "Nothing yet. Is yours still working?"
She glanced at the screen and clicked the mouse pad button once. "Yes."
"I don't get it. Why won't mine connect?" Standing in the middle of the living room, he entered some more commands on his laptop, then gave up with a frustrated groan. "It can't even find our network! Can you like, call the building manager and tell him we're having problems?"
Sharon lowered her case file. "We aren't having problems," she corrected. "You are. And that means it's probably your computer, and I'm not going to call Mr. Jones at eight p.m. because of that. We can have Buzz take a look at it tomorrow."
"But – what am I supposed to do tonight? It's the internet, Sharon!"
She shot him another dry look, and pointedly picked up the case notes again, paying him no further attention.
After a few seconds of silence, Rusty let out a loud sigh, deposited his laptop on the table and curled up in an armchair, pulling out his phone.
Ten seconds later… "Sharon! My phone isn't working either!"
Unperturbed, Sharon glanced up again. "It's probably the same thing as your computer."
"What – that doesn't even make any sense! How would – that's – seriously, that's not possible."
She hummed thoughtfully. "Well, do you have them synced up to each other?"
For a moment, Rusty looked baffled. "Well – yeah, but…"
"There you go, then," she concluded. "It's probably something to do with that. I'm sure Buzz will be able to get to the bottom of it."
"Can we call him now?"
"No."
There was a little more protesting, but in the end Rusty agreed to wait until the next day; settling down once more in the armchair, he began to play some game on his phone that involved lots of screen-tapping and shaking. After a few minutes he shifted in his seat, tried the phone a little longer, went and got a glass of juice, then tried his computer again, then let out an endless sigh.
"Sharooon…"
"If you're bored," she told him without looking up from the file, "you could go clean your room. Or, there's laundry to be done, too."
He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, and curled up deeper into the armchair. There was more playing with his phone, more screen-taping and shaking it from left to right and a lot of buzzing, until about ten minutes later came the telltale sound of "low battery". Sharon smiled at the page she was reading.
Rusty groaned.
After plugging in the phone to charge, he looked around the living room and paced a circle around the dining table. He picked up two schoolbooks from the coffee table and took them to his room, then came back, grabbed a shirt he'd left abandoned on the back of a chair and took that to his room too, and with that his cleaning efforts were exhausted. Sharon was still immersed in her work, and no amount of pointed sighing and foot-tapping and fidgeting was getting her to look up. Trying his computer again still yielded no internet.
He padded over to the far end of the sofa. "Do you mind if I turn on the TV? Since nothing else is working?"
"Go ahead," said Sharon. "Keep the volume down please." She pulled her laptop and some of her papers closer so he could have more space, and Rusty plopped down, sending one of her pencils rolling between two cushions.
The first channel, when he turned on the TV, showed a documentary about old photography devices. The second one showed an infomercial about a special set of frying pans.
Third, fourth and fifth channels were news. Sixth was weather.
Then there were three consecutive black-and-white movies, one of which also had subtitles.
Rusty turned to Sharon, the beginnings of panic in his voice: "What's wrong with the TV?"
With a sigh, she lowered her case notes again, and glanced at the screen. "It looks to me like it's working fine," she remarked.
"I know but like… there's nothing on."
Sharon gave him a disbelieving look. "I don't control what airs on television, Rusty."
"But...where are all the movie channels?"
Her eyebrows arched.
"Seriously. They were like… I don't know, there were usually movies on, okay? Did you like, change the order of the channels or something?"
She rolled her eyes and glanced at the TV again. "This is a movie," she told him. "Hm – 'The Apartment'… a very good comedy, in fact. It won the Academy Award for best picture, you know."
It was Rusty's turn to roll his eyes. "Really? When, the eighties?"
"1960."
He flipped the channel immediately without further comment.
The next thing up was a feature on environmentally-unfriendly mining procedures. After that, yet another impossibly old movie that looked all sepia-toned and grainy.
(Sharon, of course, hummed appreciatively: "That's another good one. 'The Conversation'… I think you'd enjoy it."
As if anyone in the world would ever enjoy an entire movie about a conversation. Sharon...)
"Where are all the regular channels," he asked plaintively, "and why is there nothing on?"
"Perhaps tonight's programming is aimed at widening your horizons in the domain of cinematography," Sharon suggested with a hint of a smile.
"Yeah, in that case I think I like my horizons narrow…" Sighing from the very depths of his being, Rusty gave up on the TV and walked over to the table to try the computer yet again. Still to no avail. "If I just like, text Buzz –"
He trailed off at her sharp look.
Another heartfelt sigh, and then he moved on to the little cabinet underneath the TV. "Fine. I'm just gonna put on a DVD, okay?"
Sharon only gave a vague acknowledgment as she focused on the case notes once more. For a while, the only sounds were her pencil scribbling, and Rusty rummaging through DVDs. Then a couple of minutes in the boy let out a pathetic little noise, somewhere between a groan and a whine, that was enough to make her glance over again.
"Sharon…!" He sat cross-legged next to the pile of DVDs, looking at her with an almost beseeching expression. "The DVDs are all in the wrong cases!"
Sharon's response did not show anywhere near the appropriate amount of sympathy that Rusty would've expected, given his monumental plight:
"I told you that would happen if you don't put the movies back as soon as you're finished watching them."
Okay, well that was just totally not useful at the moment.
"But like… how am I supposed to find anything to watch?"
She gave him another of her looks. "Rusty. There are three people in the LAPD morgue missing various limbs and organs. Would you like me to stop looking for their killers long enough to help you reorganize the DVD collection?"
A long beat, then: "Do you like, actually want me to answer that?"
"No." Sharon picked up the pencil again, readjusting the case file on her lap. "Just be patient and sort them back into their cases, and then you can pick one to watch."
His only response was a dissatisfied huff. He just kept going through the stack until he found the first DVD that was both something he'd watch, and in the right casing. "I'm gonna put on 'Transformers'," he informed Sharon.
He thought he saw her lips curl in a faint smile, but she didn't look up from her notes and all she said was, "Good choice", with an absent hum.
Rusty fiddled around with the TV and DVD player, moved the armchair a little for a better angle and got himself another glass of juice before sitting down. He clicked 'play' and used the first thirty seconds or so of the Paramount and Dreamworks intros to adjust the volume. Then he leaned back into his seat and settled in to watch.
Avant le début des temps, il y avait le Cube.
Rusty's brow furrowed slightly, with a hint of puzzlement.
On the sofa, Sharon tried to keep her focus on her case notes, but her eyes kept drifting surreptitiously over to her foster son.
Nous ne savons pas d'où il vient,
His expression grew a little more confused.
seulement qu'il a le pouvoir de créer des mondes et de les amener à la vie.
Rusty shook his head as though to clear water from his ears, and Sharon had to bite her lips and lower her head over the file again.
C'est ainsi que notre race est née.
"What the… Sharon, are you hearing this? No hold on," he hurried to defend at her impatient look, "I'm serious, there's something like, wrong with the DVD. Listen…!"
She listened for the next few lines, then cocked her head at him. "Sounds fine to me."
"But – but… it's… don't you hear it? The sound is off! Do you think it's scratched?"
That surprised a choked sort of snicker out of her. "Rusty…"
For his part, the boy looked totally baffled as to how she was not getting it. He picked up the remote and fast forwarded to a different, random time.
Mon Dieu…
He scrolled forward again.
Allez! Deplacez! Deplacez!
And again.
Mon nom est Optimus Prime.
Nous sommes organismes robotiques autonomes de la planète Cybertron.
He turned back to Sharon. "Seriously, does that sound like real words to you?" Not even waiting for her reply, he went on: "See? It's broken. Now can we call Mr. Jones?"
"It's not broken, Rusty." There was laughter in her voice. "It's in French."
He stared at her.
Sharon returned an affectionate look, because she couldn't help herself.
Finally Rusty recovered enough to sputter out: "Why would it be in French?" He paused, his expression turning almost scandalized. "Who'd wanna watch giant robot aliens fighting in French?!"
Her lips twitched again, but she remained unruffled. "Well, if this isn't the movie you want, Rusty, why don't you just pick another one? And put this one back in its case," she added, "so as to avoid mixing them up even more."
He still wasn't done being baffled, though. "…Why would it be in French?"
Sharon shrugged, picking up her notes again. "Maybe they made a mistake at the store."
"But… it was fine before." The boy sounded uncertain now. "I swear, I watched this before, Sharon. I did, right?" He kept staring from the TV, to the pile of DVDs, to her. "It wasn't in French then…?"
Another absent shrug. "Maybe there's another copy somewhere. If you sort all the DVDs into their right cases, you might find it."
Rusty groaned miserably. He didn't want to sort all the DVDs into their right cases, all he wanted was to have a quiet evening and his computer and why was that so much to ask for?!
He half-heartedly sorted three DVDs, yawning four times as he did so, and took his empty glass of juice to the sink to rinse it. He tried his computer again, checked his phone that was still charging impossibly slowly, and finally walked back over, planting himself in front of the sofa with another woeful groan.
"I just don't understand, Sharon, what is wrong with everything tonight?" he whined. "Like literally. nothing. is working right now. I don't get how that's even possible, I mean, it's like the universe hates me all of a sudden or something!"
"I'm sure the universe doesn't hate you," she reassured without looking up from her work. "But if you're concerned about that," she suggested, "maybe the universe would feel kinder toward you if you finished sorting the DVDs and cleaning your room."
Rusty rolled his eyes, because what was she even talking about? "Okay, Sharon, I don't think the universe cares about how clean my room is..." Duh."Seriously, do you think we've got like, a poltergeist or something?"
She hummed noncommittally. "Probably not."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, it's difficult to be entirely certain about these things," she murmured while making a note on the margin of another page; the boy let out an exasperated sigh.
"I just don't get how everything is broken at the same time," he grumbled, beginning to walk down the hall, "...doesn't even make any sense, like, how is this even happening..." He disappeared into his bedroom still muttering over his misfortunes.
Sharon nearly burst out laughing when she noticed his head poke out cautiously from the room about a minute later.
Even without looking up from her files, from the corner of her eye she could tell he was staring at her. After a few seconds, she craned her neck and looked over slowly, and his head immediately disappeared. She coughed quietly to herself.
About another minute later, his head poked out again, and this time the rest of him followed. He approached slowly, circling around the sofa at a fair distance. Half-wary, half-unconvinced. Sharon could feel her lips forming an amused smirk.
"Did you finish cleaning your room?" Her gaze was still on her case notes.
A pause, then: "...do I have to?" And this wasn't a whine, it was a genuine, cautious question.
She met his eyes again. Rusty was staring at her intently, eyes wide in anticipation of her response. There was a fair chance he was holding his breath. The seconds ticked by in tense silence.
She gave in. "Do you want your internet back?"
"Oh my god, Sharon!" He exploded into a sputter of shock. "I can't believe – you – you – I can't believe you did that! I can't believe it's you! I – I – I – Sharon!"
"I can't believe you, Sharon."
It was possibly his tenth time saying it.
"That was, like... like... I can't believe you did that!"
She laughed quietly into her cup of tea, eyes crinkling at the corners. "So I gather. I hope you realize," she said in a more serious tone, "that this wasn't about payback. I wanted to demonstrate just how ignoring people's warnings, believing in this illusion of invulnerability – that somehow you're exempt from the consequences of your actions," she explained, "can backfire."
"Yeah... also, you wanted payback," he smirked. He was sitting once again cross-legged on the floor, arranging DVDs back into their covers. "It's okay Sharon, I told you pranks can be fun. You can admit it."
"You are missing the point of this," she insisted.
"Right."
Sharon huffed, taking another dignified sip from her cup.
"You know what I don't get? Okay, so," he didn't even wait for a reply, "you made our wireless hidden and changed the password, and you canceled my data plan – you can undo that, right?" His train of thought was momentarily derailed by the need for her fifth reassurance that yes, she could undo it. "Okay, and you did change the order of the TV channels, and swapped all the DVDs around while I was in the shower – and by the way," he gave her a dry look, "I don't see how it's fair that you're making me sort them back now –"
She waved off his complaint without batting an eye, as he knew she would.
"But I don't get it, how did you know I was gonna pick 'Transformers'?! And how did you make it be like... in French?"
Sharon smirked, "A good magician," she commented, "never reveals their tricks."
That, however, was not to the boy's satisfaction. "Come on, Sharon!"
Her shoulders shook with silent laughter again. "Honey, you're not that hard to anticipate," she said warmly. "It was just a matter of taking a few other options off the table."
"And the French thing?!" He sorted the 'Titanic' DVD from the 'Alien vs. Predator' cover back into its own.
"That was Buzz." She smiled at his scandalized expression. "You shouldn't have pranked him with that tarantula. Consequences, Rusty," she reemphasized patiently, and he shot her another sideways glance.
"Yeah, okay, Sharon," he arched his eyebrows, "I'm pretty sure the 'lesson' part of this would've ended after like, the wireless thing. Or maybe the phone. The rest, though," he informed her with a grin, pulling 'Terminator' out of the 'Gone With the Wind' case, "that was totally payback and you were having fun and you know it."
"I told you, Rusty, payback had nothing to do with it," she countered. "It was an educational experience, designed to teach you about the consequences of your actions."
His grin widened. "Yeah, I'm sure that's true and you didn't go through all this effort because it was fun or anything," he snickered, "but just FYI, like, half my friends at school pulled pranks at home, and I bet you none of their parents actually pranked them back to 'educate' them, so..."
He trailed off, freezing with his hands around the 'Terminator' cover.
Sharon lowered her face over her cup of tea again, taking a long sip.
"It was a little fun," she admitted after a few seconds, in a quiet voice.
Rusty looked away, closing the DVD case and putting it back in the cabinet, reaching for the next one. There were another few moments of silence, then he let out a long sigh.
"I still can't believe you did all that just to get back at me," he informed her.
"Educate you. Note the difference." She tilted her head, smiled a little.
He rolled his eyes and finished arranging the last DVD case neatly in its place, but the corners of his lips were also pulling upward in a hint of a smirk.
Thank you for reading!
