Ah…all the reviews for last chapter made me so happy, and some damn near made me blush. THANK YOU! Part 4 is here, because I just got so happy I finished it quicker then usual, and with a little more drama in it. A little more romance and a little less humor again, but still on target, I hope. It's just too much fun writing Marshall…sigh. Words can not convey how much I love that man.

I WANT ONE!

::coughblushclearsthroat::

…Moving on. Enjoy!

Marshall Mann's Guide to Exotic Animals

Everything You Need to Know on How to Keep One

Chapter Four

The Lion(ess)'s Den

One of the most terrifying things that can happen after the barrier between loving and protecting your exotic creature is that the Keeper should have to leave, putting the animal in charge of itself for any length of time. It could be ten minutes to ten days and the amount of terror a loose animal would instill on the world made one wonder if we shouldn't just leave them loose to prowl the borders when a decrease in illegal immigration was needed.

In short, leaving an animal to its own devices at all is bad. Very bad.

Despite this, 2 months after her birthday, Marshall ended up having to leave his wildcat to her own devices for two weeks. He did not much appreciate this, nor did the world, considering it was HQ's fault, and by default Stan's as well. Though, to be fair, Stan had warned them. Twice. With great emphasis, no less.

Do not split up those two Marshals.

HQ just didn't understand…the rules concerning fraternization were important, yes, but nothing would or had changed in their professional relationship even though he and Mary were dating exclusively now. She still busted his balls and he still drove her crazy with his random facts, and Stan still looked at them like two misbehaving children he didn't know what to do with. Hell, no one would've known just by looking at them, were it not for the fact that they'd told Stan, because he was their friend and boss and if anyone could convince HQ that splitting them up was bad it was him.

HQ didn't listen to him, and for a very bad two weeks Marshall was partnered with a transfer from California who'd lost her partner of 9 years in a pass-off gone bad. The first day had been a warning bell, and he'd pointedly told Stan that she was done. Jenny – that was her name – was no longer entirely there and she was no longer suitable to the field. Even he agreed – Stan was not oblivious to the zombie-like way the woman was working – but HQ was adamant and convinced they were just whining.

To say Mary was even more livid was an understatement. She loathed newbies and absolutely hated arrogance and her new partner "Max" was both in spades. Marshall did not like the young man at all and briefly wondered if he'd ever been like that. Yes, he'd been confident as a newbie marshal, mostly due to having a US Marshal for a dad and a police lieutenant for a mom, but he'd never done some of the things he caught Max doing to Mary. Interrupting her with witnesses. Correcting things he thought were mistakes. Talking to her before she finished her morning coffee.

More then once, Marshall had to distract her so she wouldn't murder him.

"STAN," she growled after a week of it, pacing in agitation like an animal in a cage. Her body was wound up so tight she vibrated, every muscle twitching for release on something.

Both he and Stan stayed well out of arm's reach as she stalked the length of his office, snarling. He half expected to see fangs protrude from her mouth.

Neither of them had any inclination to be the 'something' she let loose on.

Mary started articulating and stopped multiple times as she paced, stopping to rearrange her thoughts or words, before she finally growled, frustrated, and threw up her hands, staring at Stan expectantly, "Do something!"

"Give it a week," he eventually promised, rubbing his temples because even he wanted her back with Marshall – if for no other reason then to make her stop snarling at him and bitch at Marshall like normal. Stan was not ignorant to their rapidly falling success rates, either. While they were managing about 15 or so witnesses a piece, which was normal, as a team they generally garnered twice the norm or more, simply because they worked so well together. It was the reason Stan got away with having fewer teams of Marshals in the office then was usual and they were feeling the effects of it now, damn it. The constant state of agitation didn't help either. "I'll speak with HQ."

HQ was slow.

Marshall was too high on morphine to be really clear on why he was mad at the stuffed shirts over in Arlington, VA calling all the shots exactly, but he was lucid enough to remember that it was their fault he was in the hospital with a hole in his chest – again – and multiple fractures in his left leg.

He breathed in and out, softly, because anything deeper hurt like a poker in his heart. Vaguely, he was aware of precisely when Mary came dashing down the halls, protective as a lioness but murmuring to him like a frightened cat, telling him not to die. He wanted to tell her not to cry, because wild animals like her really shouldn't – it went against nature for exotic creatures like her to cry – but the oxygen mask prevented it and he'd nearly passed out the last time he'd gotten it off of his mouth for even a second.

Moving it away to tell her even that was probably a bad idea, no?

Marshall didn't really hear anything more after that because he was wheeled through the doors where Mary couldn't follow, but the last thing he heard her say, with a voice roaring like an enraged tiger, was, "STAN! Someone better tell me what mother-humpin' HAPPENED!"

'That's my girl,' he thought with an insane little giggle because she was an animal and should always be roaring instead of crying before consciousness faded and the pain disappeared.

"Great news," Stan said with a tiny bit of derision when he opened his eyes who-knows-how-many-hours later. "I finally convinced them to let you both remain partners. Jenny has resigned and is moving back to her partner's hometown. Ironic, really, since it was her successful relationship with her own partner that convinced them to let me keep you two paired off even though she was the reason the situation got so bad." He shook his head then, like an exasperated father with two unruly children he had no clue what to do with. "Try not to get shot again now. Mary nearly got booted form the hospital for harassing the nurses."

Marshall smiled slightly, but snapped his fingers dejectedly. "Darn. And getting shot is just so much fun." Ignoring Stan's rather exasperated look, he nodded and said, "I'll be sure to put that in my PDA under 'Things not to do for the next decade'. Anyone get dismembered?"

"Nothing permanent," Stan stressed, and Marshall cringed almost as soon as he gave a brief laugh. "I'll go find Mary. She's been prowling the halls since you got out of surgery."

It didn't take long for him to find her and even less time for Mary to dart into his room like a cheetah on speed, barely stopping herself before she tripped head first over his bed. Her wheat-blonde hair was disheveled and sticking up in some places, her shirt half tucked in and half not, and was that a stain on her pants?

"What am I going to do with you?" he chuckled, wondering how she managed to get powdered sugar on the inside of her thigh and what looked like jelly on the side almost near her butt. Did he want to know? Probably not. But he could guess.

Guessing was better then knowing sometimes, anyway.

"That's my line, doofus," she scowled, glaring at his chest where the bullet had been – barely a hair's width away from his heart and certain fatality. "I leave you for two weeks and you nearly die!"

"What can I say? The bright light is just so pretty that I wanted to see it again," he quipped dryly. "Did Stan tell you we finally get to go back to normal?"

"Yeah, right after I kicked the newbie's ass for upsetting one of the witnesses. They're transferring him because he's an imbecile." Pulling up a chair so she could sit at his bedside, her hands drifted along his chest, sending shivers down his spine even if the touch wasn't meant to do so. It was, he'd realized, Mary's version of a cat rubbing against a human's leg. She did it more often whenever he got injured, the last being that debacle with Horst. He'd be out sooner since infection wasn't an issue this time around, but he'd been even closer to death this time and the house cat part of her wanted reassurance.

They sat quietly together long after visiting hours ended, the nurses willing to turn a blind eye so long as she stayed out of their hair. At some point she crawled into bed next to him, hand thrown over his waist and the other curled around his neck – the classic possessive gesture he couldn't help smiling at.

It wasn't until the day before he was to be released that she remembered to tell him something important.

"Oh yeah," she put in as an after thought as they watched the TV in his room, "You're moving in with me."

Pause.

"Say that again?" He made a show of cleaning out his ear, which earned him a punch in the arm.

"Just until you heal fully, doofus," she said defensively, that tone of skittishness in her voice that he recognized well. Marshall took no offense because she was still an untamable beast after all and instead smiled as he kissed her on her forehead.

There was finally an upside to getting shot.

If there was an upside, he was quickly forgetting what it was.

Despite having known Mary and her family for four years, Marshall had never once actually stayed over at the house with all three of them present. He'd crashed once when Jinx was out of town visiting Brandi, who still lived in New Jersey at the time, but beyond that he'd never actually been around to see what the house was like when all three Shannon women were around.

It was interesting to say the least.

He woke up to giggling. This wasn't so bad until his sleep-fogged brain placed the giggle to its owner (Jinx) and then he had a fountain of images he did not need in his head because he was a guy and guys imagined it when they heard it because that's just what guys do! Mary knew he'd heard because he couldn't look at her mother for the rest of the day and snickered at him on her way out to the office. Brandi just looked at him sympathetically and offered him use of her backup earplug set.

Then there was the boredom. His chest wound was healing and the biggest pain in the ass was his leg, which was going to be in a cast up to his knee for 2 weeks at the least, and Marshall hadn't realized what a pain it was to get simple things like a box of cereal from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinets until he tried and nearly slipped onto his ass because of the cast. Brandi, who'd seen the display, laughed at him, and he got back at her by chattering her ear off for 45 minutes explaining just how many injuries a year happened in a person's own home.

She didn't laugh at any of his further attempts again.

When he mentioned this problem to Mary later that night because she was still the Queen of the Den and he only had VISITATION rights she looked at him like he was mad and said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "So rearrange some things. Your ass better be back in the office in two weeks, doofus, or I'll kill you!"

So the next morning (and still with the earplugs in, because it was Brandi this time with Peter), Marshall gutted every single cabinet and arranged its contents so they actually made sense. Coffee beans by the pot and grinder, seasonings in the cabinet above the stove, cereal in the cabinet next to the fridge…he even called Bobby D, who obligingly brought over a few things from the store after some needling on his part (and a desire to avoid his half-started rant about the benefits of milk) and showed up 20 minutes after six with two bags bursting with food that wouldn't clog his arteries before he turned forty.

"Next time I stop by you'll be fixing the holes in her wall," Bobby told him, staring distastefully at the one nearest the back door.

"I'm only on a visitor's pass to the den. House fixing isn't allowed on that," Marshall grinned.

Bobby snorted at him. "Right…and this is only brown paint on my skin to cover up the pasty white. You've moved in, Mann. You both just don't realize it yet."

In hindsight, his words probably held some truth to it, because even after the cast was off Marshall was still there, under the guise that he was convinced Mary was holding his cowboy hat pajama's hostage.

"I do not have your cowboy hat pants!" She barely kept a straight face as she said this, a suspicious shine in her narrowed eyes. "I can't believe you even have cowboy hat pants!"

"Cowboy hats and lassos," Marshall corrected seriously, as if it made any difference once so ever. "And every boy dreams of being a cowboy. Of course I have the pants. I have the gun, don't I?"

"How you managed to pass the psych evaluation is beyond me," she snickered, shaking her head. "You have a real hat, the boots, and spurs too. Don't think I haven't seen them hidden in your closet!"

His eyes widened comically, a gasp escaping his mouth. "You have them with my pajama pants too?!"

CRACK.

Mary couldn't take it anymore. She fell over laughing, tears falling from her eyes, as he leaned on his hand and grinned down at her victoriously. "Can't…take it…my BRAIN…!"

Marshall held her until she could breathe again, leaning back against the headboard while she curled into his side like a cat who'd just finished binging on a bowl of cream and was ready to take a nap.

"Stay," she finally sighed out as she closed her eyes, bone-tired and still twitching with the occasional laugh.

Now he was no idiot – Marshall knew what she was saying – but he also did not presume to completely understand how Mary thought. If he did, she'd never surprise him, and she still managed to do that at least once every damn day. "Do you know what you're saying, Mare?"

"Yes, doofus, I'm telling you to live with me," she said dryly, leaning back enough just to shoot him a pointed look.

He grinned and chuckled slightly. "Telling, not asking?"

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes and snort at him. "As if you'd say no?"

"There's an insult in there somewhere…" he mused, giggling again when she hit him in the shoulder. "I'd need more room, you realize. My computer alone would fill up this room and then some. Considering most of the walls are nearly torn to pieces anyway it wouldn't take much to add on some rooms…"

She slapped a hand over his mouth, halting any further babbling and groaned into his side, "So long as you invest in some sound-proofing, I don't care."

Now it was his turn to look at her like she was daft while he removed her hand, kissing her palm with a small smile. "Well that just goes without saying." Leaning closer so he could whisper in her ear, Marshall grinned, "Much as it would serve them right, I'd rather your mother and sister not know when you're screaming."

Silence.

"You are SO going to eat your words, Mr. Mann…!"

When your exotic animal decides to trust you, there is no greater show of commitment then that. If they allow you, even briefly, into their personal den, it is a key moment in their adaption to the world and then some. But do not be fooled, because visitation rights are different from being granted your own space in their den. Best recognize the difference or risk getting yourself kicked all the way back to square one with the tranquilizer gun in one hand and the raw piece of meat in your other. But finding your way into the Lion(ess)'s Den is just half the battle.

The real battle starts AFTER that.

A/N: Well? Hopefully this pleased all of you as much as it did me as I wrote it. I'm bouncing right off to start Part 5, because I'm finally going to show the Mann clan in the next one! ::snickersmilesmirk::

As for the questions I've been getting…I haven't thought much on WHEN Marshall is writing the end paragraphs per se, but certainly when he's older, yes. You'll get a feel for it in the last installment I have planned, which is in…hmm…about 5 more chapters from now? Something like that.

As always, PLEASE review! Come on, you know you can do it…