Pawnshops and Carousels

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Sunday my wonderful readers! So we have yet another cute little chapter here. We're going to be delving a lot into stuff that happens in the episodes for the next little bit but we will eventually see some non-episode cute stuff. As always don't forget to review and I'll see you guys next week!

Chapter 25

Ashley: Like the little baby he is, Seth has not come into work today. Neither has my dad come in. Which means I'm in control and that's the way I like it. Everything was going great until all our computer went down. I was ready to deal with it but then my dad finally decided to grace us with his presence and neither of us can figure it out what's wrong and now I'm screwed. Because Seth, Seth is the computer guy, he'll know how to fix it. Which means I now how have to call my brother. Who, the last time I saw, was storming out of the store because he couldn't take a joke. But my dad won't call him and he won't let me pass the buck either. It's up to me to call my brother and beg him to help us. Shoot me now.

I'm lounging in bed with my half-asleep wife. The plan was to go baby-shopping but she woke up horny and it was my duty, as the man who impregnated her and the love of her life, to fuck her until she wasn't horny anymore. And it was great. I more than rose to that occasion, pun intended. Fuck I'd love it if she were pregnant all the time cause the sex was phenomenal.

I was so mad at Ashley that I had no intention of going in today. The whole day was going to be dedicated to staying with my wife, who loved me and treated me right, and getting baby stuff for our soon to be coming baby.

I was only half expecting a call from the store, but I was expecting it to be my father. And that is the only reason I picked it up.

But it isn't my dad calling me, it's Ash.

"Hi Seth… I need you to please come in. I need your help."

Those words must have felt like acid dropping from my sister's lips. "Excuse me? My help?"

"Yes, Seth I need your help."

"Help, who needs help?" Sabrina asks clearly having decided that she's more awake than asleep at that moment. Which is terrible timing, but what am I going to do now?

I cover the mouthpiece of the phone to say: "Ashley, something's wrong at the store I guess."

"The computers are down," Ashley tells me, which means I didn't cover the phone as well as I thought I did, as Sabrina quickly gets up in bed to look at me.

"You're gonna go right?"

"Why the hell should I go? Ashley doesn't deserve my help. She wants to be manager she can fix it her damn self!"

"Seth please, I tried, I need you to come in," I hear Ashley cry from the phone but I'm more concerned with my wife, who has suddenly started crying herself. "God Reenie, why are you crying?"

"Because that's your family and they need you and…"

God her pregnancy hormones, sometimes they were great but most of the time they made her crazy. Why couldn't she go back to being horny, huh? We were having such a great time when she was horny.

"For godsake, Reenie. Stop it. I'm going to go in, stop it. Yes. Yes. Fuck Ashley you made her cry."

There was a bit of a pause before I heard Ashley's regular no-longer-need-to-suck-up-and-be-nice-voice came back to the phone. "Your wife is pregnant she cries at everything."

"Well you get her to stop then?" I say and then toss Sabrina the phone. Before she can cry to Ashley, I lean in to kiss her. "You're lucky I love you."

Sabrina sniffs and then puts the phone to her ear. "Seth says he's going to come in and I'm going to call your mom later to see if she'll go shopping with me, I know you're busy today but I need someone for Saturday if you'd like."

Great the women were going to go shopping and I was going to have to work. Wasn't that just wonderful?

Am I happy that my brother showed up? Of Course. Am I happy that I had to call him? No, but he showed up and that was great. Especially since we had a crazy line up of people waiting to redeem their stuff and one guy in particular going crazy over getting his ring out.

I've tried to explain to him what's going on, our tellers tried telling him before I even got there, but this man was adamant on being a douche.

He shouted, he screamed, he had slammed his ticket at my as aggressively as possible so I went to go pull his ring. I actually took Seth away from fixing the server to pull the ring by hand. And he did. The problem was, it was the wrong ring, it was some woman's ring.

Panic was the main feeling. I knew I felt it and by the look in my brother's eyes he felt it too. The computer was printing duplicate tickets. Well wasn't that just fucking peachy? And with the computers down he wouldn't be able to know which ring was his unless he went through it by hand. And Seth did not have that time.

I manage to talk to the man down, tell him to come back later. Seth gets the computers at the front working but the vault system is still down, which means he still hasn't found the crazy man's ring. It's getting closer to the time that this guy is going to come in and AJL's reputation is on stake here. I don't want to bother my brother, I don't want to seem like I'm pestering him, but I need that ring.

"Do you have the ring Seth?"

Seth is at the computer and I have once again broken his concentration to ask him that question.

"You gotta give me more time, Ash," he says again. But that's the problem we don't have anymore time. That crazy man is going to come back into this store any second and I still don't have the ring.

"Well how much time do you need?"

"I'm working back here. Stop."

It's a fair request and I know it. But we're on a time crunch and he knows it. So, I leave him alone and I go back to watching the door dreading this man's inevitable return.

An hour later, still no ring, crazy guy walks through the door. He comes straight for the wrong line, the hardware windows and shouts: "Where's my fucking ring at?"

Here we go.

Well if he's going to be a dick, I'm going to wait for him to find me. He paces a bit and then finally walks by as if looking for me, shouting: "Hello!" on the top of his lungs.

It would do no good to ignore him so I call out a: "Hi!" back.

Once he spots me, he makes a beeline for me, gets as close to the window as he can and practically screams: "I'm back!" at me. Like I couldn't fucking see that.

"Where's my ring?"

I need to stall. I say hold on, take his ticket, again, and then slowly walk back to Seth. Yes, I know I should be in a hurry but I'm trying to buy him some time.

I get to the vault where my brother is still peering at the computer which makes me nervous, still I ask: "The guy's back, are you ready?"

"No Ashley I'm not ready. Ash, I'm working back here. You coming back here every five minutes isn't going to make me work any faster."

Okay yes fair, maybe I shouldn't have bugged him so much and I'll definitely apologize later, but we have a disaster on our hands and I just want to fix it. "How much more time do you need?"

"I don't know Ash."

That was not that answer I needed or wanted. But it's the answer I've got and I need to work with it. I can stall, that's all I can do, and hope to god my brother finds this guy's ring.

I return to the front, and go out, not hide behind the window, so I can talk to him.

"Okay… so… I just need five more minutes," I tell him, and I get the exact response I expect from him.

He blows up immediately. "No. Fuck five more minutes!" he's clapping at me and throwing his hands around all while I'm trying to calm him down and just listen to reason. "It is right over there in the display case!"

This old scam again. I'm not falling for that. "No, it isn't! It's in the vault"

"No. I see it!"

I ask him to take a few breaths and he sort of does and kind of calms down. "Just give my guy five more minutes to figure out where it went okay?"

He shakes his head. "No, just get my ring out of that display case and then I will be gone."

I don't even bother trying to tell him that it's not there, he's not listening to reason. "Please, just calm down. I said it's here, it's in the vault, our computers are down and we're trying to pull it by hand, okay?"

A normal person would have been fine with this, but not this guy. He doesn't yell at me anymore but he half walks away and I'm not sure which is worse at this point.

"You told me to come back in an hour!"

"You need to calm down!"

"NO! I'm here now and I want my mother fucking ring!"

God this is escalating way out of control. "Fuck this. You're gonna try and sell my fucking ring, that I paid to get back!"

Suddenly the door opens and breathless Seth is beside me. "Is this your lot?"

He drops a ring on the counter and I calmly offer it up to the guy. He takes it and looks it over. "Oh… this is it."

"See, I told you it was going to be an hour and I'd have it out for you," I remind him and he finally concedes.

"Okay."

Is that it. That's all I get for the hassle he put us through, what the hell?

"I'm sorry for the wait, sir."

But I don't get my apology, he simply says okay one more time and then leaves me there. What… what the hell is that? My god, people have no manners anymore. Seth leans back and I almost thank him for rushing out there to get me the ring, but the adrenaline of the situation is wearing off and my dad has decided to join us.

"You see what happens when you two work as a team?" Oh god, he's not going to turn this into a life lesson, is he? "You two handled that situation absolutely perfectly and that is how I expect you guys to work together. No more fighting."

"Sure, dad," both Seth and I say together. We may be in sync at that moment but I know there will still be arguments, and my dad's delusional if he thinks we won't argue anymore after this. Absolutely delusional.

Les: Do I think that my kids are actually going to stop arguing? Hell no I'm not that stupid, but if I'm lucky they'll have seen how good they work together and maybe the arguing will be a little less frequent.

Seth: I may not always see eye to eye with my sister, but we're family. And it's good to know that when the chips are down, we have each other's back.

Ashley: Absolutely delusional.

The rest of the day runs smoothly. I get the computers up and running even in the vault and we don't have anymore issues with the patrons. I don't say anything but I'm happy that I managed to help out my family today. I'm glad that Sabrina sent me into work today. I feel like it brought me and my sister closer together though neither of us are going to admit that to the other.

And I'm definitely not admitting it now that Sabrina has come into the store with my mom. I hug and kiss Sabrina first before giving my mom a hug and peck on the cheek. They're laden down with bags, and immediately I take the ones that Sabrina has. She shouldn't be doing any heavy lifting and that is something I keep reminding my family.

"The crib is at home, and this is all the extra stuff, like clothes and toys. I told Ashley I'd show her."

Just on cue Ashley came out of the back, she took in the bags and squealed. "Oh my gosh what a haul, are you sure you need to go shopping on Saturday."

"Course she does, we still need to stock her up on essentials, like diapers and baby wipes," my mom argues and Ashley smiles because it means that she can go shopping with the girls.

"How did everything go, did Seth fix the problem?"

Ashley shoots me a little bit of a glance before she nods and says: "Actually yeah, he did." She then cleared her throat and turned to me. "I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for coming in today, I know you were mad at me, so… just… thank you."

Jesus. Hell must have froze over. But instead of saying that to her… which I totally could and should have, I nod to her and beside me I hear the tell-tale sniff from my wife. I turn to look at her to find that tears are streaming down her face.

"Aw, you guys are getting long, that's soo sweet and wonderful…"

Okay, so, if it's so sweet why the hell is she crying? I try to not be frustrated but I can't help it. "God why are you crying now?"

"Because I'm so goddamn happy." Oh my god my wife is a disaster.

"Okay, tell dad I'm gonna take Reenie home, she's had too much excitement for one day."

"Tell him yourself," Ashley snaps, completely back to normal now. Already nose deep in all the bags that Sabrina and mom my let it. I leave them to it to go into the back to get my things and talk to my dad.

It's at moments like these that I remember why I want this pregnancy to be over as soon as possible.