"Will, I wanna show you this."

"Grace, I don't know. Can't I come by after work? I've got this case I'm working on…"

The redhead didn't loosen her grip on Will's arm, dragging him closer to her office. Will hung back reluctantly, dragging his feet on the sidewalk. Grace's grip was unrelenting and his shoes didn't have the grip to fight her. This was what you got for buying Italian shoes, he thought. They looked great and they went with his new suit and they were suitably expensive for a lawyer but they offered little resistance when you were being dragged along on rain-slicked paving slabs in New York by your quite-possibly psychotic best friend.

They reached the street her office was situated on and Will stopped whatever effort he'd been making to struggle. They were here now. He rolled his eyes and Grace let go of his arm to fumble around in her purse.

Will did a double-take. "Is that a new purse?"

"Uh-huh. I got is yesterday. You like?"

"I approve. How come you didn't take me shopping with you?"

Grace looked up from rummaging in her purse. "It's a sad day when a girl can't choose a purse without her gay best friend to help model them."

"It's never stopped you before."

Grace cocked her head to one side and flicked her eyebrows up, agreeing. "True. Dammit! Where is that key?"

Finally she pulled out a card from the deep dark recesses of her bag and waved it in Will's face with flourish. Will stepped back a little, blinking at the small card with a dark magnetic stripe running down the centre. He folded his arms across his chest, thinking longingly of drinking coffee in his office and getting a start on some of those cases.

"What are you going to do? Charge our entry to your office to your credit card?"

"No, watch this." Grace swiped the card through a small reader mounted on the wall next to the door to her office. Will blinked just as the light flashed green to red and then back again. Grace squealed as the door clicked and opened it by pushing on the frosted glass pane, showing Will inside.

"Very nice, Grace," Will said, obviously impressed as he walked through the door, admiring the doorframe which was now made of steel.

"I know! And look!" She walked through the door, ushered Will forward and turned, swiping the card through the reader on the other side. She closed the door and swiped the card and the light went red. The door clicked and locked itself. Grace gave it a round of.

She took a handful of Will's coat and dragged him across the room to the window at the back of her office.

"Hey, hey, hey! Watch the coat!" He began straightening the creases out in his sleeve as Grace swiped her new toy through a similar reader to the one on the door and then yanked the window upwards.

She took a deep drag of the city air in through her nose and then dissolved into a coughing fit. "Okay, last time I'm going to open that," she choked, fumes stinging her nasal passage as she slammed the pane down and locked it using the card.

She then crossed the room to the service elevator behind Karen's desk and gestured to the reader there as well. She swiped and the wooden door raised itself. She swiped again and it closed. She smiled before tossing the cardkey onto Karen's desk.

"Okay, Grace. I get it. You swipe, you get a power rush." The lawyer paused. "Do you think that you're now in the mind of Karen as she hands over her credit card at Barneys?"

"Oh, God no. I mean, where are the assistants to insult? And if you put a match to my blood, it would pose no fire hazard whatsoever."

Will smiled. "What's with the heavy-duty security anyway, Grace? Afraid someone's going to come in and steal your swatches?"

Grace rolled her eyes. "No. It's just you know what happened on the third floor? That guy broke into the office and moved all of the furniture around." She crossed the room to the coffeemaker and began busying herself with making a fresh pot.

"So you're protecting yourself from a Feng Shui nut?"

"Don't joke Will. You don't know what could happen if the… the… thing was adjusted."

"Chi?"

"No thanks, I just had breakfast. But you know what I mean, right?" She dumped the pot on the hotplate and left it to drip through.

Will shook his head, smiling, as Grace as she unzipped her briefcase and began piling files onto the mountain that was her desk. Rolls of fabric and pencils and paper and a laptop and empty coffee mugs and pens and stacks of notepads and empty portfolios and feathers and sequins and swatches and an eraser and pencil shavings and s pencil sharpener consumed the entire top surface of it. He didn't know how she managed to get anything done on that desk. He could only work when things were neat. When the bottom of his keyboard was running parallel to the edge of his desk and when his stationary was organised. But Grace… He guessed that that was what was so special about her. She could work anywhere and be completely disorganised and still turn out a room or an apartment or a house that looked perfect. Hell, she'd done well enough with his, right?

Will frowned and moved behind Karen's desk, squinting at something on the surface. Karen's desk was not as cluttered as Grace's and everything on it was coordinated, stacked in neat little boxes. The only thing Will didn't see on the desk was any type of work at all. There were bottles of pills with names the lawyer could never hope to pronounce on them, all surrounding the tall spire of a bottle of gin.

On the other side of the desk there was a neat pile of magazines. Cosmopolitan seemed to be the main theme, and Will had to stop himself picking up the copy on the top up and taking it to his office with him. How did Karen get the latest issues before they were due out anyway? Next to the boxes were pills with names vaguely pronounceable. Valium sat quite cheerfully next to Zoloft, Paxil sat merrily side-by-side with Xanax, Prozac sat happily next to various barbiturates. That must be her mood stabilising pile, he thought. Almost fondly, as it turned out. Which scared him more than a little. Was he developing a soft spot for Karen? With her alcohol and pill dependencies and her ability to let everyone know exactly what she thought in as few a words as possible?

Next to the phone was a large, round, grey object and when Will picked it up it was heavy. He tested the weight in his hand and tossed it into the air, letting it slap into the palm of his hand.

"Gracie, what's this?"

The designer looked up from her desk, where she was frantically looking for something underneath the mountain of junk that was her workspace. "Hm? Oh, that. It's a magnet. It's what Karen uses to keep her needles on. I used to have it for my paperclips, but…"

"Oh." Will suddenly realized what he was holding and threw it down onto the desk in disgust. It rolled and came to a stop.

The lawyer wiped his hand on the back of his pants and grimaced. "As much as I'd like to stay and chat I now have to go and get tested for all diseases under the Sun. So if you wouldn't mind letting me out?"

"Will, can you do it yourself? I've lost the pack of chocolate chip cookies I had on my desk… The more I look the more crumbs I find and there just aren't any cookies…" She was getting more and more choked up the further she got into the sentence.

"I'll stop by the market in my lunch break. They'll be cookies waiting for you at home." He kissed her on the top of her head.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Well, there better be."

"There will. I promise." Will poked Karen's needle magnet off the cardkey it had rolled onto with a pencil and dragged the key to the end of the desk and picked it up. He swiped it through the lock, waiting for the green light to blink at him so he could push the door. It stayed red. Will frowned, turning the card the other way up and running it through the machine. Nothing. He flipped the card over and ran it through, but still the light glared red at him. He glared back, but it didn't change to green.

"Grace, your security system doesn't like me."

"Will, if we listened to you, nothing would like you. Just swipe the damn card."

"I've tried! The light stays red!"

"And they think women are incompetent with technology. The gays are worse." She snatched the card from Will and ran it through the slot, flourishing at pulling the door, smirking. It didn't move. Grace continued to smirk, pulling the door more and more violently until it was rattling in its hardened-steel frame.

"Grace. Grace. GRACE!" Will had to yell to get the designer's attention and he gently took her hands and placed them by her side. "Okay, calm down. Think rationally. There's a problem with the system, so what can we do about it?"

"I'll call Karen. She has a key as well."

"Wait, you're going to trust Karen to get us out of here? Is she even awake from the comas she has that passes for sleep?"

"Yes. As it happens she'll now be having her eggs injected with morphine before they're scrambled."

Grace put the phone to her ear, cradling it between her shoulder and her head and punched a button on the phone. She thought better of it as it dialled for her and put the receiver back down, punching the speakerphone button. There was a delay before it started ringing and then a cell phone started chirping in the room. Will dug in his pockets and pulled out his – it wasn't ringing. Grace hadn't had a cell phone since a rather unfortunate incident in which she'd discovered the vibrate function. It was still painful to talk about. In more ways than one.

The ringing suddenly stopped.

"Hello?"

"Karen, hey."

"Whatever you're selling, I don't want it. How did you get this number? Huh? I'll have you arrested and strung up by your nose."

There was a slight echo on the line that Grace assumed was from the call being made to a cell.

"Karen, it's me, Grace. There's a little problem with the door system down here."

There was a pause. "Well, what are you calling me for?"

Karen put her hand to her head and leant against the doorframe, clutching the stem of an empty martini glass in one hand. She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder like Grace was doing as massaged her temples with her now free hand.

"Karen, you've got the cardkey that can open the door. So can you hop in your limo, or your helicopter or your golf buggy or whatever the hell mode of transport you're using today and come and let us out?"

"Honey, I'm right here."

Grace turned around and screamed, and Karen took the cell away from her ear as the noise deafened her. Will turned too and blinked at the assistant, who was leaning against the doorway of the swatch room with her phone back to her ear.

Grace clamped down on Will's arm. "Will…"

"Hey! Watch the coat! Don't make me tell you again!"

"Sorry, I'm just… Karen? What are you doing here?

Karen spoke into her phone. "Can you hold on a minute, Grace? There are some really shifty looking people in your office… And after what happened with the man upstairs…"

Grace looked down at her watch and had to look again at the time. She shook the timepiece and held it to her ear. "Will, I think my watch it broken again. What time is it?"

Will rolled up his Grace-crumpled sleeve and looked at his own watch. "It's nine-thirty." The lawyer suddenly caught on to Grace's shock. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's Karen doing at work at nine-thirty?"

"Wha? It's nine-thirty already? I should have been home to Stan and the kids hours ago…" She spoke back into the phone. "Grace, I don't know who these people are, but why didn't you tell me to go home? With all this Daylight Savings time you don't even know it's gotten so late…" She crossed the room and shrugged on a black, thick furry and very heavy coat.

"Karen, it's nine-thirty in the morning. What are you doing here? Did you not go home?"

"Yeah, hold on just one more minute, honey. The redhead with the last season pumps is yapping away at me. Like I care." She laughed and reached for her purse under her desk.

Grace sighed tolerantly, punching the button to disconnect the call. "Karen, I am Grace."

"Can you believe that? She hung up on me!" Karen tossed the phone down onto her desk. "She is off my Christmas card list!" She rummaged around in her purse. Wait; did you say nine-thirty in the morning? Good Lord. I'm three drinks behind!"

"Karen, did you stay in the swatch room all night?"

Karen looked up and then staggered backwards, shielding her eyes. She didn't look back at Grace until her thick dark sunglasses hiding her eyes.

"What do you think you're doing, wearing something that bright out in public?" Karen demanded, looking Grace's blouse up and down. "Who told you that you could pull of three citrus colours? Huh? Was it this guy with the briefcase?" She sidled up to Grace and whispered in her ear. "If it was just say the word and he's history, got it?"

Grace rolled her eyes. "Karen…" The designer turned her head and Karen screeched, clapping both hands over her already-darkened eyes to obscure the vision.

"Honey? Sequins in the… dare I say hairdo? Are you trying to blind me? Because bright things seem to be hurting this morning. I don't know what the matter with me is… I feel sick, my mouth is dry and my head is pounding like… like a great big pounding thing!"

"Karen… I think you're hung-over," Will said, not sure he believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. He dropped his briefcase to the floor. Had it finally happened? Had the alcohol level in Karen's blood finally dropped enough for her to start feeling the effects the next day? God, this was weird. It was like looking into bizarro world.

"You think I'm what?"

Will steepled his fingers, putting his thumbs under his chin and bringing his fingers up to touch his nose, musing. "Oh, boy. How am I going to explain this?"

"Karen, what you're feeling is what happens to the body when it's had too much alcohol. This is your body trying to get the alcohol out of your system."

"You think her alcohol levels have dropped that low?" Grace demanded, putting a hand to Karen's forehead.

"It's possible. Scarier things have happened."

"Like?"

"Uh… That time you found that big black spider in the bath and screamed and run through the entire apartment with just a small towel?"

Grace glared at him. "That was you."

"Oh, it's okay. I know what's happening here," Karen reached into her purse and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff and poured some into the empty martini glass. She then tilted her head back and chugged half of the bottle's contents down her throat. Letting the bottle down she banged it hard onto her desk, making the pills rattle in the bottles. She bent at the waist slightly and clutched the edge of her desk, before straightening up and smiling. "Avoid hangovers. Stay drunk!" She clapped her hands together. "There you two are. I was getting sick of the other two that were in here." The assistant picked up the martini glass and offered it to Will. "Vodka?"

Disclaimer - I don't own Will and Grace. Dammit.

Heh. Mindless rubbish that popped into my head. Review and if it's liked I'll see what I can do about a next chapter.

Twisted Flame