AUish. Set after Love Hurts. This one was fun, I might continue it.

Ever feel like you're being watched? I did as I let myself into my office, shuffling an armful of freshly-xeroxed outlines for the investigation class I was supposed to run for the Baby Wardens.

I turned and found an actual, factual pumpkin on my desk, grinning at me. One of those little battery-operated candles flickered behind its features. The pumpkin and I stared at each other for a moment.

"Oh, right." I smacked myself on the forehead with a stack of stapled papers. "Your birthday, dummy."

It had been our tradition — Murphy's and mine — for the last few years, leaving each other birthday gifts in our respective offices. I got her the same thing almost every year: a box of nine millimeter target rounds, a king-size Hershey bar and the girliest, glitteriest birthday card I could find.

She usually left me some kind of snack, or something useful, or something hilariously useless, and always a note on one of my own yellow Post-Its. I found the latter on the back of the jack-o-lantern, and felt a knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach as I read, in Murphy's neat handwriting:

my place, 7:30

--

"Trick or Treat," I said as the front door swung open. It was a half-hour to sunset and another cute little jack-o-lantern grinned at me from the porch steps. Faux cobwebs were strewn across the windows, the roses lining the walk were starting to fade and curl.

"You're not the pizza guy," Murphy said with mock disappointment. She held a huge tub of candy on one hip, and there were running footsteps and shrieking behind me; a half-dozen miniature superheroes and spooky characters swarmed up the stairs. Each swiped a handful of bite-sized chocolate bars from the bucket and bolted down the street, yelling thank yous.

"Nope. My cheesy pornstar costume is at the cleaners." I held up the sixer I had picked up on the way. "But I brought drinks."

She laughed as she waved me in, and left the candy on top of the old stereo cabinet by the front door. "I always forget you did that."

"Did what?" I tossed my duster over the back of the recliner, left my gun in its shoulder rig on the coat hook by the door, next to her own.

Murph wiggled her eyebrows. "Porn."

"I didn't do it." I glanced around the corner, checked behind a curtain, peered behind the sofa, beneath the kitchen table. "I just worked on the set."

"Sure." She snagged two beers and a package of sugary marshmallow ghosts from the candy. "Harry, what on earth are you looking for?"

"I was worried this was a surprise party or something—"

"God, no," Murphy said, reassuringly. "I would never do that to you. Pizza should be here in a while, though."

"Thanks," I sighed in relief. "I like your costume."

"I'm Off-Duty," she grinned and gestured at jeans, a wooly sweater, her favorite Cubs cap backwards over a tumble of golden hair. She wore a pair of those fuzzy boots my apprentice decried as basic, whatever that meant.

... Cute, not that I would ever say it to her face.

She opened both beers and handed one to me. As she did, the doorbell chimed. Karrin stared expectantly at me, decapitating a marshmallow ghost with a bite. "It's your turn."

I grabbed the candy, all thirty pounds of it. "Jesus."

"There are a lot of kids in this neighborhood. I give them candy, they don't egg my house." She smiled as she sorted through the records in the stereo cabinet. "We have an arrangement."

"Sounds like extortion." I threw handfuls of chocolates into pillowcases and plastic buckets.

"I like to think of it as the yearly ritual sacrifice of Kit-Kats," she grinned and dropped the needle on a Zeppelin album. "To appease the local demons."

"I'm starting to feel like I might be a bad influence on you."

--

"Well, that's the last of it," Murphy said as she closed the front door. She flicked the porch light off and hauled the empty bird-bath sized bowl to the kitchen. "Out of beer, too," she called.

"And still no pizza."

"Right?" Her voice echoed a little from inside the fridge. "What the hell is taking so long?" Murph peered around the corner at me. "I hope the delivery guy didn't get jumped by your little flying friend."

"Yeah, I asked him to stop doing that."

The silence was only a little awkward. We hadn't really worked a case together since the thing at the fair in Indiana, which went pointedly unmentioned. We chatted about everything and nothing in particular, laughing and joking and every time I thought I might have finally conjured up the nerve to say something meaningful, the doorbell chimed.

But we were out of candy, now, and I wasn't really sure what to say, anyway. Like, hey, sorry we got magically manipulated into making out, even though it was fucking fantastic and now I can't stop thinking about it?

It had, at some point when I wasn't paying attention, gotten pretty late. The living room was kind of dark, except for what light filtered from the kitchen, and the heap of white candles flickering behind the vintage wrought-iron grate of the fireplace. The one on the coffee table smelled like blackberries and vanilla, and Since I've Been Loving You was playing softly on the stereo. Murphy appeared from the kitchen, holding a bottle of wine and two glasses, and—

Uh-oh.

I had been so worried over the threat of a surprise party that I had let myself get finessed into something not unlike a date.

"So, I know you're not the biggest fan of birthdays, but I had an idea I thought you might enjoy." Murphy sat down next to me, closer than usual or maybe I was just imagining it. She put a glass in my hand and leaned in to pour, hesitating for an unbearably long second. "And I was wondering if you wanted to—"

The doorbell rang.

"I think it's the pizza," I whispered, not sure why I was whispering, hoping to any available god that it was the delivery guy, and not her quasi-immortal contract-killer boyfriend.

"Hold that thought," she smiled, as if I was capable of doing anything else, and she went to collect the food. I downed the entire glass of wine in one nervous gulp before she returned, pizza in hand. "Where were we?"

"You were, ah. Asking if I wanted to—"

"Oh, right." She motioned for me to wait, she disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a paper grocery bag, which she placed on the table with the pizza. It held a carton of eggs and a couple of rolls of toilet paper.

"... What's this?" I asked, in an unintentional but accurate impression of the King of Halloween Town.

"Rick and Lisa moved into a new place a few blocks over. I thought you might want to help me welcome them to the neighborhood."

"Pizza, alcohol and petty vandalism? Karrin, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to seduce me—"

She just smiled behind her glass of wine.

"Happy birthday."

Next: Stars