Author's note:
Hey everyone!
Thank you so much for supporting my new fic! Means the world to me.
Just to let you know, per request, my fics are now going up to Wattpad as well, so if you are more comfortable reading there go ahead I guess?
I will appreciate your thoughts so so so much!
Hope you enjoy!
"You would not believe what Herrera and I found out!" Vic exclaims when she walks into the packed beanery, as Andy shuffles right behind her.
"Dean colored Warren's entire batch of white laundry pink again?" Travis asks, piling food on top of his plate.
The entire kitchen smells amazing, and Andy can see every kind of existing breakfast item spread along the table. Whomever was in charge of breakfast today outdid themselves, and apparently everyone else knew about it beforehand, since every member of the shift already sits excitedly by the table.
Everyone excluding their new captain, of course.
"I swear it wasn't me!" Dean claims as Ben gives him an outrageous look.
"Why would I know anything about the color of Warren's laundry?" Vic questions. Both Andy and Vic find a seat at the table, opposite to each other, and Andy has her back to the entrance. She picks up one of the last two clean plates left, and serves herself with a little bit of every item on the table, which eventually forms a little mountain of food on her plate.
Well, breakfast is still the most important meal of the day, isn't it?
"I don't know!" Montgomery tries to defend himself. "I thought we were playing some kind of guessing game, and I said the first thing that came into my mind."
"When don't you say the first thing that comes into your mind, Montgomery?" Maya asks as she shoves another forkful of food into her mouth.
Everyone around the table nods their agreement, before Andy says "Fine, guess away, but I bet none of you will get to the right answer."
That seems to trigger each and every one of her friends, who starts to throw their assumptions around the table. If there is one thing that the members of station 19 do not back away from, is a bit of healthy competition.
"The new captain assigned Travis for a month long toilet cleaning duty?" Miller tries his luck, which earns him a piece of scrambled egg thrown in his direction, the courtesy of the same firefighter he was just talking about.
"Nope." Vic replays. "But it does involve Sullivan, so I guess you get a half a point for that." That makes Dean throw a hand in the air triumphantly.
"Are we playing for money?" Maya asks as she chews.
Andy sighs and puts her fork down in despair. "Again, there is no way any of you will guess it correctly, so there is no point in betting your money on it, you are just going to lose it."
"I am willing to put twenty on Herrera finally punching the guy." Jack fishes a crumpled up bill out of his pocket and slams it pointedly on the table.
"I have a ten." Maya joins the bet.
Andy places her elbows on the table and nestles her head between her palms, as she hears her entire team members piling up money on the fact that she may or may not have thrown a fist at their new captain. "Guys!" She yells as the chaos of loud voices gets out of control. "I wasn't physically violent toward Sullivan in any way."
"Yes!" Warren exclaims. "Bishop, Gibson, pay up." He reaches for the bills lying on the table in front of the very not pleased Maya and Jack.
"Thank you for the vote of confidence, Warren."
"Anytime, Herrera." Ben says as he counts the money in his hands, then shoves it deep into his pocket.
"Seriously, why would you think I have punched him? I am not a violent person."
Andy receives a snort coming from Maya's way, and a murmured "Yeah, OK, whatever you say. So I guess you almost running over Ryan's police car, while you were driving the truck, on multiple different occasions, were all just unfortunate accidents."
"Exactly." Andy approves as she drops more food into her mouth.
"You just seem to pick up a fight with Sullivan in every chance you get. Excuse me for thinking it transformed from verbal contempt to a physical brawl." Jack says.
"We just don't agree. Ever. On anything." Andy says, spitting little bits of half chewed food on Vic who sits right in front of her.
Vic wipes her face with the back of her hand. "Thank you Herrera. Now, as much as I would like to hear more about your disputes with Sullivan, nobody guessed it currently yet."
"I am out." Warren calls, picking up his dishes and making his way to the sink.
"Sullivan has a teenage daughter." Andy blurts out. She scans the room with her eyes, and the reactions she gets from every one of her friends are priceless. They are all frozen, their eyes wide open and each of them look in a different state of shock.
"Told you you will never guess it." Andy shrugs, before she takes a sip of her coffee.
"Pay up, Warren." Maya calls across the room, and stretches out her palm for Ben to put the bills back in it. Ben huffs out his dissatisfaction, and pulls out the money he had just put away in his pocket.
"What were you betting on now?" Andy asks, confused.
"Well…" Warren starts to say, but he is stalling, and Andy knows that whatever it is, she is not going to like it. "I thought that you had slept with Sullivan before he became the captain of this station."
Andy spits the coffee she had in her mouth straight back into the mug, to the sound of "Ew" coming from all around the table. "I am sorry, come again?"
Great. There goes her morning drink.
"I don't know. It just made sense to me. This is the reason you hate each other so much, so no one will know that you used to be lovers." Ben continues with his refuted theory.
"First of all, if I had slept with him, Maya would have already known by now." Andy says.
"Thank you Andy, I have said the exact same thing." Maya calls as she rolls the bills and stuff them into her uniform.
"Second," Andy continues, ignoring the fact that she had been interrupted. "Why would I come in here and announce that I have slept with the captain? If I have done it, which I did not, I would like to keep it to myself. And finally, what the hell is going on at Grey Sloan Memorial that your first thought is that I had sex with the captain?"
"Oh, believe me, you don't even want to know." Ben mutters as he washes his dishes and puts it on the rack to dry.
"As much as I like talking about Herrera's love life, today and any day." Travis rolls his eyes. "Can we get back to the subject? Sullivan has a teenage daughter?"
"Thank you!" Vic slams her hand on the table. "At least someone gives me the reaction I was looking for."
"It is as if the Grinch had a baby." A tremor goes through Dean. "I bet she had never celebrated Christmas in her life."
"I am in. I have 30." Maya hands Miller the money she has earned from Jack and Ben.
"I don't know, I don't think so." Andy doesn't know why she is coming to the defense of this girl who is practically a stranger, but she feels a need to be on her side nonetheless. "She looked perfectly normal, like any other teenager. More normal than I was when I was in high school, let me tell you that."
"What do you think is his story? Do you think he is married?" Vic asks. Another thing that the members of station 19 do not back away from, is a little bit of gossip.
"Maybe he abducted her." Maya guesses.
"Very funny. I don't know. Maybe he had a wife that left him because he never smiles, and left the daughter with him." Andy contributes her own assumption to the mix.
"Herrera." She hears a stern voice coming from behind her.
Oh no. Now if anyone is going to be on toilet duty for the rest of the month, it is going to be her.
"I do not appreciate you talking about my personal life at all, and about my daughter specifically, are we clear?" Andy turns around in her seat, and meets eye to eye with a very furious Sullivan, standing at the entrance to the beanery, his arms crossed around his chest and the vein in his forehead pulsing.
"Yes, sir." Andy replays softly, as she looks down.
"And since you are all so interested, yes, I have a daughter. Her name is Olivia, and her mother, my wife, passed away some time ago. Now that you all got the information you desired about my private life, clear this mess up. Line up in five."
Everyone around her starts to pick up the dirty dishes and put away the leftover food, almost frantically. The silence as they do it is a strong testimony to the fact that they are embarrassed, like a kid caught stealing the last cookie out of the jar.
As Andy wipes down the dirty table, she lifts her eyes up to see Sullivan giving her one last look, before turning around and going down the stairs.
She will not be able to forget the look on his face.
No matter what she does, she only manages to disappoint him.
Andy rushes up the stairs to the beanery.
She is famished, to a point where her stomach growls and makes very loud, very embarrassing noises. It has been a very long day that started very early in the morning in the aid car. For some mysterious reason Jack, her partner in crime for the day, called it a day, declaring he is not hungry.
Her plan is to step into the kitchen, go through the cabinet and eat the first thing she doesn't have to make on her own. Simple and easy. Yet when she walks in, she smells the scents of cooking and frying coming to her nose, even though she is certain the team members had already had their dinner. A meal she had to skip thanks to a four year old who decided that jumping off a swing and onto a concrete surface was a fine idea.
Over the stove stands Olivia, mixing something in a pot, her tongue sticking out in concentration.
"What are you doing?" Andy asks the teenager.
"Oh, I will clean everything up once I am done, I promise!" Liv says, never looking at her. As Andy comes closer to the stove, she sees there are multiple pots and pans bubbling away, and she can see the 16 years old tending to them all with experience.
"Why are you cooking in our kitchen?"
"Because this is the only way to get my father to eat something that is not a banana or a granola bar." Olivia shakes the salt and the pepper over one of the sauce pans, then grabs a spoon to taste test it. The girl nods in satisfaction, which only makes Andy's stomach roar louder.
"For some reason, he doesn't eat with us, even though I have invited him to."
"Yeah I know, this is why I am here. Oh, I am sorry, you must be starving." Liv points out. "There is plenty of food if you want to join my dad and I."
Andy hesitates before she answers. "I don't think this is a good idea."
"I know that you and my father don't get along. But I can tell you are hungry, otherwise you won't be wandering around here just an hour after your peers finished their dinner. Well, unless you want to do some emotional eating on your own, which I don't think is the case, because you could have walked away the moment you saw me. By the way, even if it is the case, you should know I am not judging." The girl rumbles on.
Andy thinks to herself that she has to give the girl more credit than she does. Liv is an observant young woman, who is compassionate and caring to the only parent she has, something that she hasn't always been when she was a teenager.
And maybe Sullivan deserves the credit, for raising her this way.
"My father taught me to never let someone go hungry, not as long as I can remedy this so easily. We truly have more food than we can eat, and I can give you a plate and send you to eat alone if you want to, but I really prefer it if you will come and eat with us. He needs an ally, someone in here that will be able look after him when I can't. Even if he will never admit to it."
Andy still has her doubts. Her mind telling her that she better have nothing to do with her captain or with his daughter. Her belly on the other hand, just tells her that the food smells amazing, and looks even better, and reminds her that she hasn't eaten anything since this morning.
"Taste it." Liv encourages. She puts a little bit of everything on a plate, then sticks a fork in the food and mixes everything around. "You have to have a bit of everything in every bite."
The girl brings the fork to Andy's lips, her hand supporting it from the bottom to prevent any food being spilled on the floor. It makes Andy feel like a child who is incompetent to eat by herself, but it also makes her feel good, being taken care of for a change. Even if the person who takes care of her is a sixteen years old girl.
When the food hits her taste buds, she closes her eyes and hums in satisfaction. "This is amazing! What is it?" Andy asks before she even has a chance to swallow.
"Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and a lot of white gravy." Liv answers, and Andy can really hear the pride in her voice.
"More." Andy demands.
"Fine." Liv pleases, as she pours a spoonful of mashed potatoes to the plate and drizzles it with the gravy. "But you are going to spoil your appetite."
"Are you sure you are from Montana and not from Texas?"
Liv laughs at Andy's retorts. "Yes, I am sure. I have never been to Texas, but my mom was born and raised there. Dad always said that it was mom's favorite dish, so it was pretty much the first thing I have learned how to make. It used to make him sad at the beginning, I think, but I kept making it anyway. He got used to it eventually, and I really like it. It makes me feel like I know her on some level, even if my dad doesn't talk about her much."
"Where did you learn to cook like that?" Andy asks with her mouth full, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
"I learnt from an amazing thing called the internet, you might have heard about it." Liv bites. "Well, my mom died when I was just a baby, as I said, and my dad was never really around. You are a firefighter, so you know the hours are crazy more often than not, and not really leave you extra time to cook dinner. And don't tell him that I have said it, but he can't really cook anyway." Liv giggles, and for the first time this evening Andy sees her as the sixteen years old that she is. Life has obviously made her more mature than her actual age.
"So I had no other choice than to learn how to do it myself, otherwise I would have probably starved to death by now. I started at thirteen, and I realized that I really like it, and I am also quite good at it." Liv pulls out three plates from the cabinet and starts to stack big pieces of steak on them. "And it feels good, you know, doing something for him, after everything he has done and every sacrifice he had to make for me."
"Yeah, I know. I lost my mom when I was eleven. My dad was the captain of this station, so believe me when I say I know what it is like to feel like you are growing up completely independent." She reaches with the free hand into the neck of her shirt, and finds the necklace she never takes off. She fiddles with it a bit, tracing the letter "E" with her thumb. "I have never really learned how to cook though." Andy admits.
"So what exactly did you eat your entire adolescence years?"
"My nutrition included mainly Lucky Charms, straight out of the box, cinnamon roll pop tarts and McDonald's meals I used to share with my best friend Ryan." Andy shrugs. "I have always wanted to learn, just never got there, not with my crazy schedule."
"Sounds healthy." Both of the girls laugh, before Liv suggests. "Well, if you still want to learn how to cook I can teach you. It seems like I am about to spend quite a lot of my free time in the station anyway, if I wish to see my dad every once in a while, so I can give you some lessons while you are not on calls."
"I sense a 'but' coming my way."
"I want something in return."
"Learning how to cut deals from a young age, I see." Andy tries to stall time. Is she supposed to encourage this kind of behavior? "What do you want?"
It is not as if Andy is her mother. She is not the one who is supposed to teach her wrong from right.
"I teach you how to cook, and in return you can teach me how to be a firefighter." Liv crosses her arms around her chest, waiting for an answer, and in that particular moment she looks exactly like her father.
"You want to be a firefighter, uh?"
Liv nods, and Andy can see herself in the young girl. She can see the teenager she was, dreaming of following the footsteps of the man who raised her all by himself.
"You have yourself a deal." Andy declares, and reaches out her hand for Olivia to shake, as if they were signing some kind of a treaty.
"Wait, aren't we supposed to sign it with blood?" That earns Liv a confused look, which ends only when Liv cracks up laughing. "Kidding, relax."
Andy can't help but liking this girl already, no matter how she feels about her father.
Liv finishes serving the food on three different plates before she calls."Now come and help me get those plates downstairs to the captain's office. My dad will never come up here to eat."