A/N: I've got a touch of the writer's block so I'm playing around with a plot I've had on the back burner for a while. Don't worry, more chapters of my other stuff are coming. I didn't do any sort of October prompts this year, but I wanted to do something.

"Hell's—freaking—bells." The wrench slipped against the stuck bolt on the Beetle's strainer plate and my knuckles rammed into the underside of the car. Changing the oil was no big deal, but it was a hell of a lot easier with two working hands. "Ow."

I shook out my bashed fingers. Now both of my hands hurt. A single glob of oil landed on my forehead and rolled toward my hair. Sweat glued my t-shirt to my skin and gravel dug into my back and none of it was as uncomfortable as the jolt of guilty dread I felt as a big motor and loud exhaust rounded the corner onto my street.

The engine downshifted a few times before a motorcycle coasted to a stop in the driveway. The rider heeled down the kickstand and a pair of boots crunched toward me across the gravel. She dropped to a knee and peered around the back tire. "Did you get stuck under there, Dresden? Is that why you haven't been answering the phone?"

I grumbled a few choice words. A moment later she was scooting under the back of the car next to me, watching as I struggled with stuck bolts and scraped knuckles. Fumbling even more now that I had an audience; on her back next to me, too close for comfort, a hint of floral shampoo wafting beneath the acrid smell of old car.

"Here," Murphy said, pulling the wrench out of my fingers. "Smaller hands. It's an underrated superpower."

I felt around until I found the shop towel and mopped at my face. "Along with the ability to materialize out of nowhere the exact moment I look most like an idiot?"

"That says more about you than me. Don't you have a mechanic?"

"Blew my budget on replacement seats." I sighed. "Mike says changing the oil is 'therapeutic.'"

She set her jaw and broke the last bolt free with a little huff of effort that set my heart pounding, even faster when she turned to me and smiled. "I was out for some therapy, myself." She mimed revving a motorcycle throttle with the wrench. "Thought I'd drop in and see if you wanted to do lunch."

"I would, but I'm headed out of town as soon as I get this done."

"I saw the bag by the stairs." Of course she had. There would be no quietly skipping town for a few days for me. She reached backward and dragged the oil pan between us to catch the draining goop. "Another apprentice excursion?"

"Nah. The Carpenters went on a family trip this weekend."

"Fun," Karrin said in the flat tone of someone with more experience in big family vacations than me. "More Warden business, then? You've got that camp thing coming up, right?"

"Going to Missouri," I said and she stilled, giving me a sideways look through the draining motor oil. She knew I had lived there for a while with my mentor, knew that he and I were still mending fences after I found out why he'd taken me in: just in case I needed to be taken out by the White Council's off-the-books hitman. "McCoy asked if I could go check on the farm for him. Something is killing the animals and he's… I'm not exactly sure where he is. He asked me to look into it."

She also knew I hadn't been back to the farm since I left.

"Not something you can send one of the other Wardens to do," she ventured. Murphy loosened the bolts completely and took out the mesh filter. We both kind of wriggled out from under the car and sat on the ground behind the Beetle's bumper, blinking beneath a high noon sun. Dust from the gravel marred her black leather jacket and she huffed sweaty hair from her eyes as she passed me the little metal doodad. "Need some help with the case?"

"It's probably just a coyote or a stray dog. I can handle it."

"Do you want some help?" she asked again, glancing up at me. Her smile teased but her eyes were serious. She wasn't the kind of person to let her friends face potential danger or revisit childhood trauma alone. "Harry, I'm so bored I was actually thinking of starting a new hobby. The ones I already have are prohibitively expensive. You should save me from myself before I buy a crossbow or sign up for an aerial yoga class."

"Much as I'd like to see either of those?" I cleaned the oil strainer with a can of mineral spirits and another old towel and tried not to look at her. She was still suspended for ditching work to help me with the most recent rescue mission, and definitely getting demoted for it. And I had been dodging her calls. "Don't you have another bullshit session with the department shrink this week?"

"I'll reschedule it." She waved a grease-smudged hand. "What are they gonna do, put me on double suspension?"

"They could fire you."

"Those assholes are always trying to fire me."

"It'll be three or four days—"

"I have plenty of time."

"Three or four days, in a hundred-year old farmhouse with no hot water or air-conditioning in the middle of summer, and in the woods," I tried to scare her away but her grin grew wider as I continued, "with the poison ivy and the mosquitos and Lyme disease and rattlesnakes, and—this only sounds like fun to you, doesn't it?"

She took the cleaned oil strainer and disappeared beneath the Beetle. "We can take my car," Murphy called between ratcheting sounds. "It'll actually make it there in one piece. Mouse can ride in the back."

"Mouse is on assignment in Wisconsin." I gathered up the rest of the oil change supplies from the cardboard box on the Beetle's back seat. "Getting some fresh air and keeping an eye on Molly."

"I bet he's having a blast with all those kids." I could hear her smile. "Alright, you're all set." She shimmied out from under the car and grabbed the hand I offered, letting me pull her to her feet. "So? You want some help or not?"

"I'm worried if I say yes, I'll end up with an extra hole in my head."

Murphy rolled her eyes and took the container of oil and the funnel from me. She drew a breath like she was about to speak, then turned away, tipping the contents into the engine reservoir.

Things had only been a little weird since our awkward conversation in the hotel elevator a few weeks ago; yes, there was potential for something more than friendship between us, and no, we weren't going to do anything about it. I understood better than anyone why she didn't want things to change. But it still stung. And I still kinda wanted to strangle Kincaid every time she got a text message that made her smile, and I was still forcing myself through the psychological equivalent of dragging all those feelings out to a secondary location, beating them to death with a shovel and burying them. I hated that things were weird between us. For so long it had been us against whatever weird shit cropped up.

She traded me the empty container for a second quart and poured it in. "How far away is the farm?"

"About eight hours." I opened the last quart and handed it to her. "Just half of this one."

She nodded and tipped it into the funnel. "I'll get a bag and come back to pick you up. So just hiking gear and—"

"... And a big rifle."

The corner of her mouth quirked up, pleased and trying to hide it as she turned away again. It had taken a few years and just as many near-death experiences for her to trust me, and I'd found her heart was as stubbornly caring as the walls around it were unscalably high. All that pent-up kindness tended to escape as sarcasm and gruff concern and things like today's well-intentioned bullying. Inviting herself on my weekend trip was the Murphy version of shaking me by the shoulders, screaming 'we might just be friends, but we are still friends, dumbass!'

I could accept the olive branch she offered or I could let her beat me to death with it. Besides, it might be nice to have some help, and McCoy wouldn't mind me bringing her along. And it might take her mind off how she would no longer be in charge when she went back to work.

I took the half-empty canister. She checked the oil level and frowned, unsure, looking up for confirmation. I gave her a thumbs-up of approval. "That's good. Yeah, he thinks it's probably just a predator, but you never know."

"Big rifle, either way." She put the cap on the oil reservoir and tightened it. "Don't forget to let it idle for a few minutes before you go anywhere."

"Murph, has anyone ever told you you'd make an excellent stepdad?" I tossed her the shop towel. "You do realize you just changed the oil for me?"

"... Shit." She looked down at her hands and then up at me, sheepish. Cute. "Sorry."

"You should be." I shut the engine compartment and reached for that imaginary feelings-squashing shovel. "Guess who I'm calling in five thousand miles?"

Murphy laughed and threw the towel at me, striding toward the Harley. "An hour, Dresden. You're paying for gas." She swung a leg over and settled onto the bike, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves and then the sleek, matte black helmet dangling from the handlebars. "I'll be back."

"Now say it like Schwarzeneggar."

Her eyes crinkled behind the tinted visor. "No."

… Feelings buried, but stars and stones, it was a shallow grave.

The bike roared away as I let the Beetle down from the jacks. I didn't turn to watch. I packed up the toolbox and oil change supplies. I let the car idle while I slumped in the driver's seat. All the rational justification in the world couldn't change the fact that I had just signed myself up for a long weekend alone with a woman I was interested in spending a weekend alone with, who had made it abundantly clear she wasn't interested in me.

"Stupid." I bumped my forehead against the steering wheel. "Stupid, stupid. She has no problem turning you down, why didn't you just tell her no—"

"You know why," a voice whispered. I caught a flash of green eyes in the rearview mirror as I sat up, but I didn't turn to look at her, either. I killed the engine, gathered up the stuff I'd left by the stairs and went inside.

"How's Karrin?" asked my brother, lounging in the recliner, halfway through one of the bodice-ripper romance novels I had picked up for Bob. "Still suspended?"

"Yep."

"Still bored out of her mind?"

"Yep." I dropped my army-surplus duffle bag on the floor and stood there for a solid minute, numbly leaning on my staff.

"I thought you were ready to leave?" He finally looked up at me, annoyed. "I can't house-sit if you don't leave."

"She'll be back in an hour to pick me up."

"Well." Thomas licked a fingertip and turned a page, letting the silence drag on for another uncomfortable minute before he gave his two cents. "It's no Hawaii—"

I put one foot on the recliner backrest and stomped it toward the floor. My brother yelped and tumbled out in an indignant heap. He jumped up, dusted himself off, righted the recliner and flopped into it again. "So have you finally decided to grow a pair and make your move this weekend?"

"It's just a case. I'd take you along to help if Ebenezer wouldn't kill us both for it."

"No thanks." He flipped through the pages until he found the chapter he'd been reading. "I don't do rural. But she seems like the type who might be into that sort of thing—"

"What sort of thing?"

"The whole rugged outdoorsman thing." Thomas brandished the novel at me. "Lean into that, you could make it work."

"You know not everyone lives in a cheesy porno like you do, right?"

"You could if you tried harder."

stay tuned!