A/Ns: Thought I'd post a little early this weekend to make up for the lack of post, review replies, or Bitchface List update last weekend.
Speaking of: Whelp, I'm not dead (obviously), but I did end up in the ER for a while there. A couple weeks of depression mixed with this endless, stupid, friggin' back issue of mine, all came to a head in the form of a nasty drug interaction. One morning my brain woke up and thought, 'I'm gonna give Olympic Spinning a go today', and my head, jumping on the bandwagon (peer pressure, you know?) decided to put itself through the bathroom wall. Luckily, I have a tough noggin. And also, apparently, a tough bathroom wall. I'm recovering (more from the mayhem reeked on my system than the drywall head-butt) but, needless to say, this story is going to fall behind for a hot second. I need to switch to two-week posting schedule while I get back on my feet, because I haven't written in weeks and I don't really know when that'll change just yet.
Quality Warning: Following that lovely note up, this chapter is probably not up to par editing wise. It only got a once over, so apologies for any mistakes. I also don't find it the most exciting chapter, but setup and chatter is inevitable when your author can't write an episode in anything less than three chapters D:
Reviews: For a second there, this story had 66 chapters and 666 Follows. That made me grin in a definitely no good dirty rotten sort of way. The, let's say, no good dirty rotten cliffhanger sort of way ;P
Chapter Warnings: Jo's attempting (and failing) cell phone theft, Dean's attempting (and failing) to lie to anyone, Sam and Andy are attempting (and failing) to have any part in this chapter, and Chuck is the only one actually succeeding at anything this episode.
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The Road So Far (This Time Around)
Season 2: Chapter 34
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A tapping on her shoulder caused Stephanie to look up from the iPod resting in her hands. The music device was something Chuck had offered once she'd run out of things to read (was it normal for an editorial assistant to just…hang around your house all day?) She'd looked at it strangely before, like everything else he'd given her so far, diving straight in with true recluse fashion. Now she pulled the earplugs from her ears by the cord and stared expectantly up at the writer.
"Uh…next chapter," he offered with a sheepish smile at the stack of papers he'd tapped her on the shoulder with. He nodded at the iPod. "Find anything good?"
She took the chapter from him, wrapping the headphones around the small device and setting it on the side table. "Yes. So far I have greatly enjoyed the singing of Robert Johnson."
Chuck grinned widely. "You're a Blues girl. I'm more a Jazz man, myself. You know, he wrote a song about a Crossroads demon?"
The editorial assistant looked up from the first page of the newest batch of chapters to stare at him. "I know. It is on your eye pod."
"Ah." Chuck rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. Of course it was. That made sense. God, he was bad at talking to girls. "Uh. Well…erm…en-enjoy the new chapters."
He turned and headed back towards his desk. By the time he settled behind his computer once more, Stephanie had her nose in the new pages, hand reaching for the iPod. Chuck hadn't really figured this woman for an introvert when she'd first popped up on his doorstep but, ah well, he never had been the best judge of character.
Then again, it was all too possible she just really didn't like him.
-o-o-o-
They didn't even make it to the elevator, the four of them, before Dean's phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket with one hand, hitting the button to go down with his other, before he glanced at the caller ID and froze.
Jo tried to grab the phone before he could answer it, but wasn't fast enough.
"Ellen," Dean started, keeping his voice even as he raised the device to his ear. Jo was right in front of him, glaring daggers up at him and hissing all manner of death threats.
"You heard from Jo?" Ellen's voice was tinny through the speaker, but Dean knew her daughter heard it the second she tensed and those daggers got a thousand times sharper. The older hunter glared right back, keeping his expression neutral. Which wasn't terribly hard to do, since he hadn't decided what answer he planned on giving yet.
"Why do you ask?" Oh yeah. Real smooth. Not suspicious at all. Because Dean Friggin' Winchester was real prone to saying things like 'why do you ask.' Brilliant.
Ellen made an aggravated noise on the other end of the phone, no doubt behind the bar, a hand on her hip, equal parts pissed off and worried as only a mother could be. "She's been on about this case in Philly for weeks, but I wouldn't let her go. Now she's taken off for the weekend – said she was going to Vegas, but I don't buy it."
"Well, did you check for a paper trail-"
"Of course I did. I'm not new to motherhood you know." Dean almost laughed, but he knew it wasn't the time. "But with Ash as a roommate, you know good as me that means jack."
Dean met Jo's eyes, even as the blonde shook her head vehemently. Beside them, the elevator dinged loudly in the hallway, doors sliding open. No one moved, and eventually they slid shut again.
He heard Ellen sigh down the line, and his guilty conscience only grew. "You'll call me if you hear from her, won't you, Dean?"
The other Harvelle woman mouthed, "Don't you dare!" with a hand fisted in his shirt.
"Yeah, Ellen," Dean answered, and he kept Jo's gaze, no matter how much he wanted to look away. "She called us."
The younger hunter pitched her hands in the air angrily, shoving him back and stomping off away from the elevator. Sam and Andy gave her a wide berth as she passed.
"She's there?" Dean could practically hear Ellen straightening upright with hope. It quickly faltered. "With you?"
He tried not to take it personally, but the quiver in her voice, the fear of her daughter hunting with a Winchester, stung. Dean knew he didn't deserve it, knew Ellen didn't even know him enough to really mean it (and once she did know him enough, she never would have meant it), but it still hurt.
"Yeah."
Jo stalked back around (Sam and Andy shying out of her path again), finger up and jabbing at Dean as she mouthed every threat she could think of in his general direction. Though, there was hardly a point in hiding her presence anymore. Sam looked about ready to hold her back, but Dean waved him off. No reason for more than one Winchester casualty in this.
"Dean, you put her butt on the first flight outta there."
Jo opened her mouth and hissed, "Try it!"
Dean kept her gaze. "I can't do that, Ellen."
Surprise lit the younger Harvelle's face, even as the older sucked in a breath.
"Dean-"
"I can try to lock her out of this, if that's what you want," he continued, watching the surprise morph from pleasant to betrayed all over again in the span of seconds. "But I do that, next time she needs backup on a hunt, it won't be us she calls."
Jo's eyes darted between each of his, hissed protests on pause for now as she watched him with a narrowed, uncertain gaze.
"I don't want that, Ellen. I know a Winchester is the last person you want to hear this from-" and he was going to have so much fun explaining that to Jo, her brow already furrowing- "but hunting with the wrong backup is as dangerous as hunting alone. She shouldn't have to do either."
The silence on the other end was like being stabbed half a dozen times over, but Dean breathed through the emotional pain that might as well have been physical. Ellen didn't know him, not yet. He just kept telling himself that, eyes locked on those beautiful brown ones that he would see to old age this time, he swore it.
"If you know why I don't wanna hear that from you, then you know why I'm asking you to put my daughter on a plane, right now."
Dean finally turned away from Jo, away from the others. No way in hell could he stop them from hearing this, but the move was still instinctual self-preservation. "I'm not my dad, Ellen. I can't promise she'll be safe – you know I can't, and I won't lie like that to you – but I can promise I will do everything to protect her. Or sure as hell die trying."
This time, the silence in the hallway was just as deafening as the one on the phone. Dean focused on breathing through it (ignoring the hell out of it), his grip tightening on the phone. Pouring his heart out to everyone around him wasn't exactly within his comfort zone, here.
"Put my daughter on."
Dean passed the phone to Jo like it was a game of hot potato and someone had set the damn thing on fire. Jo was still staring at him, expression less readable now; muddled surprise, confusion, gratitude, and anger made it all too hard to know what she was really thinking. The young hunter took the phone and pressed it to her ear.
"Mom-"
"You listen up, Joanna Beth. You check in every hour, and I mean every hour, or I am on the first flight out there. Do you understand me?"
Jo's eyes snapped to Dean's, surprise painting her face almost as brightly as the smile that spread across her lips. "Yes! I mean, yes. Of course, absolutely, mom."
"Put Dean back on."
The younger Harvelle licked her lips, contemplating saying more, but decided against it. She handed Dean's phone back to him, and he was severely less enthused about getting back in line for the guillotine.
"Ellen."
"You let anything happen to my baby girl, and I swear, Dean…" She couldn't even complete the threat, but the hunter didn't need her to. There had always been a reason he'd been scared of her. A healthy fear, he reminded himself, given the sheer pain promised in words spoken hundreds of miles away.
"I know. You've got my word. We'll call you in an hour."
Dean hung up, knowing the conversation was over, despite them both having plenty left to say. All three of them, if Jo chewing on her lip was any indication. He pocketed his phone and turned away from them, hitting the down button once more.
No one said a word, and the elevator doors pinged open before anyone got the bright idea to try.
-o-o-o-
Dean hadn't remembered where the entrance to the sewer torture chamber was, just that there had been one, because they'd cemented it shut after they'd trapped Holmes in a ring of salt down in his own torture chamber. So they needed a metal detector. Andy, having not made it more than half the length of the lobby with his own Winchester partner, agreed to get one for them when Dean hollered at him. He was, after all, the kind of guy who could get things.
When he showed back up outside the apartment building with metal detector in hand, less than seven minutes later, Jo stared at him with the narrowest of narrowed eyes.
"Are you some kind of thief, or something?" she asked, tone skeptical, as she glanced back at the Winchesters.
"People just like me, I guess," was the kid's response as he handed over the device with a wide smile. "They give me stuff all the time."
Dean grabbed the metal detector and ushered Jo off on their task before she could ask more questions, giving Andy an annoyed glare (which the kid just waved off with an unaffected grin). He was still grumbling under his breath when they started searching for the manhole that would lead them below.
It didn't taken long to find, though it was dark and dry once they dropped down the ladder and landed in the underground system of tunnels. They broke out the flashlights and weapons – salt-loaded shotgun for Jo, iron crowbar for Dean – and started their way back towards the apartment building.
"Nuh-uh," the older hunter said almost immediately when Jo took the lead. He snagged the back of her shirt and hauled her back. "You're rear guard. I'm going first."
"You're kidding, right?" Jo glared at him, one hand on her hip, flashlight illuminating the ground, and the other on her shotgun.
Dean was, in fact, not kidding. He'd never been so serious in his life (okay, slight exaggeration there, he could admit. Still.) He gave her a pointed look to say absolutely no way in hell was she leading this expedition into the monster's layer when said monster wanted to seal her up in a wall and watch her slowly mummify herself to death while he petted her hair and pulled pieces of her scalp off.
Okay, so maybe not so slight an exaggeration, after all.
He must have managed most of that internal rant in a single look, because Jo rolled her eyes, but fell in line. Trailing slightly behind and to his left, she swept her flashlight along the dark, dirt-covered walls of the sewer system. They made it about a hundred yards in tense silence, the kind Dean could tell Jo was about to break, before she finally did in a falsely nonchalant tone.
"So what's going on with you?"
"Don't know what you mean." His own flashlight swept the walls and dark tunnel in front of them.
"Yeah, you do," Jo bit out, suddenly stopping. Dean was forced to stop as well, turning towards her and the caustic words. "You're yo-yoing between being on my side and acting like you don't want me here. You're the one who chose to show up, and now you're giving me crap for it?"
"You telling me I shouldn't have come?"
"Cut the shit, Dean, and tell me what's going on." She targeted her flashlight beam right on his face and he had to look away, squinting past the bright light. "Is there some kind of chauvinistic stick up your ass? Because back at the Roadhouse, you sounded like you had my back. And up top, on the phone with my mom. Now you're acting like I can't even walk down a tunnel right. Excuse me if I have a little whiplash from your flip-flopping."
Jo finally lowered the light, and Dean blinked several times to clear the spots. "You done?"
She put a hand on her hip, likely because she couldn't cross her arms while also holding the shotgun. The beam of light swung wildly in the dark. Her gaze was no-nonsense, learned straight from her mother. She just hadn't mastered the I-will-actually-murder-you-in-your-sleep follow-up vibe. Dean was pretty sure, with time, she'd get that one down pat, too.
"I've got your back, Jo, but I'm not picking sides between you and your mom." Dean grunted low in the back of his throat, keeping his own flashlight trained on the ground and illuminating the space around them. "I know you want to hunt; I got nothing against it. But I don't wanna see you dead. And that's got nothing to do with gender studies, by the way, so you can stow the feminism rant. Woman can do the job just fine, but you're new at this. I showed up to make sure you don't get yourself killed, because I do have your back."
She was quiet for a moment, chewing on the inside of her lip with a stiff jaw. "You think I can't do the job?"
He rolled his eyes. "You're not ready to do the job alone. There's a difference, Jo. I don't hunt alone either, not when I can help it, because it's a dumbass decision."
Jo remained tersely silent for another pause. "My dad hunted alone."
Dean sighed, finally dropping his head. Damnit, this was not a talk he was ready for. "So did mine. Look where they both are."
It was harsh, not just for her, but for him too. Even if he'd had just as long as Jo to accept that truth, to get over their fathers' deaths. Even if the brutality of his truth was just a little closer because of an angelic DeLorean.
"Your mom, she's got as much a point about this as you do," he added, veering them away from their dads. Jo snorted, and Dean was the one to flash the beam of light on her face this time before lowering it. "Having someone want more for you than a life of hunting? There is nothing bad about that. Sometimes I wish I'd had it."
His thoughts flickered to his own mom, what she would think of all this, of her sons grown into the life she'd never wanted for them. It had hurt like hell to hear that, the words coming from her own mouth back in 1973. At the time, Dean wished he could explain, could tell her it wasn't all bad. Or worse, he wished he could have saved her, had her as he grew up, to want better for him. But he had stowed it then and he'd stow it now. Wishes like that just wasted time and heartache he couldn't afford.
"You love the job," Jo countered immediately, and he could see the desperate gleam in her eye. How badly she wanted to love the job too.
"Yeah, I do." No point in denying it. "But there are days I wish to hell I didn't. They come more often than you think. You want this, you gotta be prepared for those days, too. And don't fault your mom for wanting better for you. You choose this life, good, fine, that's your choice, and there's nothing wrong with it. But don't spit on your mom's wishes just for having them, either."
Jo didn't answer, but he could tell she was at least taking him seriously, perhaps for the first time since they'd shown up. He might be overbearing here, but Jo had been rearing for a fight the moment they'd arrived. She was too damn stuck on proving herself to people who hadn't been doubting her to start with.
"We gonna find a ghost, or what?" she finally said, clearing her throat pointedly and pushing past him. So far, he hadn't let her lead, and he grumbled as he jogged to catch up. He didn't trust 'Time' worth a damn; there was no way he was letting her out of his sight this time, for any reason. Sao he fell instep alongside her, at least not curtailing her lead but not letting her walk into a trap first, either. As they resumed their trek through the tunnel, Jo glanced his way now and then. "So how are we going to ice this thing, if we can't salt and burn his bones?"
One of the first things Sam had brought up after revealing who they were dealing with, was that H.H. Holmes famously had his remains incased in cement upon his death. So no one would mess with his corpse, of course. Hypocritical dickwad.
"We'll trap him in his own torture chamber," Dean answered easily enough, thinking back to their plan the first time around. It had worked well enough then, no reason they couldn't do that again. "We'll get the girl out, wait till he shows back up looking for her, and trip a salt circle along the walls. Then we seal the entrance and Holmes spends the rest of eternity in his own little circle of cement hell. Was the guy's dying wish, after all."
He grinned over at her, but Jo wasn't returning the look. Instead she was eyeing him all funny again, a raised brow fighting a simultaneously pinched frown. She looked, once more, thoroughly unimpressed.
A weak voice from up ahead, calling for help, interrupted the conversation. Both hunters glanced at each other as the cry repeated, asking if anyone was there, in a scratchy, tired, female voice. Jo and Dean took off running.
Teresa from 2F was, indeed, still alive, just as Dean said. She was trapped in the wall via a cutout that was sealed by a heavy metal gate. Dean got to work on it immediately while Jo kept an eye out for their ghostie, flashlight scanning the room. A circular room, perfect for springing a salt trap. Jo glanced over her shoulder, suspicions starting to form, as Dean got the metal trapdoor open and helped the traumatized woman to her feet.
She was dirty, terrified, and had a chunk of hair missing, but overall appeared in decent health, all things considered. There was also no way she was staying another second in that chamber. Dean spared a look with Jo, and they agreed they'd have to come back to spring their trap, the twitchy woman making it clear she was leaving, with or without them. It's not like they'd come down prepared with salt, or any way to build the kind of trap Dean had been talking about. Just another thing Jo added to the list in her head that had been amassing ever since she'd called Dean that morning.
Their rescued damsel wasted no time once they reached the ladder back to the surface. Teresa took off like a bolting rabbit, and Dean gestured for Jo to follow. The hunter put her hand on one of the rungs, but didn't go anywhere.
"How did you know?"
Dean, having expected her to start up and ready to follow after, was caught off guard and pulled back. "Know what?"
"Any of it." Jo's eyes were sharp, her shrug calculated. "All of it. How did you know Teresa would still be alive?"
Dean's brow pulled down between his eyes, but Jo wasn't buying it for a minute. "Holmes kept his victims alive for days, didn't he? It was wishful thinking, and it turned out to be right."
It sure hadn't sounded like wishing. It had sounded like confidence.
"And the room?"
"What about it?"
"You called it circular. Twice."
Shit, he had? He didn't think he had. He shrugged awkwardly, going for defensive but knowing he was off his game. Jo did that to him. Always had. "It's a sewer. Aren't all connection points between tunnels circular or square? Fifty-fifty chance, Jo. I got lucky."
"Like you got lucky knowing I was Holmes' type?"
Dean ground his teeth and looked away. Okay, apparently he still sucked at this. What else was knew? It's not like he'd had any practice, lately. Sam had known for months now, and Andy had Jedi-mind tricked him into confessing the truth before they ever bothered trying to hide it from him. Dean hadn't had to keep quiet for months, hadn't had to pretend he was ten years in the past and didn't know what he knew. He was more than off his game; he was out of practice, and Jo was way too smart not to pick up on it.
Which meant, yet again, Sam had been right. Dean really hated those days (and how often they seemed to happen. Damn smart kid.)
"Alright, look, I- yes, something is going on, okay?" he conceded, a pointed look in her direction doing nothing to lessen that sharp gaze. If anything, it just got more expectant, like she could tell he was lining up to procrastinate this. Jo crossed her arms over her chest and Dean had to speak through clenched teeth. "Later, Jo. I'll tell you later, alright?"
"Nope. You tell me now. I'm sick of you putting me off." She was an immoveable force at the bottom of that ladder, and Dean tilted his head back, cursing Gods he knew weren't paying any attention.
"I'm psychic, alright?" He decided to rip the bandaid off so they could get the hell out of the sewer sometime this century. "Can we go now?"
She didn't move an inch, though she certainly scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right."
Dean sighed, aggravated. He scrubbed at his hair and clenched his teeth. "It's the truth."
Jo just stared, realization slowly kicking in that he looked anything but joking. She dropped her arms. "Bullshit."
"Look, can we go?" Dean didn't exactly want to hang out any longer in a serial killer's domain, not to mention a sewer, dried up as it was.
"Oh my god, you're serious." She blinked at him, eyes growing wide before they quickly narrowed in thought. Too damn smart for her own good. "Sam?"
Dean grabbed the ladder himself and started climbing. Screw chivalry and screw waiting around for a ghost to ice their asses. "Yeah, him too, alright? But not in the same way."
"You saw all this, didn't you? What else did you see?"
The silence that followed those questions paused the hunter only a couple feet off the ground. He sighed, thunked his forehead into the rung straight in front of him, and then dropped back to the ground. Apparently, they were doing this.
"You. In one of those slots back there, after he got you in the walls." Dean was, possibly, as serious as she had ever seen him. It wasn't hard to imagine what made him such a good hunter, with a rigid, intimidating posture and a look in his eyes that promised revenge for an event that hadn't even happened. "I lost you, Jo, and Sam and I might have gotten you back, but I lost you. And then you had to sit in there and play bait for a ghost that tried to kill you, and got damn close to succeeding."
"Did it work?"
Dean reeled back. Jesus, had she heard a damn word he'd said? She could read the anger in his expression, and adopted a defensive stance of her own.
"Fear's a teacher, Dean. You said it yourself; I'm new at this. I'm not gonna learn if you don't let me."
Good god. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed at his eyes, and let out a frustrated, protective growl. "Damn it, Jo, there's fear and then there's trauma. There's a difference, and I'd rather you have a good, healthy dose of the first and as little as possible of the second."
God knew he certainly didn't have them in that order. Sam, either.
Jo was silent for a moment, shifting her weight. "You know, your number isn't the only one I have. I could have called half a dozen hunters, but I called you because I knew you wouldn't take this away from me."
It wasn't an accusation, it wasn't consolation. It was just…what it was, he guessed. It was annoying, is what it was, and not something they had time for, damnit.
"I'm not trying to take it away from you," Dean professed, suddenly so damn tired.
"You could have told me," she argued back immediately. "You're psychic, Dean. You knew how to solve this case right from the start, didn't you? I thought it was convenient, you guys showing up, pointing out those buildings that just happened to lead to our guy. God-" Jo cut herself off, shaking her head. "You should have told me; we could have done this together."
"We are doing it together!" Jo turned away from him, her anger building, and Dean growled again. God, he hated these conversations, and he was so done having them. "Damn it, Jo, every time I try to change something, every time I've told someone so that I can, it's all gone to crap, alright?"
And now he was getting into really dangerous territory, because one little slip and then she'd know his psychic claim was as full of shit as almost everything else he'd told her so far. He was going to lose her – Ellen too – by trying to friggin' save them.
Story of his god damn life lately.
The thought had not even finished crossing his mind when an inhuman howl ripped through the tunnel, its source definitely the torture chamber they'd just come from. Holmes had come back to find his playroom empty of its prize.
Jo froze, eyes going wide, and Dean grabbed the shotgun out of her hand and shoved her towards the ladder, even as she started moving again. He hauled her up the first rung, hardly needing to as she scrambled for it all on her own.
"Go, go, go!" he yelled, shoving at her hip, thigh, then ankle, before turning to fire into the tunnel, though there was nothing to shoot. Yet. Jo was scrambling up the rungs quick as she could, with Dean right behind her, shotgun abandoned on the ground for the sake of faster climbing. They both heard the roar grow louder, and the tunnel leading back the way they'd come grew dark, a supernatural pitch that swallowed up the cement as it hurled toward them at incredible speeds.
Dean knew they weren't going to make it. He grabbed Jo's ankle and tugged. "Let go!"
She did, trusting him completely. He was only half a dozen feet off the ground, and he let go as well, catching her weight as it crashed into his. The two plummeted back to the floor, back to the shotgun that might give them a few extra precious seconds. But whatever happened, he wasn't letting her go. If Holmes wanted her this time, he was taking both of them.
But when had Dean ever gotten what he wanted in life?
Wind tore through the tunnel, darkness enveloped them, and the weight in his arms was gone by the time he hit the floor. As dim light returned, his flashlight flickering back to life on the ground beside him, Dean scrambled to his feet, gun in hand, barrel swinging wide.
It was too late. He was alone in the tunnel and Jo was nowhere in sight. He'd lost her again.
-o-o-o-
Chuck looked up from his desk to the editorial assistant suddenly standing beside it, stack of papers in hand. He pulled the pencil out of his mouth, eraser end all chewed up. A habit he had anytime he hand-wrote (which was usually when he had writer's block). The thought alone was enough to have him glancing down at his scribbles with some mixture of dismay and acid reflux.
The writer offered a weak smile to Stephanie instead, happy for the distraction.
"What did you think?"
She looked down at the chapter she'd just finished reading and offered an approving nod. "Dean is psychic?"
"Dean is…something." Chuck tapped the end of the pencil against pursed lips before sighing and tossing it atop the notebook in front of him. Not like the thing was doing him much good anyhow. "I'm not sure what, yet. But he thinks he's psychic."
Steph made a noncommittal noise, something of a hum, before handing the packet over. Chuck didn't take it right away, and if he was disappointed by her stoic reaction to his work, he didn't show it. The moment lengthened, Chuck just staring up at her, contemplation flickering across his face, before the writer – and also something much more than the writer – reached out to take the chapter. As he did, his fingertips brushed the back of her hand for the quickest of moments.
He took the papers back and set the stack on the desk beside him.
Stephanie turned away, likely to retreat back to her chair, but paused. She was rubbing the back of her hand absently, a silly little tingle spreading just beneath the skin there. Like a cool breeze. When she turned back to Chuck, there was a strange look on her face.
"She will be alright, won't she?" The writer raised his eyebrows, and Steph clarified, "Jo Harvelle?"
"Ah." A warm smile crept across Chuck – and not Chuck's – face. "You'll have to wait and see."
The woman – who was not really a woman at all – frowned at that, an emotion on her face not unlike confusion. It was replaced with the same narrow-eyed suspicion she got in those false blues anytime the writer teased her. Chuck just smiled wider and his editorial assistant huffed, dropped her hand, and headed back for her chair.
Chuck – and not Chuck – picked the pencil back up and got to work.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
A/Ns: Reminder that we'll be switching to a two-week posting schedule for a while. I'll let you know when I think that'll end as soon as I know myself (aka, as soon as my brain stops being fuzzy and my body stops trying to have nap time all the time)
Up Next: Time's doing things backwards, the boys are destroying private property, Ellen wasn't joking about that flight, Andy's an incredibly handy Jedi to have around, and Tom's finally working on that Plan B.