“Are hands supposed to be sprouting from the ground?” Kalia shouted over the roar of the engine, head half-turned back to make sure they could hear her.  She grimaced in pain as her elbow popped hard against metal — even braced against the tailgate of the truck on her knees she was taking a hell of a beating just from the ride.

“Sprouting, no.  Pushing up from graves, yes.  And considering how many wars have been fought in this valley, we’re pretty lucky that they’re not cracking out of the trees and displacing the pavement, too.”  Jacq handed her two more arrows, both already on fire, and she nocked them at the same time and drew.  It wasn’t like precision was something she could hope for.  Not at these speeds.

“I was being poetic.”

“Don’t get poetic around magic.  Sprouting hands are a whole different spell.  And cure.”  They grinned and ran another strip of cloth through the pitch, winding it around the arrow head with ease.  ”Tonya, ease up on the gas a little, you’re outpacing my bubble.”

The girl in the cab rolled her eyes hard enough that Kalia could feel it, but she slowed down a little.  ”Problem is, I ain’t outpacing the fucking undead.”

"Have faith,” Jacq said, their hands moving first to bless the arrow, then to light the pitch on fire.  "In me, if not in the universe.“

Cap loves loves LOVES his ipod for a couple of reasons.  One for music, because he loves having it on and he loves going for long runs, and he has a lot to catch up on so he can quickly, efficiently and inexpensively have a ton of music.  He’s checked out half the public library’s worth of CDs just to drop them on his ipod for running/working out.

Two is books on tape and instructional audio.  He’s re-learned (and first-learned) a ton of languages this way, he’s gone through tons of non-fiction books catching up with the world, he’s taught himself a dozen new skills that way.  And old-time radio plays, oh man, radio radio radio.  He used to love the radio, and the fact that there are still radio shows like there used to be makes him so happy.

Three is because he’s used to being around sound and rumbling and noise and people.  The old apartments were cramped and thin-walled; in the army he always slept in barracks or outside.  Rarely, if ever, did he have a spare minute.  And he’s lonely.  Music and plays and everything else makes him feel like he’s less alone in his space.

——-

Lydia Martin does not like the taste of coffee, but she loves the way it makes her feel.  She tries not to think too hard on how that’s a metaphor for her whole life.

The emptiness was a relief, at least. My anger’d been boiling over all day but I’d run out of energy and fucks not long after dinner.  I had to go back inside soon, and I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t their fault.  They didn’t know who I was after hours. They didn’t know who I’d chosen to be after they went to sleep.  The lies were what made me feel unclean; the work would make me clean again.

“C'mon,” Tony wheedled, giving Pepper his most charming grin.  "You know it’s fun.  And math doesn’t lie – the stock price goes down when we’re not together.“

"The stock price goes down when the board thinks you’re unsupervised,” Pepper corrected, without even looking up from her paperwork.  "And no, Tony, no, not even for pretend, not even for one event.  We both know why it doesn’t work, and I’d like to be able to flirt with anyone I want without the tabloids calling me ugly names.“  She glanced up, unaffected by his sulking expression. "Well, uglier.  Find someone else to fake-date.”

“You’re not my supervisor,” he said, trying hard not to let it come out with a petulant huff.  "And Rhodey let me take him on a fake-date in college and he’s already sworn never again.“

"There’s got to be someone else.”

“Happy said no, and you won’t let me take the suit.”

“It’s creepy, Tony.  I don’t even want to consider what the newspapers would say if you did that.  There has to be another person.”

“I don't like anyone else.”

There was a knock at the door, and Bruce stuck his head in.  "Sorry, Pepper, your assistant was gone and I’m looking for… hey, Tony.“  He came the rest of the way into the office and crossed the floor, offering out a tablet.  "The propulsion data came in.  You should see what the new fuel is doing.”

Tony let Bruce hand him the tablet, oblivious to the expression on Pepper’s face as she watched the two of them.  "What, did it under… wait, what the hell is that?“  He squinted as he manipulated the data on the tablet with nimble fingers.  "That spike.  Can we replicate that spike?”

“Only if we want to blow out the windows.”

“… we can replace the windows.”

Pepper cleared her throat.  "One, Tony, no.  Small samples in the secure lab or I’ll cut your repair budget.“  Bruce gave her a grateful smile.  "Two, I think you just solved another problem.”

Tony glanced up with a puzzled expression.

“You let him hand you the tablet, Tony.”

Tony’s expression went from puzzled to delighted in an instant.

“Bruce.”  He put an arm around him and steered them both towards the door.  "First you’re going to show me the formula for that additive.  Then we’re going to get you fitted for a tux.“

Bruce shot Pepper a lost, please-help-me look over his shoulder as Tony pulled him out of the room.  She just waved cheerfully and went back to her paperwork.

That’ll give the board something to chew on, at least.

“I swear to god you little shit.”  Threats were always much less threatening when they came with a laugh; even more so when they came with a giggle.  Joachim grinned as his fist barely connected with his sister’s shoulder, the lightest of love-taps.  Her grin twisted into a mock pout, and she clutched her arm dramatically.

“Ouch!  Oh, I should tell on you, you know.  Mama!  Ma!  Joachim’s turned into the big, bad wolf!”  Marisol laughed as a pillow collided with her head, and she twisted to grab her favorite bear and thwap him back, giving as good as she got.  "Ouch!  Ouch!  You are the worst brother of all! Not my hair, you punk!”

He snorted and tossed the pillow at her, knowing she’d catch it easily, and he flopped down on the edge of her bed. “Oh, pobrecita, you’re right.  I never should have touched your hair.  I forgot you have a date later.”

Marisol huffed and raked her fingers through her curls.  ”Gnk.  Shut up.   It’s not a date.”  

“I’ll stop calling it a date if you stop leaving dog biscuits on my desk.”

She ruffled her fingers along her scalp one more time, a little sneaky grin escaping.  ”It’ll never stop being funny, you know.  All that fuss we went through last year, and it turns out it was just your own natural lunacy.”

“Hah, hah,” he said. “I’m a werewolf. Can we maybe pretend it’s a big deal?”

"You’re just…” she made a little face.  "Sorry, ‘chim, but you’re just not scary.  I mean, you’re not like the rest of them.  Some wolves, you want to back away and say nice doggie, but not you”

“What do you say to wolves like me?”

She grinned and leaned forward, lightning fast, to ruffle his hair.  ”Who’s a good boy, eh?  Who’s a good boy?”

“Oh I’m gonna kill you for that.”  She took off with a shriek of laughter and he grabbed the pillow to chase her across the apartment until their mother yelled for them to stop making a mess and come to dinner.

“You know what this means, right?”  We’d stopped paying attention to the TV ages ago.  Brampton was going to win, sure-bet, and the real game was going to be the All-Stars anyway.  Still, we kept it on.  It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on them.

Carrie squinted at her computer screen and double clicked on another file to download it.  Most people were busy using Napster to share music and porn, but there was a second, underground layer if you knew where to look.  We were using it to find information on creatures beyond your normal ken.

“Nope.  I mean, we know that they’re… not human.  But that doesn’t mean they’re…”

“… obviously aliens.”

“Fairies.”

“Aliens.”

The twins glared at each other for a minute.  ”… possibly shapechangers.”

“Possibly.”

Six sophomores huddled around a computer wasn’t going to draw anyone’s attention, but Meeka opened the door just a crack and slid through, managing to keep the coffee upright and close it behind her at the same time.  ”Any luck?”

“Oh, you know, another bestiary with no backup sources and an academic paper on vampires in biotechnology, but nothing solid.”  Carrie sighed.  "Nothing on the supernatural in hockey.  It’s like we’re the first people to notice it.“

"Is it because they’re all Americans?”

“Worse.  Most of this stuff is from Europe.”

The entire room gave a collective huff of frustration.

Rhodey’s Average Thursday Night.

Ingredients:

1 bottle domestic beer
2 oz bourbon
8 oz sweet tea
ice
Fresh peach

Begin with a beer, at home.  Domestic, bottled. A beer is nice.  A beer is safe.  A beer will leave you ready to go to bed or deal with your best friend, whichever c….

Get interrupted by phone call.  Thank harried sounding operator on the other end of the line for connecting you.  Get Tony on the line.  Check to make sure he’s at least on the East Coast.  No, the East Coast of North America.  No, the… damn it, Tony.

Get Pepper on the phone.  Pour two fingers of bourbon over ice, fill glass with Sweet Tea, the kind your Auntie Doris used to make when you’d go visit her in Mississippi.  Find out, thanks to Pepper, that you do not have to suit up, thank god, because you’d like to be able to make your meeting at 0700 tomorrow.

Learn exactly what strings you are going to need to pull to fix this situation.  Let Pepper vent while you cut up a peach and put two slices in the tea and one on the rim, to make the drink last a while, because it’s going to be a long night.  Shout a good-bye to Tony because Pepper is a wise woman and refuses to give the phone back.  Promise to swing by on Sunday.  Hang up phone.

Sip slowly while you call in a half-dozen favors in Washington, somewhat regretting your taste in best friends (but not really, you’re just glad he actually calls for help these days).

The first time they meet, she is young and he is Curzon.  He is not overly fond of children but images had been a passable diversion while the Bactricans had kept him and her father waiting.  It was interesting to see how she’d grown, and it was nice to see his friend’s daughter decimate the competition at a school function.  She barely noticed him, too caught up with her friends and her success to manage more than a polite handshake before she put him out of her mind.

Then, of course, they met professionally, when the Voyager was just setting sail and she was Jadzia.  She’d meant to mention that she’d known the Captain’s father, but there wasn’t much time to socialize and everyone thought the ship’d be back in port a few weeks later.  That didn’t happen, of course, and though there were communications back and forth from time to time Jadzia was gone before Voyager made her way back to the Alpha Quadrant.

It wasn’t until she was an Admiral and she was Ezri that they had time to talk.  The promotion’d been nice, but Kathy was never one for desk jobs and with every vacation she pushed out a little further, looking for new experiences, places where no one knew her name or rank and the conversation was good.

So they met in a bar, and Ezri called her Kathy without thinking, and it all came out, the unspooling of a dozen coincidences and near misses, and they became dear friends in half a dozen days and twice as many cups of coffee.  

They kept on meeting, in stranger places, though now it was planned.  The back edge of a moor on a strange moon with too much oxygen but no one for miles to hear them; the private club at the back of a rather disreputable station that took a bit of a reputation to get an invitation for; the Klingon bar in neutral space they nearly got thrown out of, until Kathy managed to break someone’s hand with a lucky move and a bar stool.  (“Hoch DIl loD'vam,” Ezri added, casually, and after that no one bothered them.)

It doesn’t matter, much, which one passed on first. It was the end of an era, and after that they never saw each other again.  This time, though, there was a chance to say good-bye, and there were memories, the kind that live on, long past this mortal coil.  

Kenzi’s Drink that Eats Like a Meal

Step One: Go To Trick’s.  It has been a good day, you deserve time with the Trickster.

Step Two: Ask for a Bloody Mary.  Lots of pepper.

Step Three: Ask for a mug and crackers.  Hey, technically these things are free!

Step Four: Put Bloody Mary in mug, with crackers.  This is now soup.  Make faces at anyone that dares to judge your greatness.  IT EVEN COMES WITH A VEGETABLE.  When questioned, ask for a spoon.

Step Five: Get Guinness.  It is technically bread.  Bread and soup is technically dinner.  You now have a meal!

Step Six:  Get a cup of coffee to wash down your soup with.  Add some whiskey to that coffee.  You are a genius.

Step Seven: If you decide you want dessert, fruity girly drink + whipped cream makes a great choice.

Step Eight: Snoopy dance to celebrate yourself, then actual dancing because tonight is going to be as good as today was.