All Those Little Moments 82, 12, 35, 16

[coffeebuddha]

Title: All Those Little Moments Are What Make A Life
Author: coffeebuddha
Rating: R/FRT (overall)
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
Summary: A collection of drabbles and shorts for a 100 Themes Challenge. Contains various genres, characters, and ships-mostly Shassie with some Shules, Gules, and misc.

***

 

82. Can You Hear Me?

They managed to evacuate the building without too many problems. It wasn't even that hard to find the two bombs. He called in the bomb squad and within ten minutes they were packing their things back up. Later, Lassiter would mostly be pissed about the fact that he hadn't realized there was a third bomb.

Vick met him in the emergency room. The bomb squad had suffered some cuts, burns, and bruises, but were otherwise fine. Even Lassiter had escaped more or less unscathed. Well, relatively speaking. Sure, he was going to have to readjust to wearing an arm sling for a week or so, but the other thing wasn't even a big deal. It was barely a thing. Hell, it was a non-thing.

Of course, Vick saw things a little differently. He spent over an hour arguing with her and brought in three separate doctors to give her their opinions before she'd agreed that he could come in and do paperwork instead of going home on medical leave.

He didn't notice Spencer until the other man leaned over his desk and waved his hands in his face. And that not noticing, well, it was kind of nice.

Spencer talked and talked and talked, but no matter how big and frantic his gestures became or how wide he opened his mouth or how far into Lassiter's personal space he leaned, all Lassiter could hear was that same ringing he'd been listening to since the explosion had temporarily knocked out his hearing.

Slowly, very slowly, a smile spread across Lassiter's face. He'd just found his silver lining.
 

*

12. Insanity

"Henry! Today isn't your usual day, is it?"

"Nah, but I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so I thought I'd come see him early. How's he been this week, June?"

"Oh, you know him. Half the time he's keeping the entire building entertained with those stories he makes up and the other half, well…you know."

"Yeah."

"I'll tell you, I have no idea how he comes up with all that stuff. I mean, I've seen people with delusions and hallucinations before, but everything he says is just so intricate and detailed. You'd almost think it had actually happened."

"Kid's always had a remarkable brain."

"I'll say! Discovering dinosaurs? Werewolf conspiracies? And the murders! Now, I know he's just about the nicest, gentlest patient here, but after he had those episodes with the serial killer, it was all I could do to convince some of the younger nurses to be in a room with him alone."

"Hmm. And other than the…visions? His mother said something about you changing his medications again?"

"What? Oh, no we just upped the dosage a little. But you should already know that. We have to do it for him every year around this time. Summer just makes him so upset."

"Makes sense. That's when the accident happened. Such a damn stupid thing…"

"Oh! Oh, Henry. Here, I think I have a tissue somewhere."

"No, I'm fine."

"If I said something I shouldn't have-"

"You didn't."

"It's been about four years now, hasn't it?"

"Four years and two weeks. The car came out of nowhere. He was killed instantly. Or at least that's what they told me."

"They must have been terribly close for it to effect him like this."

"Closer than brothers. They grew up together and were just completely inseparable. Balanced each other out."

"The poor dear…Well, we're here and you've been listening to me yammer for long enough. Go on in and have a visit. I'll just leave you two alone."

Henry slumps into a chair, stares into eyes that look right through him, and sighs.

"Hello, Gus."

*

35. Hold My Hand

I've always felt that hand holding is a surprisingly complex thing. There are so many reasons to do it, so many people to do it with. You can draw a lot of conclusions about two people by the way they hold hands. A mother's holding her child's hand as they cross the street. It's protective, concerned, loving. Two girls walk down the street, their hands loosely clasped and swinging freely between them. There's friendship there, affectionate and close. That pair there, the ones who keep rearranging their hands and fidgeting? Probably a new relationship. Neither one's completely comfortable yet, but it would take an act of God to get either of them to let go.

I've held a lot of hands in my life. Big, small, rough, soft, hot, cold, clammy, dry. I could write a Dr. Seuss book with all the different hands I've held. All that's missing is the red hand, blue hand.

Now Lassie...Lassie has nice hands. He has nice hands like whoa. Big with long fingers. They're strong, but don't fumble when it comes to delicate work. He has pianist hands. Can you just imagine? Lassie in some smoky jazz club, tie and collar loose and hair messy, bent over a piano, eyes half closed in concentration, hands dancing, fingers coaxing smooth riffs from the keys with each deliberate caress?

The first times our hands touched, it was always a warning. He'd grab and pull and force and push, and while that was hot-clearly a scowly Lassie is a sexy Lassie-it made me wonder if maybe he didn't like me that much. Always 'don't touch that, Spencer', 'get off my desk, Spencer', 'what the fuck are you doing in my kitchen at two in the morning, Spencer!' Pssh. I brought him a pineapple. He should have been falling at my feet in gratitude, not crushing the bones of my hand as he yanked me out of the kitchen and almost literally kicked me out his front door.

Even with my memory, I'm not really sure when things started to change. Somewhere along the line, his hands stopped being quite as harsh. The pad of his thumb would maybe graze across my knuckles. The tips of his fingers would linger a little longer than necessary on the back of mine. Or curl into my palm for a split second, barely long enough to register the slight graze of fingernails.

I do remember the first time I didn't let him pull away. His finger lightly traced an invisible pattern on the fleshy bit under my thumb for an impossibly long moment and my throat went dry and my brain went 'more' and my body went 'nowfuckplease'. As he started to let go, I grabbed his hand in both of mine and took his teasing finger in my mouth, sucked on it hard, and if I'd had any psychic powers I'd have used them to make certain he knew exactly what his taunting was going to lead to if he didn't stop soon. Since I'm not actually psychic, I made do with a not so subtle moan and my best Fuck Me look.

Which, you know, seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, that whole location, location, location thing is pretty true, because no matter how much unresolved sexual tension two people have, it turns out it's not a good idea to start making sex noises and sucking on an anal retentive man's body parts when you're in the middle of his office. In fact, it can make things kind of awkward. Seems like one of those things Gus should have warned me about.

The second time was back in his kitchen in the middle of the night. At least I knocked that time, even if I didn't technically wait for an answer before letting myself in. And Lassie stopped yelling somewhere between the first scrape of my teeth against his earlobe and him bodily pressing me against the counter so hard it left bruises on my lower back. Not that I'm complaining.

Then, in a blur of hands and mouths and ohsweetfuckingpineappleyes, we somehow ended up in Lassie's bedroom, where he finally put those amazing hands to work. The world narrowed to heat and gasps and pleasure and the feel of his sweat slicked chest against my back. His breath shuddered wet and warm along my spine right before his hot, open mouth sucked at the base of my neck, while his hands slid up my sides and down my arms to tangle our fingers together. And somehow the feel of our clasped hands-tense, sweaty, and desperate-seemed more intimate than anything else that we were doing.

It's been years and our hands are still together. Comfortable. Possessive. Affectionate. Protective.

Loving.

You can draw a lot of conclusions about two people by the way they hold hands.
 

*

15. Silence

There are innumerable sounds in any silence. What people think of as silence, fake silence, only exists in a sensory deprivation chamber. And even then, you still have all the little sounds that you make yourself.

Here in the station, in real silence, Juliet still has those small bodily noises. There's the rustle of her sleeve against her skin. The silken slide of her hair slipping over her shoulder. The unbearably loud pounding of her heart beating a pulse in her ears.

In the background, there's a plethora of other noises. She hears a splash as Buzz spills a pot of coffee. Somewhere, someone is using a stapler with perhaps a touch more enthusiasm than is wise. Lassiter's barking out orders, probably to a rookie. The printer spits out some pages for a case she's been working. A drunk down in the cells is screaming. A bird chirps, only slightly muffled by the closed window and the low roar of traffic.

She swallows thickly, and even that reverberates in her ears.

The only thing she can't really hear anything from is the man in front of her. He's almost unnaturally still. Definitely uncharacteristically quiet. He just stands there, staring at her, breathing so shallowly that she can barely see his chest move. He's acting strange and serious and obviously putting so much effort into trying to make her see that this isn't a joke that the words slip out almost before she's realized she's come to a decision.

"Yes."

"Yes?" A flicker of disbelief and a hesitant smile.

"Yes. I'd love to have dinner with you, Shawn."