Love You in the Dark: gift for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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Dec. 23rd, 2011 07:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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bandomstuffsitTitle: Love You in the Dark
Author:waxpoetically
Pairing(s): Ashlee/Vicky-T
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, really. Repercussions of violence (injuries, that sort of thing) and some medical talk (of the shots and bandaging nature).
Word count: ~8,000 words.
Summary: In a world where the ladies of bandom work for the CIA, Vicky-T is a government scientist in love with Special Agent Ashlee. This is their story.
The hall outside Victoria's lab always had a terrible tendency to echo. Even with the thick door shut, Victoria could catch snippets of conversations, at best, and she had lost more than one fragile test tube from the clattering of Annie or Elizabeth (or the both of them) (and sometimes Greta, too) running down the hallway and shaking everything on Victoria's shelves.
Currently, there wasn't much more than peace and tranquility as Victoria stared into a petri dish, her pen tapping against her clipboard as she jotted down notes on the growth without looking at her paper, her busy scrawl flying everywhere along the page. She perked up, though, as soon as Ashlee's voice filtered down the long hall and curled through Victoria's open doorway.
"See? Not so bad," Ashlee was saying, which was followed by a protested "Hey!" and giggling that bubbled up and seemed to be barreling closer.
A moment later, Victoria could hear the squeak of shoes on the floor, and she slowly stood up, pushing her petri dish far back from the counter's ledge and hugging her clipboard to her chest as she toed her short, metal stool back with a grating scratch against the floor. A misbehaving brown curl had escaped from her ponytail, and she tried to shove it back behind her ear before changing her mind and bringing it back down to hang at her cheek again, and she pushed her glasses up her nose, smoothing her cardigan down with worried pats.
"Oh, God, snap out of it," she whispered to herself, listening as the chaos grew louder, and she couldn't even hear the steady clip of her heels over the laughing - who was laughing like that? She didn't recognize the voice, and she had always had a good ear.
Suddenly, like a blur, Ashlee whirled into the lab, red hair tied back but flying behind her until she skidded to a stop. Ashlee was panting, sweat gathered at the dip of her collar bones that was visible between the vee of her McDonald's polo. Oh, so that explained the giggling, and -
And Victoria didn't have time to register another moment as she found herself being crashed into and then on the floor, her clipboard clattering off to her side somewhere.
"Oh! Oh, God, I'm sorry," whoever it was immediately said. She was breathing hard, and her face was buried in Victoria's splayed curls. The girl shoved herself off from on top of Victoria and shakily stood up, receiving no help from Ashlee, who was busy standing off to the side and clutching her sides as she laughed at them.
Victoria perched up on her elbows and only then realized just how crooked her glasses were and how much her ribs hurt from the impact. The girl standing in front of her was fresh-faced and full of freckles, flashing hazel eyes and a bitten-red bottom lip that was currently tucked between her teeth as she clasped her right wrist in her left hand.
"I am so, so, so sorry," she said again, looking over her shoulder at Ashlee as if she was silently pleading for Ashlee to intervene. Ashlee shook her head and pushed her black visor up until it stood straight up in the middle of her head like a bonnet, and she leaned heavily against Victoria's counter, the polo stretching tightly across her chest as she sucked in deep breaths from laughing so hard.
Not that Victoria was paying any attention to that.
The girl stuck her hand out to help Victoria up, and Victoria took it with a sigh. "Oh - oh, here, I'm sorry. Did I mention I'm sorry? Because I'm sorry," the girl said as she handed Victoria her clipboard and then ran across the lab to duck under the counter the petri dish resided on to fetch Victoria's pen.
"Thanks," Victoria said, looking back and forth between Ashlee and the new girl (she had to be one of the two newest arrivals they'd all been briefed on this morning when Lindsey bribed them into her office with donuts. Victoria had one of the extras with sprinkles tucked back to share with Ashlee later... if Ashlee got a moment, at least. She was always busy, and she probably wouldn't have the time. But just in case...) and waiting for one of them to explain.
Ashlee eventually let out a low "Woooooooooo, Cassadee, Jesus," and yanked the visor off completely to fan her red face with it. Victoria blinked owlishly behind her glasses as she watched and then blinked some more when it registered just how screwy her vision was. And then that her glasses were still just barely hanging on.
The new girl - Cassadee - was watching Victoria intensely, and Victoria's nerves squished all up inside her in a tight little ball. She tore her gaze away with a halfhearted, flighty smile and tore her glasses off to clean them with the corner of her cardigan. When she finally slid them back into place, high on the bridge of her nose, Ashlee was leaning against the counter, arms crossed over her chest and a smirk resting at the corner of her mouth.
"Vicky-T, are you all right? You have to forgive Cassadee, she's new," Ashlee said, actually winking at Victoria, then, and Victoria felt head flood her face as she looked down at her hands, knuckles white as she clutched at her clipboard.
"Hey! This was your fault, you started -"
"I'm fine," Victoria interrupted, lifting her chin a little, proudly, when her voice came out almost completely steady. Ashlee reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind Victoria's ear and grinned.
"That's good," she said, her fingertips brushing against the corner of Victoria's jaw for a moment before she dropped it to her side. Cassadee was watching them shrewdly, and Victoria cleared her throat and tried uselessly to tone down the delighted curve of her mouth.
She knew they were smiling the stupid, dopey kind of smiles that people complain about, and sure enough, Cassadee crossed her arms and bumped the back of her shoe against the side of the other one, sighing. But then Ashlee was making a concerned noise, lines drawn up between her eyebrows, and Victoria couldn't care about the new girl's impatience.
"Did you hit your head? Something sounded like it got banged really well," Ashlee said, reaching up to squeeze Victoria's shoulder.
Months ago, Victoria wouldn't've noticed the innuendo, but she was learning, and she even said before Ashlee could smirk and chime in with it herself, "If I know what you mean?"
"Definitely," Ashlee said with a snicker, and Victoria was sure in that instant that it was scientifically possible for her stomach to drop somewhere down by her feet. Somehow or another, Ashlee had pushed herself off the counter and curled in just the tiniest bit closer to Victoria, still arm's length away but it felt like so much less than that, and Victoria's next quiet inhalation was stuttery with nerves.
She almost didn't notice it when, out of the corner of her eye, Cassadee gave a very obvious wave, arm swinging wildly until they were both giving her their full attention.
"Um, hi, I'm Cassadee," she said, eyebrows raised high up her forehead in suspicion. Victoria's cheeks colored even pinker, and she glanced down at her clipboard and couldn't offhand read half of what she'd written. Damn.
"So, you're one of the new agents?" she asked after a beat, clasping her arms around the clipboard even tighter. "Um. It's nice to meet you, however unorthodox the meeting was." Her words were stilted, like she thought over each one too long before spitting them out, and this new agent was going to think she was an idiot. No scientist was this inept. Thankfully, Cassadee nodded anyway and took in a breath.
"And you're a... secret government scientist?" she asked, taking in Victoria's lab coat and and then, as she craned her neck around, the rest of the room. It was clean and organized to the point of sterility, cool metal counters against two of the walls and a row of sinks lining the back wall. White cabinets above them and the counters and thin shelves underneath those were attached to the walls. It was truthfully Victoria's baby, and she was guilty of staying in the lab more often than her own apartment.
"She's more than that," Ashlee said, throwing her arm around Victoria's shoulders and reeling her in. "Our girl's a genius." Victoria's gaze jerked to Ashlee's hand curling tightly on her bicep, neatly manicured nails shining in the glow of florescent lights. She was pretty sure she'd never blushed redder in her life. Her entire face burned, and the heat traveled down her neck and spread over her chest in waves. She was just grateful that underneath her lab coat and wooly cardigan, she'd worn a turtleneck.
"It's not a big deal. I just figure out formulas and create antidotes to poisons, evaluate known and unknown toxins, the usual," Victoria said, forcing herself to roll her eyes. It really wasn't a big deal. It's what she went to school for, just like Ashlee - and Cassadee, Victoria supposed - went to the academy to be field agents. Victoria's stint at the academy had been short; she'd declined advanced weapon training and hadn't needed the field practice that agents required. She just loved science and loved her job, and there was nothing... genius about any of it. She hugged her clipboard even closer and shrugged out of Ashlee's grip to go sit on her stool, pulling her coat closed around her.
"Sounds impressive to me," Cassadee said.
"It is impressive, and don't let her tell you differently. In the Geoffery Burkes case, Laena would've been dead, and Geoffery would've gotten away with millions and murdered a slew of innocent people if Laena hadn't had Vicky-T's latest development on her. But one dart of that in Geoff's neck had him seeing stars."
Victoria shook her head. "It was just an experiment. Anyone could have developed that. It's really not -"
"Wait. The Geoffery Burkes case as in Geoffery Burkes, founder of Burkes Steel, the company who built the ground floor of the government? Who kept laundering federal money from every construction site he sent his minions to? Who took down a whole site's worth of workers so that he could escape and who is currently serving life without parole? That Geoffery Burkes?" Cassadee asked.
"The one and only, that we know of," Ashlee said with a calculated smile. "We sent Monroe and Geronimo out there to take him down at his last job, but he's quick. Luckily, Laena's quicker. And lucky that we have Vicky-T."
Cassadee bounced on her heels. "That is so cool! I read about that right before I started training. The toxicology report said there were unknown substances in his blood that they couldn't trace, but they were all nerve paralyzers. That's like a one, two, three punch to the system, holy crap."
Victoria laughed uneasily. Oh God, oh God. "It's no big deal. It's my job," she said, shrugging. She was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and should've expected it but just absolutely didn't when Ashlee followed her path across the room and settled her hand on her shoulder and slid it under her hair, rubbing the back of her neck. Victoria felt her eyes sliding closed. Ashlee's touch was so warm and gentle, and it set every nerve she had lying right under her skin on fire, making her shiver. She looked up at Cassadee over the rim of her glasses after a moment, though, and Cassadee had one eyebrow raised, a completely unsurprised (and, confusingly enough, a vaguely amused) expression on her face.
"She's a keeper," Ashlee said affectionately, breaking the silence, and if it was possible, Victoria's face blushed pinker than before.
Ashlee's hip rang, and she pulled out her cell. "Looks like newbie number two has landed." Ashlee went to grab her visor and shoved it on her head, straightening her hair under it. "It's showtime!"
"C'mon, newb," Ashlee said to Cassadee as she passed and headed out the doorway. "See you later, Vicky-T!"
Cassadee started to follow Ashlee out, and Victoria had just rested her elbow on her counter and was sliding her hand over the back of her neck, as if Ashlee's hand was still ghosting there so lightly, when Cassadee popped her head around. Victoria jerked her hand away so fast that it smacked against the counter, sending off a metallic thwang that had her gritting her teeth and Cassadee wrinkling her nose in distaste.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to - anyway. I just wanted to say, um, again, really cool job? But I'll let you get back to work now! It was really great meeting you. Ashlee's awesome, right?"
Before Victoria answered, she was gone, for sure this time, and Victoria sighed. Ashlee made her crazy and had no idea. God, what was she going to do?
***
Two months later
Victoria had to be very careful. There were too many fresh chemicals at work, and one wrong move could spoil the whole thing. She'd have to set up new cultures and wait another month, and if this experiment turned out as she hypothesized, it could be the cure-all her team needed five years ago at least.
She squeezed the dropper, and the thin pink liquid turned into a more pronounced red-gold and fizzed at the top before settling into the flask. She just needed one more milliliter of --
"Victoria! Victoria!" Cassadee called. Her hand slapped on the doorframe as she spun inside, and Victoria pursed her lips. She loved Cassadee, really, but Cassadee was very... loud and abrasive and so much happening all at once. Not that she wasn't used to noise because when Elizabeth, Laena, and Annie got together, there was no used studying anymore, and the firing range was directly under her lab.
When she finally looked up, though, she was startled to see that Cassadee was so pale that even from a distance, Victoria could probably count every freckle licking across the cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Victoria, it's Ashlee, she's -"
"Ashlee's back? But she was supposed to be undercover at least another week," Vicky-T said. Something was very, very wrong, and Victoria's insides were twisting up into knots all of a sudden, and then those knots were knotting themselves into pretzels. She stayed sitting, her hand tightening into a fist around a bunch of her skirt fabric, but she could still feel her nails digging into her skin.
Cassadee opened her mouth to explain further, but she must have heard a noise or something because she held up a finger to Victoria and darted around the corner, disappearing with a sudden silence that was deafening.
"Cassadee? Ashlee?" Victoria called, thinking at the last second to put stoppers and covers over her work before she ran out into the hallway. It was eerie how quiet the building was. Sometimes she let time slip away from her, and she would finally come out of the lab in the middle of the night, but even then there were creaks of the headquarters settling. Now it was just the clicks of her heels on the smooth floor and nothing else.
"Is anyone here?" she called again.
Suddenly, two people blurred by her, one carrying something big and lifeless, and it took her a minute to process that it was Laena with Cassadee quick on her heels. "Victoria! We need your help!" Laena called out from the lab.
By the time she retraced her steps down the hallway and made the turn into her lab, Laena was setting something down on the cot Victoria sometimes tucked into a corner for herself when she was too tired to go home. It got used more often than she wanted to admit.
"What is it?" she asked. Laena and Cassadee combined were blocking whatever or whomever it was on the cot. "Laena? What?"
Laena looked as scared as Cassadee did. She had a loose strand of her dark brown hair stuck to her lipstick, but she didn't seem to notice it, and Cassadee kept darting her head back over Laena's shoulder to what was on the cot.
"Victoria, that serum you were working on, the one you said was almost done... we need it. Now."
She had to be joking. Victoria was convinced she had to be joking because science did not work that way. She still had one last step to go in finishing the experiment, and then there were tests to run, subjects to hire, reports to make, side effects to witness and possibly prevent. By "done," she had meant that she could stop waiting for it to mature. She didn't mean it was almost ready for use.
"We... we can't use that," she finally managed to get out. Laena strode over until she was the only thing Victoria could see, even though she trained her eye on the unpolished buckle of Laena's shoulder holster so she wouldn't have to look her in the face.
"Victoria," Laena said calmly, and Victoria jerked her gaze up. Laena sighed. "You're going to have to use it. We need this. Ashlee needs this, now."
It felt like someone reached in and tore the pretzel of Victoria's insides out of her body in that instant, and she gripped onto the corner of her metal lab table. It was sharp enough to dig into her hand, and the bloom of pain kept her grounded in reality.
"Ashlee?" she parroted. She was surprised her voice was steady because it sounded far away, like someone was behind her and doing the thinking and talking for her. Ashlee was in trouble. Ashlee was possibly hurt? It dawned on her that it was most likely Ashlee who Laena had carried in there and who was on her cot right now. Was she going to be okay? Was she... would she live?
Victoria finally got her legs to work, and she pushed past Laena and across the room, her knees hitting the ground next to Cassadee's feet. Ashlee's hair was sprawled out across her pillow, and her face had a sheen of sickly sweat on it, her eyes sunk in and the skin yellow around them. Her lips were dry and a pale, weak pink. Her shirt was off, and there was a bandage wrapped around her torso with the thickest part just under her right breast. She took a wheezing breath, and her chest rose and fell, and Victoria nearly cried with relief. She was alive, thank God.
She heard Laena walk over behind her, and Cassadee dropped to her knees beside her, one hand resting on Ashlee's knee. She couldn't take her eyes off her, and Victoria felt much the same way. If they looked away, something might change. Ashlee might get worse.
Laena's hand curled around the top of Victoria's, and she squeezed lightly. "Ashlee needs that serum, Victoria. We've stopped the blood flow and bandaged her up enough now, but Lindsey's been instructed not to bring her to a surgeon until the toxin is out of her system. If it's combined with any anesthetic he has to give her, then she could die. You're the only one that can fix this."
Victoria's blood was rushing past her ears, and for a second, it was like Laena's mouth was moving but nothing was coming out, nothing that Victoria could process anyway. Her mind was going a mile a minute.
"Blood flow? She needs... she needs surgery?" she asked finally.
"She was shot," Cassadee said, breaking her own silence, but she sounded very small, scared. Victoria wanted to ache for her. She was just a kid after all. But she couldn't think or feel anything else with Ashlee sprawled out in front of her, her eyes closed and her breath coming in tiny gasps instead of slow and steady like it was supposed to.
"The vital organs were missed. The bullet's not what's killing her. She doesn't have long. It was Carden. You know what he was planning on using. You could save her, Victoria. You have to," Laena said. Victoria finally looked up at her and saw the worry in her eyes, how her lipstick was half bitten off, the huge blood stain on her bra that had to be...
"I could kill her," she said suddenly, jumping up. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and started pacing the room and chewing on her thumbnail. "It hasn't been tested on mice let alone anyone human. I'm not letting Ashlee be the first. I'm not putting her in harm's way."
Laena followed her, standing up and watching her walk. "She's already in harm's way. If you don't try, she's going to die anyway. Lindsey said that we didn't have long, and we've wasted enough time like it is. There's no maybes in this. You either try and save her, or you do nothing, and she's dead."
Victoria's jaw clenched, and she glared at Laena. Laena didn't get it. It wasn't Annie lying on the cot and near death in front of them. If it were, she wouldn't be so calm. It wasn't possible.
A cough came from Ashlee's direction, and Cassadee was over by her head in an instant, pushing her hair back off her face and patting her shoulder. "Ash?" she said, and Victoria ran over, kneeling beside her again.
It must have took enormous strength, but Ashlee opened her eyes halfway and looked around the room before settling on Victoria. The corner of her mouth quirked up in the tiniest of smiles.
"Trust you," she whispered hoarsely, a cough breaking up the two words. Her eyes drifted closed again after another heartbeat's moment, and her breathing went back to the tiny, quiet gasps that had filled the room since she arrived.
Laena's hand fell to Victoria's shoulder, lightly, meant to comfort. Victoria sighed and looked up at her. She had might as well admit it to herself that she couldn't stay here and do nothing while Ashlee was dying in front of her.
"I don't know how fast it'll work," she said slowly, turning each word over in her mind before speaking them. "I haven't worked out the right levels for the stabilizers yet. Carden's still using the black darts, the ones we've seen before, right?" Laena nodded, and Victoria sighed and made her way over to her lab table, uncovering all her tools and pulling the stoppers out of her flasks.
She sat on her stool, and her shoulders were hunched, drawn up around her ears, defensive. After a few seconds, she realized she couldn't work like this, not with eyes at her back waiting on her every move. She spun around, holding her clipboard to her chest like a shield. "Can you go? For awhile. I can't... I need some time to think," she said.
"Of course," Laena said instantly, but Cassadee's brow furrowed, and she shook her head.
"No way," she said. "I'm not leaving Ashlee."
Laena sighed and clamped her hands on Cassadee's arms, picking her up and standing her on her feet almost effortlessly. "Beth is waiting at your apartment, and we'll call you as soon as we know something, but Victoria has to work."
"I won't be in the way!" Cassadee said before looking at Victoria. "Please."
Victoria dropped her gaze to the ground. She needed to polish her shoes, and why was she thinking of that when Ashlee was dying? Cassadee begged her again, and Victoria knew if the roles were reversed, she wouldn't want to leave either, but she had to get this serum just right. Ashlee needed her, and she had to do this perfectly for her.
"Just a few hours, Cassadee, please," she said, almost whispering. Laena kept one hand around Cassadee's arm and led her out. Cassadee kept craning her head to look over her shoulder at Ashlee, watching her until she was out of the doorway and sullenly following Laena down the hall.
Ashlee should've been in a hospital, hooked up and monitored and tucked under the covers, not there on Victoria's cot with a bullet still in her body for God's sake. Vicky-T bit her lip hard and took a steadying breath before she tilted her clipboard down to look at her notes. If this had waited another six months, her serum, were it successful, could be in the hospitals, and none of this would be a problem.
"One milliliter. That's it," Victoria said quietly to herself before jerking around to check in on Ashlee again. She didn't want to disturb her.
The mixture fizzled as the lone drop of blue barreled down inside it and then spread out, giving it a milky green color. According to her notes, if everything went according to plan, that should have been the last ingredient. It seemed to be behaving properly so far, but she had plans to give it at least two weeks and liberal moderation before bringing in the lab mice.
Ashlee, however, did not have that long, and Victoria needed to stop staring at the serum like it would grow legs and walk across the room to Ashlee itself. As she stood up, she was quite literally shaking in her shoes, and she had to force her mind onto autopilot to grip the handle of the cabinet above her with her steadily dwindling supply of syringes and iodine swabs. She really should have called Nate to bring her in some more stock before now, but at least she had enough to do the job.
Ashlee didn't respond when Victoria knelt beside her and set her supplies on their silver tray on the ground in front of her. She didn't open her eyes when Victoria gently took hold of her arm and turned it so the crook of her arm faced out, the veins a darker blue than usual and highlighted against her suddenly too-pale skin. She gasped in another shallow breath, and Victoria steadied her trembling hands long enough to tear open the iodine packet and swab over Ashlee's arm. She'd never asked if Ashlee was allergic. There were so many things she didn't know about Ashlee, and she might never know if what she was about to do went horribly wrong.
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, counting back in her head from ten to one before grabbing a dry swab from her packet and cleaning the iodine from Ashlee's arm. She fiddled with the split across the top of the syringe's wrapping before pulling it apart properly, wasting time picking off the paper a pinch at a time, and after she filled it to the top, she held it in front of her face and stared at the solitary green drop that slid quickly down the needle's shaft and over the plastic, disappearing around a wrinkle in her latex glove.
It took three tries for her to not pull the needle away and back out, only to bring it forth again and hold it just over Ashlee's skin. "I am so sorry," she whispered as she finally slid the needle inside and pressed down until all the serum had disappeared into Ashlee's veins. It was too late to change her mind now.
Fear, unmitigated and unapologetic, crept up her spine. Usually, Victoria had no problems waiting. Her patience could outlast most anyone else's, and she sat with her experiments for hours during long, quiet nights. But now her skin crawled, and she twisted her fingers together and popped her knuckles and rearranged how she was sitting no less than fifteen times.
It hadn't taken long for Laena to drive Cassadee to her apartment and get back, and no one else had left headquarters. They were all waiting, and at first, they popped their heads in and asked if anything had changed, if Victoria needed anything. Greta swore that there was some color in Ashlee's cheeks that hadn't been there earlier, but Victoria wasn't seeing it, and she had a keen eye. The truth of the matter was that, while Ashlee hadn't gotten worse in the slightest, she also hadn't gotten better.
"Yet," Lindsey said when Victoria voiced her thoughts. "Just give her time. You know how strong she is." She draped a blanket around Victoria's shoulders and crossed the corners under her chin. "Don't forget to sleep some eventually," she said.
None of them stayed in the lab long, and Victoria halfway wondered how much of a mess she looked, not leaving Ashlee's side, hardly blinking or breathing in case she missed something. But the rest of her team knew to give her space, and it was nice of them. Later, if there was a later and if Ashlee was okay, she knew she'd feel guilty for pushing them away. Everyone loved Ashlee.
But Victoria was, she was pretty sure, the only one in love with her.
Around four in the morning when the hallway outside her lab had been deadly quiet for hours, Victoria let her head drop until her cheek was resting on Ashlee's thigh, her eyes still trained on Ashlee's face and watching her breathe. She smoothed her thumb over Ashlee's skin, just a tiny bit above the bright blue Band-AID she'd put on her before she trashed the syringe and the rest of her garbage.
Her other hand was curled loosely around Ashlee's, and the blanket Lindsey had given her was soft and so much better than the scratchy, tiny thing she'd found in a closet that she kept spread over her cot. Her eyelids felt so heavy, and it was probably the fact she was exhausted, but Ashlee's breathing seemed to have had fallen into a healthy, steadier rhythm that was lulling Victoria to sleep.
She startled awake to someone whispering her name. What time was it? Fuck. What had she missed? She darted up and glanced at the white watch around her arm. Two hours. Two hours she'd been unconscious. So much could've happened - she had to - she...
No one else was in the room with her. She had almost convinced herself she'd dreamed someone calling her when her eyes finally settled back onto Ashlee. She was awake.
Victoria straightened up onto her knees and leaned over Ashlee, touching her cheek. "Ashlee?" she whispered. It sounded too loud in the room, and her mouth was dry as anything, but she didn't care about any of that when the corner of Ashlee's mouth lifted in a tiny smile.
"Hey," she said after dragging in a deep breath that made her wince. She brought the hand not tangled with Victoria's up to her bandages and frowned, feeling the thickly padded gauze.
"You were shot," Victoria offered, and Ashlee dropped her hand.
"I remember," she said, looking off at the wall for a long moment. "What was that - something stung me in the neck. A dart?" She winced again as she talked, and Victoria bit her lip, her hand brushing Ashlee's hair back off her forehead. She wanted to take care of her, but this wasn't her area. She was like a fish out of water.
"Poison," she said lightly. She kept her features cool. Show no worry, don't let Ashlee know she almost died.
"Oh. Poison," Ashlee repeated. "Fun."
Victoria sat back on her heels and pulled her hand out of Ashlee's, even though she didn't want to. "Do you want... water, or. Are you in pain? I mean, of course you're in pain. I could get you something, whatever you need."
Ashlee turned her head and pressed her cheek against Victoria's pillow and smiled at her. "Have you been taking care of me this whole time?"
"I, um," Victoria began eloquently. She dropped her hands in her lap and picked at the skin around her thumbnail, ducking her head.
"No, don't do that," Ashlee said, stretching her arm out to rest her hand on Victoria's knee. "I wouldn't've wanted anyone else."
Victoria's mind was going a million places at once. Ashlee was probably not thinking clearly, and if she was, she didn't mean anything like that. They were friends, and that was good. Victoria liked having friends.
She snorted. "You'll want someone else to get the bullet out," she said.
Ashlee glanced down, craning her neck to see the little mountain of bandages on her torso. "Yeah, maybe. You don't have a steady hand?"
Something flickered in her eyes, and Victoria was pretty sure Ashlee was teasing her, but she had never been the best at reading people. "I'm no surgeon. Let me give you something, Ash. You need to rest, and being in pain's not gonna help you do that."
"Suppose not," Ashlee said, sighing. She tried shifting minutely and then sucked in a breath and bit her lip until the skin turned white. "Bad idea."
Victoria's eyes didn't leave her. "Little bit. I'll be back in a second, just... keep still until then?"
Ashlee stared straight up at the ceiling, her lips pursed, frustrated. She raised her good arm to her forehead and gave a sloppy salute. "Yes, ma'am."
Victoria bit her lip again and pushed herself up, letting the blanket fall where it wanted. Perhaps she should offer it to Ashlee. She might be cold. The lab wasn't exactly the best for keeping in heat for any given amount of time.
Her fingers were shaking as she dug through the drawers in her supply closet for something that would help Ashlee with the pain. Her brain was going Ashlee, Ashlee, hurry, help her, don't fuck up, hurry, and it wasn't helping her think clearly about strengths and dosages.
She finally wrapped her hand around a tiny orange bottle of liquid and pulled out another syringe from her drawer.
"That is a big needle," Ashlee deadpanned when Victoria crossed over to her. She looked... sallow, and she wasn't smiling; she wasn't like the Ashlee Victoria knew so well.
"It'll make you feel better. Well. The needle won't. The stuff inside the needle will. It's -"
Ashlee rested her hand on Victoria's arm. "Victoria," she said tiredly, and Victoria's breath hitched. "Just give it to me, okay?"
Victoria nodded. Her cheeks burned. She shouldn't feel embarrassed; Ashlee just wanted some relief from the pain, that was all. But in the back of her mind, she couldn't stop berating herself for how stupid she was being.
She prepped the crook of Ashlee's arm again and slid the needle home. Ashlee watched the entire time, and Victoria wasn't sure how she could do it. Watching the needle go in was the worst part. She put on another Band-AID and smoothed her thumb over Ashlee's soft skin. "You should start feeling -"
"High."
"- better in a bit. And probably high."
Ashlee finally smiled again a tiny bit, and she grabbed Victoria's hand, lacing their fingers together.
As she was falling asleep, her other hand resting on her bandages, she laughed quietly and looked up at Victoria. "Already down to just my bra, and we haven't even gone on our first date. Racy," she murmured, her words fuzzy as the medicine hit her. Victoria was thankful when Ashlee's lids fell closed because the blush on her cheeks was probably redder than Ashlee's hair.
***
There were flowers all over Ashlee's room. Admittedly, most of them were from Victoria, but she wasn't embarrassed by that. They were something colorful and pretty for Ashlee to look at, and that would make her feel better faster, and then she could get out of the hospital faster, and Victoria could stop worrying if she was too cold or hungry or bored.
Ashlee was asleep when Victoria eased into her room, not bothering to knock. Her face was turned to the wall, and she was all twisted up, halfway lying on her back with her ankles crossed and turned. She liked sleeping on her left side the most, with her arms around her pillow. Victoria knew that. But the doctors had insisted she stay on her back, that if she didn't, she'd be in a world of pain, and Ashlee had griped about it later with her arms crossed over her chest and four starched pillows helping her halfway sit up. ("And really," Ashlee had said one day, "who irons their pillow cases. I feel like I'm sleeping on a church skirt.")
Victoria lowered herself in the only chair in the room that didn't have plastic-like cushions. She didn't want to wake Ashlee, not yet. She took time to examine the differences a day made. Ashlee's hair was woven into a French braid. Jessica must have stopped by and done that. The IV drip wasn't in Ashlee's arm anymore, just a cotton ball and a piece of murky tape bent in the crook.
Everything looked normal. The base hadn't had a scare like this since Kitty's encounter three summers ago, but Victoria remembered what it was like, the tiny changes in day-to-day hospital life that slowly signaled a patient was on the mend. The rooms started getting brighter, sunnier, bathed in colors instead of stark and white and ominously hinting at death. Victoria was glad; she wanted Ashlee out of here. For the moment, though, she pulled out a book and her glasses, leaning back in her chair and settling in to be there for awhile.
Three and a half chapters later, Victoria was so immersed in her book that she didn't hear the quiet shift of hospital gown under scratchy sheets and didn't look up until Ashlee said, "Hey, stranger," with a pleased but tired half smile on her face.
"Hey there yourself," Victoria said, reaching down to pick up the book she'd dropped when Ashlee spoke. "Good sleep?"
"Not really," Ashlee said, wrinkling her nose. "They took me off the good stuff." She touched the cotton ball on her arm and sighed.
"Are you hurting?" Victoria's eyes darted to the button to the right of Ashlee's head and half-obscured by pillows. She could call a nurse in, get Ashlee taken care of.
"Not a lot. And I've got - ow." Ashlee's teeth gritted together, and she paused mid-reach toward her bedside table, her free hand going to the fresh bandages around her ribs.
"I've got it!" Victoria said in a rush, pushing herself up and winding across the bed as fast as she could. "You've got... ibuprofen." She squinted at the bottle. This wasn't enough for anything.
"Hey, don't knock it," Ashlee said lightly, leaning back. "Ugh, when can I leave? I want to shower."
"Not much longer. If you promise to take it is easy, you could maybe go home tomorrow."
Ashlee's face lit up, and Victoria couldn't stop herself from smiling. It was infectious. "But you have to be careful."
"Hey, trust me, no ninja acrobatics will be had, I promise," Ashlee said, holding up her hands. "I just want the basics - food that's not encased in gelatin, to stop smelling, and my heffalump."
"... your heffalump?"
Ashlee shrugged. "I have to have someone to cuddle with at night." She didn't take her eyes off Victoria for a long moment, and Victoria squirmed. Her cheeks felt hot, and she didn't know why, of all times, she was blushing now. Hospital lighting would show too much.
Victoria set the bottle of ibuprofen down on the bed beside Ashlee's hand and sat back in her chair, leaning forward to rest her arms on the bed and then her head on top of them. Her glasses slid down her nose, and she pushed them up with a sigh.
"So, I was thinking," she began. "Is... Jessica, maybe, going to stay with you? You know, while you recover some more."
Ashlee shook her head. "I wish," she said. "But Jess's gotta get back on tour. She took two weeks off, and now she's got, like, seven dates to make up at the end. I wouldn't ask her to stay here longer." She picked at her blanket, scratching at a place on it so worn that her finger was about to poke through.
Victoria nodded. "Well, um. I mean, I was going to say that if you wanted, you could... I mean, I live alone, so there's plenty of room for you, and I could, um. Help. Is what I'm saying."
It was not her smoothest delivery, not that she had a history of smooth deliveries, really. Or deliveries at all. The knots of her insides were back, and she felt fifteen again, like she was asking Ashlee out on a date. That wasn't what this was. That was one coworker taking care of another in their time of need. That was all.
Ashlee was smiling at her, wide and unguarded. "I don't want to be any trouble..."
Victoria quickly shook her head. "It's really not, um. I wouldn't offer if it was? I mean, what if you fall and... break your hip or something," she blurted out.
Ashlee rolled her eyes. "I got shot, I'm not suddenly eighty." But then she tucked some of Victoria's hair behind her ear and traced over the curve, the pad of her finger brushing over the back of Victoria's earring and then carefully down her neck. "But I'd like that. I'd like to... be with you." Victoria's breath caught, but then Ashlee made a face. "Honestly, you're a better nurse than the people they've got here." They both laughed, but Victoria wished silently that none of it had been a joke.
"So, any news from HQ?" Ashlee asked. She had a closed-off room in a wing where the entire far half of it belonged to her, but they still had to be careful when they talked about work. Only a few people at the hospital knew what her profession was; no one knew what Victoria did, and they never knew who might be lurking.
Victoria glanced around quickly. The plants Ashlee had received, the ones not from Victoria at least, had been swiped and cleared of all bugging devices before entering the room, so that much was good. "Well," she began. "Your... shift that you'd been planning on working had to be taken over by someone else. Cassadee and Beth worked the hours together."
Ashlee nodded. "They're new... But Cassadee's good. I've seen her. Beth's not bad either, a little hotheaded."
"Yeah," Victoria said, stretching out the vowels. "A little too hotheaded."
"Did something happen?" Ashlee sat up a little more and winced, and Victoria raised up enough to put her hand on Ashlee's shoulder, keep her calm. That was what she was here for.
"They both... survived the shift," she said. She hated talking in metaphor. "Zebra... Cat? was there. He didn't make it out." It was almost too ridiculous, and it wasn't as if Ashlee needed the stress anyway. She should have waited until they were back at the base, and then she could tell Ashlee about Cassadee and Beth taking down Zack Cumen properly without calling him... Zebra Cat.
Ashlee was beaming cautiously, though. "You're fucking kidding me, did they really -"
Victoria nodded. Ashlee grinned and did a mini fist pump in the air. "I knew they were going be great."
"Well... it's possible Beth, um... slipped on grease - this is ridiculous." Victoria sat up and grabbed a notepad out of her purse and a pen and wrote down the rest of the story, complete with what room number Beth was in in the same hospital. Ashlee's smile melted down a little further and a little further until she was frowning, her features long and worried.
"I don't like this. Did Lindsey say what she was going to do?"
"She's unsure. Cassadee is on probation, for now, from the field anyway," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. "She doesn't think she's going to let Beth come back, though."
Ashlee nodded. "I'm not surprised. It'd be dangerous. Has anyone -"
"No one's told Cassadee yet. She's... she took it hard, so I think Lindsey's going to wait."
"I can imagine. God, remember Miguel?" Ashlee shook her head, looking off for a second, and Victoria impulsively grabbed her hand, grounding her to the present. Ashlee had looked haunted for weeks, making the motions of being at work but not actually being there with them after she'd taken out Miguel. He had been Ashlee's first kill, and it had stuck with her. Victoria had hated it for her then, and she didn't want Ashlee to relive it now.
Ashlee turned her hand over under Victoria's and loosely laced their fingers together, glancing at their hands. "She'll be okay, though. She has all of us."
"Yeah." Victoria was quiet for a minute. "You know, Cassadee said something when Lindsey was... admonishing her after she got back."
Ashlee rolled her eyes. "Lindsey should've waited."
"Yeah, probably, but she asked Cassadee why they'd been so reckless, and Cassadee said that she would do anything for Beth. They're like sisters, you know? Best friends, and Cassadee just follows her. So of course she'd jump in with guns a-blazing for her. And, well." Victoria stared intently at the sheets, hard enough that she thought if she could see better, she might would spend her time counting every thread instead of saying anything else.
"Well, I just wanted to say... I mean, I know we're not partners or anything, me and you, I mean, but I'd follow you into gunfire. Anytime." She cleared her throat. "Always."
Her face was on fire, and she waited for Ashlee to say anything at all, but she wasn't expecting to hear her laugh. It was fond, though, quiet, like a secret shared between the two of them, and Victoria glanced up at her.
"Vicky-T, you hate guns," Ashlee said.
"I know, but -"
"You won't even complete the mandated shooting range assessment."
"Yeah, but still." Victoria sighed in exasperation, and right then, she wondered why she was in love with Ashlee. Ashlee was a terrible person - logical, but terrible.
Ashlee squeezed her hand before twisting it away carefully and reaching up to push Victoria's glasses up her nose. "It's okay, though." She grinned wider. "I love you for your brain." Her hand settled on Victoria's cheek, and it was hospital-cool for a second before warming up next to her skin. Victoria was on sensory overload. Ashlee was close, and Victoria steadfastly did not let herself glance down at Ashlee's mouth - not more than once anyway. Well, twice. She swallowed hard.
"I. You - what?" If she'd been able to think of anything articulate to say, her words would've been caught in her throat. She met Ashlee's eyes. Surely, she didn't mean -
"Are you gonna keep staring, or are you gonna kiss me already?"
Victoria could've choked. "Wait, you mean-"
"Oh my God, come here," Ashlee said affectionately, and she couldn't really pull Victoria close like she probably wanted to, not without hurting herself, so it was good that Victoria mindlessly obeyed, coming closer and tilting her head to press her mouth firmly against Ashlee's.
It was dry and warm, and Victoria's heart was beating a mile a minute in her chest. She could almost feel it against Ashlee's bottom lip. When they parted, Victoria's glasses were a little fogged, and Ashlee noticed and snickered under her breath before taking hold of Victoria's hands again.
"I was thinking maybe when I get out of this joint and stop being depressingly immobile that maybe we could go do something, on a date," she said.
"It's... it's a sound hypothesis," Victoria said, smiling when Ashlee laughed again. She had no idea when she woke up that something this grandiose would happen in her life; it wasn't exactly in her realm of expectations. It was Ashlee after all. But it was amazing, and, mostly, she regretted forgetting, in her haste, to floss.
Author:
waxpoeticallyPairing(s): Ashlee/Vicky-T
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, really. Repercussions of violence (injuries, that sort of thing) and some medical talk (of the shots and bandaging nature).
Word count: ~8,000 words.
Summary: In a world where the ladies of bandom work for the CIA, Vicky-T is a government scientist in love with Special Agent Ashlee. This is their story.
The hall outside Victoria's lab always had a terrible tendency to echo. Even with the thick door shut, Victoria could catch snippets of conversations, at best, and she had lost more than one fragile test tube from the clattering of Annie or Elizabeth (or the both of them) (and sometimes Greta, too) running down the hallway and shaking everything on Victoria's shelves.
Currently, there wasn't much more than peace and tranquility as Victoria stared into a petri dish, her pen tapping against her clipboard as she jotted down notes on the growth without looking at her paper, her busy scrawl flying everywhere along the page. She perked up, though, as soon as Ashlee's voice filtered down the long hall and curled through Victoria's open doorway.
"See? Not so bad," Ashlee was saying, which was followed by a protested "Hey!" and giggling that bubbled up and seemed to be barreling closer.
A moment later, Victoria could hear the squeak of shoes on the floor, and she slowly stood up, pushing her petri dish far back from the counter's ledge and hugging her clipboard to her chest as she toed her short, metal stool back with a grating scratch against the floor. A misbehaving brown curl had escaped from her ponytail, and she tried to shove it back behind her ear before changing her mind and bringing it back down to hang at her cheek again, and she pushed her glasses up her nose, smoothing her cardigan down with worried pats.
"Oh, God, snap out of it," she whispered to herself, listening as the chaos grew louder, and she couldn't even hear the steady clip of her heels over the laughing - who was laughing like that? She didn't recognize the voice, and she had always had a good ear.
Suddenly, like a blur, Ashlee whirled into the lab, red hair tied back but flying behind her until she skidded to a stop. Ashlee was panting, sweat gathered at the dip of her collar bones that was visible between the vee of her McDonald's polo. Oh, so that explained the giggling, and -
And Victoria didn't have time to register another moment as she found herself being crashed into and then on the floor, her clipboard clattering off to her side somewhere.
"Oh! Oh, God, I'm sorry," whoever it was immediately said. She was breathing hard, and her face was buried in Victoria's splayed curls. The girl shoved herself off from on top of Victoria and shakily stood up, receiving no help from Ashlee, who was busy standing off to the side and clutching her sides as she laughed at them.
Victoria perched up on her elbows and only then realized just how crooked her glasses were and how much her ribs hurt from the impact. The girl standing in front of her was fresh-faced and full of freckles, flashing hazel eyes and a bitten-red bottom lip that was currently tucked between her teeth as she clasped her right wrist in her left hand.
"I am so, so, so sorry," she said again, looking over her shoulder at Ashlee as if she was silently pleading for Ashlee to intervene. Ashlee shook her head and pushed her black visor up until it stood straight up in the middle of her head like a bonnet, and she leaned heavily against Victoria's counter, the polo stretching tightly across her chest as she sucked in deep breaths from laughing so hard.
Not that Victoria was paying any attention to that.
The girl stuck her hand out to help Victoria up, and Victoria took it with a sigh. "Oh - oh, here, I'm sorry. Did I mention I'm sorry? Because I'm sorry," the girl said as she handed Victoria her clipboard and then ran across the lab to duck under the counter the petri dish resided on to fetch Victoria's pen.
"Thanks," Victoria said, looking back and forth between Ashlee and the new girl (she had to be one of the two newest arrivals they'd all been briefed on this morning when Lindsey bribed them into her office with donuts. Victoria had one of the extras with sprinkles tucked back to share with Ashlee later... if Ashlee got a moment, at least. She was always busy, and she probably wouldn't have the time. But just in case...) and waiting for one of them to explain.
Ashlee eventually let out a low "Woooooooooo, Cassadee, Jesus," and yanked the visor off completely to fan her red face with it. Victoria blinked owlishly behind her glasses as she watched and then blinked some more when it registered just how screwy her vision was. And then that her glasses were still just barely hanging on.
The new girl - Cassadee - was watching Victoria intensely, and Victoria's nerves squished all up inside her in a tight little ball. She tore her gaze away with a halfhearted, flighty smile and tore her glasses off to clean them with the corner of her cardigan. When she finally slid them back into place, high on the bridge of her nose, Ashlee was leaning against the counter, arms crossed over her chest and a smirk resting at the corner of her mouth.
"Vicky-T, are you all right? You have to forgive Cassadee, she's new," Ashlee said, actually winking at Victoria, then, and Victoria felt head flood her face as she looked down at her hands, knuckles white as she clutched at her clipboard.
"Hey! This was your fault, you started -"
"I'm fine," Victoria interrupted, lifting her chin a little, proudly, when her voice came out almost completely steady. Ashlee reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind Victoria's ear and grinned.
"That's good," she said, her fingertips brushing against the corner of Victoria's jaw for a moment before she dropped it to her side. Cassadee was watching them shrewdly, and Victoria cleared her throat and tried uselessly to tone down the delighted curve of her mouth.
She knew they were smiling the stupid, dopey kind of smiles that people complain about, and sure enough, Cassadee crossed her arms and bumped the back of her shoe against the side of the other one, sighing. But then Ashlee was making a concerned noise, lines drawn up between her eyebrows, and Victoria couldn't care about the new girl's impatience.
"Did you hit your head? Something sounded like it got banged really well," Ashlee said, reaching up to squeeze Victoria's shoulder.
Months ago, Victoria wouldn't've noticed the innuendo, but she was learning, and she even said before Ashlee could smirk and chime in with it herself, "If I know what you mean?"
"Definitely," Ashlee said with a snicker, and Victoria was sure in that instant that it was scientifically possible for her stomach to drop somewhere down by her feet. Somehow or another, Ashlee had pushed herself off the counter and curled in just the tiniest bit closer to Victoria, still arm's length away but it felt like so much less than that, and Victoria's next quiet inhalation was stuttery with nerves.
She almost didn't notice it when, out of the corner of her eye, Cassadee gave a very obvious wave, arm swinging wildly until they were both giving her their full attention.
"Um, hi, I'm Cassadee," she said, eyebrows raised high up her forehead in suspicion. Victoria's cheeks colored even pinker, and she glanced down at her clipboard and couldn't offhand read half of what she'd written. Damn.
"So, you're one of the new agents?" she asked after a beat, clasping her arms around the clipboard even tighter. "Um. It's nice to meet you, however unorthodox the meeting was." Her words were stilted, like she thought over each one too long before spitting them out, and this new agent was going to think she was an idiot. No scientist was this inept. Thankfully, Cassadee nodded anyway and took in a breath.
"And you're a... secret government scientist?" she asked, taking in Victoria's lab coat and and then, as she craned her neck around, the rest of the room. It was clean and organized to the point of sterility, cool metal counters against two of the walls and a row of sinks lining the back wall. White cabinets above them and the counters and thin shelves underneath those were attached to the walls. It was truthfully Victoria's baby, and she was guilty of staying in the lab more often than her own apartment.
"She's more than that," Ashlee said, throwing her arm around Victoria's shoulders and reeling her in. "Our girl's a genius." Victoria's gaze jerked to Ashlee's hand curling tightly on her bicep, neatly manicured nails shining in the glow of florescent lights. She was pretty sure she'd never blushed redder in her life. Her entire face burned, and the heat traveled down her neck and spread over her chest in waves. She was just grateful that underneath her lab coat and wooly cardigan, she'd worn a turtleneck.
"It's not a big deal. I just figure out formulas and create antidotes to poisons, evaluate known and unknown toxins, the usual," Victoria said, forcing herself to roll her eyes. It really wasn't a big deal. It's what she went to school for, just like Ashlee - and Cassadee, Victoria supposed - went to the academy to be field agents. Victoria's stint at the academy had been short; she'd declined advanced weapon training and hadn't needed the field practice that agents required. She just loved science and loved her job, and there was nothing... genius about any of it. She hugged her clipboard even closer and shrugged out of Ashlee's grip to go sit on her stool, pulling her coat closed around her.
"Sounds impressive to me," Cassadee said.
"It is impressive, and don't let her tell you differently. In the Geoffery Burkes case, Laena would've been dead, and Geoffery would've gotten away with millions and murdered a slew of innocent people if Laena hadn't had Vicky-T's latest development on her. But one dart of that in Geoff's neck had him seeing stars."
Victoria shook her head. "It was just an experiment. Anyone could have developed that. It's really not -"
"Wait. The Geoffery Burkes case as in Geoffery Burkes, founder of Burkes Steel, the company who built the ground floor of the government? Who kept laundering federal money from every construction site he sent his minions to? Who took down a whole site's worth of workers so that he could escape and who is currently serving life without parole? That Geoffery Burkes?" Cassadee asked.
"The one and only, that we know of," Ashlee said with a calculated smile. "We sent Monroe and Geronimo out there to take him down at his last job, but he's quick. Luckily, Laena's quicker. And lucky that we have Vicky-T."
Cassadee bounced on her heels. "That is so cool! I read about that right before I started training. The toxicology report said there were unknown substances in his blood that they couldn't trace, but they were all nerve paralyzers. That's like a one, two, three punch to the system, holy crap."
Victoria laughed uneasily. Oh God, oh God. "It's no big deal. It's my job," she said, shrugging. She was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and should've expected it but just absolutely didn't when Ashlee followed her path across the room and settled her hand on her shoulder and slid it under her hair, rubbing the back of her neck. Victoria felt her eyes sliding closed. Ashlee's touch was so warm and gentle, and it set every nerve she had lying right under her skin on fire, making her shiver. She looked up at Cassadee over the rim of her glasses after a moment, though, and Cassadee had one eyebrow raised, a completely unsurprised (and, confusingly enough, a vaguely amused) expression on her face.
"She's a keeper," Ashlee said affectionately, breaking the silence, and if it was possible, Victoria's face blushed pinker than before.
Ashlee's hip rang, and she pulled out her cell. "Looks like newbie number two has landed." Ashlee went to grab her visor and shoved it on her head, straightening her hair under it. "It's showtime!"
"C'mon, newb," Ashlee said to Cassadee as she passed and headed out the doorway. "See you later, Vicky-T!"
Cassadee started to follow Ashlee out, and Victoria had just rested her elbow on her counter and was sliding her hand over the back of her neck, as if Ashlee's hand was still ghosting there so lightly, when Cassadee popped her head around. Victoria jerked her hand away so fast that it smacked against the counter, sending off a metallic thwang that had her gritting her teeth and Cassadee wrinkling her nose in distaste.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to - anyway. I just wanted to say, um, again, really cool job? But I'll let you get back to work now! It was really great meeting you. Ashlee's awesome, right?"
Before Victoria answered, she was gone, for sure this time, and Victoria sighed. Ashlee made her crazy and had no idea. God, what was she going to do?
***
Two months later
Victoria had to be very careful. There were too many fresh chemicals at work, and one wrong move could spoil the whole thing. She'd have to set up new cultures and wait another month, and if this experiment turned out as she hypothesized, it could be the cure-all her team needed five years ago at least.
She squeezed the dropper, and the thin pink liquid turned into a more pronounced red-gold and fizzed at the top before settling into the flask. She just needed one more milliliter of --
"Victoria! Victoria!" Cassadee called. Her hand slapped on the doorframe as she spun inside, and Victoria pursed her lips. She loved Cassadee, really, but Cassadee was very... loud and abrasive and so much happening all at once. Not that she wasn't used to noise because when Elizabeth, Laena, and Annie got together, there was no used studying anymore, and the firing range was directly under her lab.
When she finally looked up, though, she was startled to see that Cassadee was so pale that even from a distance, Victoria could probably count every freckle licking across the cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Victoria, it's Ashlee, she's -"
"Ashlee's back? But she was supposed to be undercover at least another week," Vicky-T said. Something was very, very wrong, and Victoria's insides were twisting up into knots all of a sudden, and then those knots were knotting themselves into pretzels. She stayed sitting, her hand tightening into a fist around a bunch of her skirt fabric, but she could still feel her nails digging into her skin.
Cassadee opened her mouth to explain further, but she must have heard a noise or something because she held up a finger to Victoria and darted around the corner, disappearing with a sudden silence that was deafening.
"Cassadee? Ashlee?" Victoria called, thinking at the last second to put stoppers and covers over her work before she ran out into the hallway. It was eerie how quiet the building was. Sometimes she let time slip away from her, and she would finally come out of the lab in the middle of the night, but even then there were creaks of the headquarters settling. Now it was just the clicks of her heels on the smooth floor and nothing else.
"Is anyone here?" she called again.
Suddenly, two people blurred by her, one carrying something big and lifeless, and it took her a minute to process that it was Laena with Cassadee quick on her heels. "Victoria! We need your help!" Laena called out from the lab.
By the time she retraced her steps down the hallway and made the turn into her lab, Laena was setting something down on the cot Victoria sometimes tucked into a corner for herself when she was too tired to go home. It got used more often than she wanted to admit.
"What is it?" she asked. Laena and Cassadee combined were blocking whatever or whomever it was on the cot. "Laena? What?"
Laena looked as scared as Cassadee did. She had a loose strand of her dark brown hair stuck to her lipstick, but she didn't seem to notice it, and Cassadee kept darting her head back over Laena's shoulder to what was on the cot.
"Victoria, that serum you were working on, the one you said was almost done... we need it. Now."
She had to be joking. Victoria was convinced she had to be joking because science did not work that way. She still had one last step to go in finishing the experiment, and then there were tests to run, subjects to hire, reports to make, side effects to witness and possibly prevent. By "done," she had meant that she could stop waiting for it to mature. She didn't mean it was almost ready for use.
"We... we can't use that," she finally managed to get out. Laena strode over until she was the only thing Victoria could see, even though she trained her eye on the unpolished buckle of Laena's shoulder holster so she wouldn't have to look her in the face.
"Victoria," Laena said calmly, and Victoria jerked her gaze up. Laena sighed. "You're going to have to use it. We need this. Ashlee needs this, now."
It felt like someone reached in and tore the pretzel of Victoria's insides out of her body in that instant, and she gripped onto the corner of her metal lab table. It was sharp enough to dig into her hand, and the bloom of pain kept her grounded in reality.
"Ashlee?" she parroted. She was surprised her voice was steady because it sounded far away, like someone was behind her and doing the thinking and talking for her. Ashlee was in trouble. Ashlee was possibly hurt? It dawned on her that it was most likely Ashlee who Laena had carried in there and who was on her cot right now. Was she going to be okay? Was she... would she live?
Victoria finally got her legs to work, and she pushed past Laena and across the room, her knees hitting the ground next to Cassadee's feet. Ashlee's hair was sprawled out across her pillow, and her face had a sheen of sickly sweat on it, her eyes sunk in and the skin yellow around them. Her lips were dry and a pale, weak pink. Her shirt was off, and there was a bandage wrapped around her torso with the thickest part just under her right breast. She took a wheezing breath, and her chest rose and fell, and Victoria nearly cried with relief. She was alive, thank God.
She heard Laena walk over behind her, and Cassadee dropped to her knees beside her, one hand resting on Ashlee's knee. She couldn't take her eyes off her, and Victoria felt much the same way. If they looked away, something might change. Ashlee might get worse.
Laena's hand curled around the top of Victoria's, and she squeezed lightly. "Ashlee needs that serum, Victoria. We've stopped the blood flow and bandaged her up enough now, but Lindsey's been instructed not to bring her to a surgeon until the toxin is out of her system. If it's combined with any anesthetic he has to give her, then she could die. You're the only one that can fix this."
Victoria's blood was rushing past her ears, and for a second, it was like Laena's mouth was moving but nothing was coming out, nothing that Victoria could process anyway. Her mind was going a mile a minute.
"Blood flow? She needs... she needs surgery?" she asked finally.
"She was shot," Cassadee said, breaking her own silence, but she sounded very small, scared. Victoria wanted to ache for her. She was just a kid after all. But she couldn't think or feel anything else with Ashlee sprawled out in front of her, her eyes closed and her breath coming in tiny gasps instead of slow and steady like it was supposed to.
"The vital organs were missed. The bullet's not what's killing her. She doesn't have long. It was Carden. You know what he was planning on using. You could save her, Victoria. You have to," Laena said. Victoria finally looked up at her and saw the worry in her eyes, how her lipstick was half bitten off, the huge blood stain on her bra that had to be...
"I could kill her," she said suddenly, jumping up. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and started pacing the room and chewing on her thumbnail. "It hasn't been tested on mice let alone anyone human. I'm not letting Ashlee be the first. I'm not putting her in harm's way."
Laena followed her, standing up and watching her walk. "She's already in harm's way. If you don't try, she's going to die anyway. Lindsey said that we didn't have long, and we've wasted enough time like it is. There's no maybes in this. You either try and save her, or you do nothing, and she's dead."
Victoria's jaw clenched, and she glared at Laena. Laena didn't get it. It wasn't Annie lying on the cot and near death in front of them. If it were, she wouldn't be so calm. It wasn't possible.
A cough came from Ashlee's direction, and Cassadee was over by her head in an instant, pushing her hair back off her face and patting her shoulder. "Ash?" she said, and Victoria ran over, kneeling beside her again.
It must have took enormous strength, but Ashlee opened her eyes halfway and looked around the room before settling on Victoria. The corner of her mouth quirked up in the tiniest of smiles.
"Trust you," she whispered hoarsely, a cough breaking up the two words. Her eyes drifted closed again after another heartbeat's moment, and her breathing went back to the tiny, quiet gasps that had filled the room since she arrived.
Laena's hand fell to Victoria's shoulder, lightly, meant to comfort. Victoria sighed and looked up at her. She had might as well admit it to herself that she couldn't stay here and do nothing while Ashlee was dying in front of her.
"I don't know how fast it'll work," she said slowly, turning each word over in her mind before speaking them. "I haven't worked out the right levels for the stabilizers yet. Carden's still using the black darts, the ones we've seen before, right?" Laena nodded, and Victoria sighed and made her way over to her lab table, uncovering all her tools and pulling the stoppers out of her flasks.
She sat on her stool, and her shoulders were hunched, drawn up around her ears, defensive. After a few seconds, she realized she couldn't work like this, not with eyes at her back waiting on her every move. She spun around, holding her clipboard to her chest like a shield. "Can you go? For awhile. I can't... I need some time to think," she said.
"Of course," Laena said instantly, but Cassadee's brow furrowed, and she shook her head.
"No way," she said. "I'm not leaving Ashlee."
Laena sighed and clamped her hands on Cassadee's arms, picking her up and standing her on her feet almost effortlessly. "Beth is waiting at your apartment, and we'll call you as soon as we know something, but Victoria has to work."
"I won't be in the way!" Cassadee said before looking at Victoria. "Please."
Victoria dropped her gaze to the ground. She needed to polish her shoes, and why was she thinking of that when Ashlee was dying? Cassadee begged her again, and Victoria knew if the roles were reversed, she wouldn't want to leave either, but she had to get this serum just right. Ashlee needed her, and she had to do this perfectly for her.
"Just a few hours, Cassadee, please," she said, almost whispering. Laena kept one hand around Cassadee's arm and led her out. Cassadee kept craning her head to look over her shoulder at Ashlee, watching her until she was out of the doorway and sullenly following Laena down the hall.
Ashlee should've been in a hospital, hooked up and monitored and tucked under the covers, not there on Victoria's cot with a bullet still in her body for God's sake. Vicky-T bit her lip hard and took a steadying breath before she tilted her clipboard down to look at her notes. If this had waited another six months, her serum, were it successful, could be in the hospitals, and none of this would be a problem.
"One milliliter. That's it," Victoria said quietly to herself before jerking around to check in on Ashlee again. She didn't want to disturb her.
The mixture fizzled as the lone drop of blue barreled down inside it and then spread out, giving it a milky green color. According to her notes, if everything went according to plan, that should have been the last ingredient. It seemed to be behaving properly so far, but she had plans to give it at least two weeks and liberal moderation before bringing in the lab mice.
Ashlee, however, did not have that long, and Victoria needed to stop staring at the serum like it would grow legs and walk across the room to Ashlee itself. As she stood up, she was quite literally shaking in her shoes, and she had to force her mind onto autopilot to grip the handle of the cabinet above her with her steadily dwindling supply of syringes and iodine swabs. She really should have called Nate to bring her in some more stock before now, but at least she had enough to do the job.
Ashlee didn't respond when Victoria knelt beside her and set her supplies on their silver tray on the ground in front of her. She didn't open her eyes when Victoria gently took hold of her arm and turned it so the crook of her arm faced out, the veins a darker blue than usual and highlighted against her suddenly too-pale skin. She gasped in another shallow breath, and Victoria steadied her trembling hands long enough to tear open the iodine packet and swab over Ashlee's arm. She'd never asked if Ashlee was allergic. There were so many things she didn't know about Ashlee, and she might never know if what she was about to do went horribly wrong.
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, counting back in her head from ten to one before grabbing a dry swab from her packet and cleaning the iodine from Ashlee's arm. She fiddled with the split across the top of the syringe's wrapping before pulling it apart properly, wasting time picking off the paper a pinch at a time, and after she filled it to the top, she held it in front of her face and stared at the solitary green drop that slid quickly down the needle's shaft and over the plastic, disappearing around a wrinkle in her latex glove.
It took three tries for her to not pull the needle away and back out, only to bring it forth again and hold it just over Ashlee's skin. "I am so sorry," she whispered as she finally slid the needle inside and pressed down until all the serum had disappeared into Ashlee's veins. It was too late to change her mind now.
Fear, unmitigated and unapologetic, crept up her spine. Usually, Victoria had no problems waiting. Her patience could outlast most anyone else's, and she sat with her experiments for hours during long, quiet nights. But now her skin crawled, and she twisted her fingers together and popped her knuckles and rearranged how she was sitting no less than fifteen times.
It hadn't taken long for Laena to drive Cassadee to her apartment and get back, and no one else had left headquarters. They were all waiting, and at first, they popped their heads in and asked if anything had changed, if Victoria needed anything. Greta swore that there was some color in Ashlee's cheeks that hadn't been there earlier, but Victoria wasn't seeing it, and she had a keen eye. The truth of the matter was that, while Ashlee hadn't gotten worse in the slightest, she also hadn't gotten better.
"Yet," Lindsey said when Victoria voiced her thoughts. "Just give her time. You know how strong she is." She draped a blanket around Victoria's shoulders and crossed the corners under her chin. "Don't forget to sleep some eventually," she said.
None of them stayed in the lab long, and Victoria halfway wondered how much of a mess she looked, not leaving Ashlee's side, hardly blinking or breathing in case she missed something. But the rest of her team knew to give her space, and it was nice of them. Later, if there was a later and if Ashlee was okay, she knew she'd feel guilty for pushing them away. Everyone loved Ashlee.
But Victoria was, she was pretty sure, the only one in love with her.
Around four in the morning when the hallway outside her lab had been deadly quiet for hours, Victoria let her head drop until her cheek was resting on Ashlee's thigh, her eyes still trained on Ashlee's face and watching her breathe. She smoothed her thumb over Ashlee's skin, just a tiny bit above the bright blue Band-AID she'd put on her before she trashed the syringe and the rest of her garbage.
Her other hand was curled loosely around Ashlee's, and the blanket Lindsey had given her was soft and so much better than the scratchy, tiny thing she'd found in a closet that she kept spread over her cot. Her eyelids felt so heavy, and it was probably the fact she was exhausted, but Ashlee's breathing seemed to have had fallen into a healthy, steadier rhythm that was lulling Victoria to sleep.
She startled awake to someone whispering her name. What time was it? Fuck. What had she missed? She darted up and glanced at the white watch around her arm. Two hours. Two hours she'd been unconscious. So much could've happened - she had to - she...
No one else was in the room with her. She had almost convinced herself she'd dreamed someone calling her when her eyes finally settled back onto Ashlee. She was awake.
Victoria straightened up onto her knees and leaned over Ashlee, touching her cheek. "Ashlee?" she whispered. It sounded too loud in the room, and her mouth was dry as anything, but she didn't care about any of that when the corner of Ashlee's mouth lifted in a tiny smile.
"Hey," she said after dragging in a deep breath that made her wince. She brought the hand not tangled with Victoria's up to her bandages and frowned, feeling the thickly padded gauze.
"You were shot," Victoria offered, and Ashlee dropped her hand.
"I remember," she said, looking off at the wall for a long moment. "What was that - something stung me in the neck. A dart?" She winced again as she talked, and Victoria bit her lip, her hand brushing Ashlee's hair back off her forehead. She wanted to take care of her, but this wasn't her area. She was like a fish out of water.
"Poison," she said lightly. She kept her features cool. Show no worry, don't let Ashlee know she almost died.
"Oh. Poison," Ashlee repeated. "Fun."
Victoria sat back on her heels and pulled her hand out of Ashlee's, even though she didn't want to. "Do you want... water, or. Are you in pain? I mean, of course you're in pain. I could get you something, whatever you need."
Ashlee turned her head and pressed her cheek against Victoria's pillow and smiled at her. "Have you been taking care of me this whole time?"
"I, um," Victoria began eloquently. She dropped her hands in her lap and picked at the skin around her thumbnail, ducking her head.
"No, don't do that," Ashlee said, stretching her arm out to rest her hand on Victoria's knee. "I wouldn't've wanted anyone else."
Victoria's mind was going a million places at once. Ashlee was probably not thinking clearly, and if she was, she didn't mean anything like that. They were friends, and that was good. Victoria liked having friends.
She snorted. "You'll want someone else to get the bullet out," she said.
Ashlee glanced down, craning her neck to see the little mountain of bandages on her torso. "Yeah, maybe. You don't have a steady hand?"
Something flickered in her eyes, and Victoria was pretty sure Ashlee was teasing her, but she had never been the best at reading people. "I'm no surgeon. Let me give you something, Ash. You need to rest, and being in pain's not gonna help you do that."
"Suppose not," Ashlee said, sighing. She tried shifting minutely and then sucked in a breath and bit her lip until the skin turned white. "Bad idea."
Victoria's eyes didn't leave her. "Little bit. I'll be back in a second, just... keep still until then?"
Ashlee stared straight up at the ceiling, her lips pursed, frustrated. She raised her good arm to her forehead and gave a sloppy salute. "Yes, ma'am."
Victoria bit her lip again and pushed herself up, letting the blanket fall where it wanted. Perhaps she should offer it to Ashlee. She might be cold. The lab wasn't exactly the best for keeping in heat for any given amount of time.
Her fingers were shaking as she dug through the drawers in her supply closet for something that would help Ashlee with the pain. Her brain was going Ashlee, Ashlee, hurry, help her, don't fuck up, hurry, and it wasn't helping her think clearly about strengths and dosages.
She finally wrapped her hand around a tiny orange bottle of liquid and pulled out another syringe from her drawer.
"That is a big needle," Ashlee deadpanned when Victoria crossed over to her. She looked... sallow, and she wasn't smiling; she wasn't like the Ashlee Victoria knew so well.
"It'll make you feel better. Well. The needle won't. The stuff inside the needle will. It's -"
Ashlee rested her hand on Victoria's arm. "Victoria," she said tiredly, and Victoria's breath hitched. "Just give it to me, okay?"
Victoria nodded. Her cheeks burned. She shouldn't feel embarrassed; Ashlee just wanted some relief from the pain, that was all. But in the back of her mind, she couldn't stop berating herself for how stupid she was being.
She prepped the crook of Ashlee's arm again and slid the needle home. Ashlee watched the entire time, and Victoria wasn't sure how she could do it. Watching the needle go in was the worst part. She put on another Band-AID and smoothed her thumb over Ashlee's soft skin. "You should start feeling -"
"High."
"- better in a bit. And probably high."
Ashlee finally smiled again a tiny bit, and she grabbed Victoria's hand, lacing their fingers together.
As she was falling asleep, her other hand resting on her bandages, she laughed quietly and looked up at Victoria. "Already down to just my bra, and we haven't even gone on our first date. Racy," she murmured, her words fuzzy as the medicine hit her. Victoria was thankful when Ashlee's lids fell closed because the blush on her cheeks was probably redder than Ashlee's hair.
***
There were flowers all over Ashlee's room. Admittedly, most of them were from Victoria, but she wasn't embarrassed by that. They were something colorful and pretty for Ashlee to look at, and that would make her feel better faster, and then she could get out of the hospital faster, and Victoria could stop worrying if she was too cold or hungry or bored.
Ashlee was asleep when Victoria eased into her room, not bothering to knock. Her face was turned to the wall, and she was all twisted up, halfway lying on her back with her ankles crossed and turned. She liked sleeping on her left side the most, with her arms around her pillow. Victoria knew that. But the doctors had insisted she stay on her back, that if she didn't, she'd be in a world of pain, and Ashlee had griped about it later with her arms crossed over her chest and four starched pillows helping her halfway sit up. ("And really," Ashlee had said one day, "who irons their pillow cases. I feel like I'm sleeping on a church skirt.")
Victoria lowered herself in the only chair in the room that didn't have plastic-like cushions. She didn't want to wake Ashlee, not yet. She took time to examine the differences a day made. Ashlee's hair was woven into a French braid. Jessica must have stopped by and done that. The IV drip wasn't in Ashlee's arm anymore, just a cotton ball and a piece of murky tape bent in the crook.
Everything looked normal. The base hadn't had a scare like this since Kitty's encounter three summers ago, but Victoria remembered what it was like, the tiny changes in day-to-day hospital life that slowly signaled a patient was on the mend. The rooms started getting brighter, sunnier, bathed in colors instead of stark and white and ominously hinting at death. Victoria was glad; she wanted Ashlee out of here. For the moment, though, she pulled out a book and her glasses, leaning back in her chair and settling in to be there for awhile.
Three and a half chapters later, Victoria was so immersed in her book that she didn't hear the quiet shift of hospital gown under scratchy sheets and didn't look up until Ashlee said, "Hey, stranger," with a pleased but tired half smile on her face.
"Hey there yourself," Victoria said, reaching down to pick up the book she'd dropped when Ashlee spoke. "Good sleep?"
"Not really," Ashlee said, wrinkling her nose. "They took me off the good stuff." She touched the cotton ball on her arm and sighed.
"Are you hurting?" Victoria's eyes darted to the button to the right of Ashlee's head and half-obscured by pillows. She could call a nurse in, get Ashlee taken care of.
"Not a lot. And I've got - ow." Ashlee's teeth gritted together, and she paused mid-reach toward her bedside table, her free hand going to the fresh bandages around her ribs.
"I've got it!" Victoria said in a rush, pushing herself up and winding across the bed as fast as she could. "You've got... ibuprofen." She squinted at the bottle. This wasn't enough for anything.
"Hey, don't knock it," Ashlee said lightly, leaning back. "Ugh, when can I leave? I want to shower."
"Not much longer. If you promise to take it is easy, you could maybe go home tomorrow."
Ashlee's face lit up, and Victoria couldn't stop herself from smiling. It was infectious. "But you have to be careful."
"Hey, trust me, no ninja acrobatics will be had, I promise," Ashlee said, holding up her hands. "I just want the basics - food that's not encased in gelatin, to stop smelling, and my heffalump."
"... your heffalump?"
Ashlee shrugged. "I have to have someone to cuddle with at night." She didn't take her eyes off Victoria for a long moment, and Victoria squirmed. Her cheeks felt hot, and she didn't know why, of all times, she was blushing now. Hospital lighting would show too much.
Victoria set the bottle of ibuprofen down on the bed beside Ashlee's hand and sat back in her chair, leaning forward to rest her arms on the bed and then her head on top of them. Her glasses slid down her nose, and she pushed them up with a sigh.
"So, I was thinking," she began. "Is... Jessica, maybe, going to stay with you? You know, while you recover some more."
Ashlee shook her head. "I wish," she said. "But Jess's gotta get back on tour. She took two weeks off, and now she's got, like, seven dates to make up at the end. I wouldn't ask her to stay here longer." She picked at her blanket, scratching at a place on it so worn that her finger was about to poke through.
Victoria nodded. "Well, um. I mean, I was going to say that if you wanted, you could... I mean, I live alone, so there's plenty of room for you, and I could, um. Help. Is what I'm saying."
It was not her smoothest delivery, not that she had a history of smooth deliveries, really. Or deliveries at all. The knots of her insides were back, and she felt fifteen again, like she was asking Ashlee out on a date. That wasn't what this was. That was one coworker taking care of another in their time of need. That was all.
Ashlee was smiling at her, wide and unguarded. "I don't want to be any trouble..."
Victoria quickly shook her head. "It's really not, um. I wouldn't offer if it was? I mean, what if you fall and... break your hip or something," she blurted out.
Ashlee rolled her eyes. "I got shot, I'm not suddenly eighty." But then she tucked some of Victoria's hair behind her ear and traced over the curve, the pad of her finger brushing over the back of Victoria's earring and then carefully down her neck. "But I'd like that. I'd like to... be with you." Victoria's breath caught, but then Ashlee made a face. "Honestly, you're a better nurse than the people they've got here." They both laughed, but Victoria wished silently that none of it had been a joke.
"So, any news from HQ?" Ashlee asked. She had a closed-off room in a wing where the entire far half of it belonged to her, but they still had to be careful when they talked about work. Only a few people at the hospital knew what her profession was; no one knew what Victoria did, and they never knew who might be lurking.
Victoria glanced around quickly. The plants Ashlee had received, the ones not from Victoria at least, had been swiped and cleared of all bugging devices before entering the room, so that much was good. "Well," she began. "Your... shift that you'd been planning on working had to be taken over by someone else. Cassadee and Beth worked the hours together."
Ashlee nodded. "They're new... But Cassadee's good. I've seen her. Beth's not bad either, a little hotheaded."
"Yeah," Victoria said, stretching out the vowels. "A little too hotheaded."
"Did something happen?" Ashlee sat up a little more and winced, and Victoria raised up enough to put her hand on Ashlee's shoulder, keep her calm. That was what she was here for.
"They both... survived the shift," she said. She hated talking in metaphor. "Zebra... Cat? was there. He didn't make it out." It was almost too ridiculous, and it wasn't as if Ashlee needed the stress anyway. She should have waited until they were back at the base, and then she could tell Ashlee about Cassadee and Beth taking down Zack Cumen properly without calling him... Zebra Cat.
Ashlee was beaming cautiously, though. "You're fucking kidding me, did they really -"
Victoria nodded. Ashlee grinned and did a mini fist pump in the air. "I knew they were going be great."
"Well... it's possible Beth, um... slipped on grease - this is ridiculous." Victoria sat up and grabbed a notepad out of her purse and a pen and wrote down the rest of the story, complete with what room number Beth was in in the same hospital. Ashlee's smile melted down a little further and a little further until she was frowning, her features long and worried.
"I don't like this. Did Lindsey say what she was going to do?"
"She's unsure. Cassadee is on probation, for now, from the field anyway," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. "She doesn't think she's going to let Beth come back, though."
Ashlee nodded. "I'm not surprised. It'd be dangerous. Has anyone -"
"No one's told Cassadee yet. She's... she took it hard, so I think Lindsey's going to wait."
"I can imagine. God, remember Miguel?" Ashlee shook her head, looking off for a second, and Victoria impulsively grabbed her hand, grounding her to the present. Ashlee had looked haunted for weeks, making the motions of being at work but not actually being there with them after she'd taken out Miguel. He had been Ashlee's first kill, and it had stuck with her. Victoria had hated it for her then, and she didn't want Ashlee to relive it now.
Ashlee turned her hand over under Victoria's and loosely laced their fingers together, glancing at their hands. "She'll be okay, though. She has all of us."
"Yeah." Victoria was quiet for a minute. "You know, Cassadee said something when Lindsey was... admonishing her after she got back."
Ashlee rolled her eyes. "Lindsey should've waited."
"Yeah, probably, but she asked Cassadee why they'd been so reckless, and Cassadee said that she would do anything for Beth. They're like sisters, you know? Best friends, and Cassadee just follows her. So of course she'd jump in with guns a-blazing for her. And, well." Victoria stared intently at the sheets, hard enough that she thought if she could see better, she might would spend her time counting every thread instead of saying anything else.
"Well, I just wanted to say... I mean, I know we're not partners or anything, me and you, I mean, but I'd follow you into gunfire. Anytime." She cleared her throat. "Always."
Her face was on fire, and she waited for Ashlee to say anything at all, but she wasn't expecting to hear her laugh. It was fond, though, quiet, like a secret shared between the two of them, and Victoria glanced up at her.
"Vicky-T, you hate guns," Ashlee said.
"I know, but -"
"You won't even complete the mandated shooting range assessment."
"Yeah, but still." Victoria sighed in exasperation, and right then, she wondered why she was in love with Ashlee. Ashlee was a terrible person - logical, but terrible.
Ashlee squeezed her hand before twisting it away carefully and reaching up to push Victoria's glasses up her nose. "It's okay, though." She grinned wider. "I love you for your brain." Her hand settled on Victoria's cheek, and it was hospital-cool for a second before warming up next to her skin. Victoria was on sensory overload. Ashlee was close, and Victoria steadfastly did not let herself glance down at Ashlee's mouth - not more than once anyway. Well, twice. She swallowed hard.
"I. You - what?" If she'd been able to think of anything articulate to say, her words would've been caught in her throat. She met Ashlee's eyes. Surely, she didn't mean -
"Are you gonna keep staring, or are you gonna kiss me already?"
Victoria could've choked. "Wait, you mean-"
"Oh my God, come here," Ashlee said affectionately, and she couldn't really pull Victoria close like she probably wanted to, not without hurting herself, so it was good that Victoria mindlessly obeyed, coming closer and tilting her head to press her mouth firmly against Ashlee's.
It was dry and warm, and Victoria's heart was beating a mile a minute in her chest. She could almost feel it against Ashlee's bottom lip. When they parted, Victoria's glasses were a little fogged, and Ashlee noticed and snickered under her breath before taking hold of Victoria's hands again.
"I was thinking maybe when I get out of this joint and stop being depressingly immobile that maybe we could go do something, on a date," she said.
"It's... it's a sound hypothesis," Victoria said, smiling when Ashlee laughed again. She had no idea when she woke up that something this grandiose would happen in her life; it wasn't exactly in her realm of expectations. It was Ashlee after all. But it was amazing, and, mostly, she regretted forgetting, in her haste, to floss.
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Date: 2011-12-24 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-24 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-24 04:47 pm (UTC)Writer, thank you SO, SO much for this fic! I never thought I'd get a femslash fic, let alone a bandom ladies being awesome fic, and it is everything I could have hoped for! Nerdy Victoria (which, hello, hottest thing ever that I'd never previously considered!) being in love! Kickass Ashlee kicking ass and flirting outright with Vicky-T! Cassadee being the newbie! OH MAN I LOVE ALL THE THINGS.
Seriously, I just adore this. The flirting is absolutely adorable, the h/c is just hurty enough and the comfort is wonderful. I am just...giddy, honestly, because you've given me not only this awesome story, but this whole universe that I can daydream about. A whole agency full of awesome ladies being awesome! I love love love that you put in all these background characters like Lindsey and Annie and everyone so that it's not just about these two women who are successful in their fields, but a whole bunch of women who are successful in their fields.
I also love that you managed to create these very strong connections between the characters. It's obvious without backstory that Vicky-T and Ashlee have this very strong friendship that's becoming (or has already become but neither of them has moved on it) more. Cassadee's loyalty to Ashlee is possibly one of my very favorite parts of this fic. I would read so many stories just about them out in the field, Cassadee learning the ropes and Ashlee looking out for her.
I will admit right now that the mention of Carden made me grin like a loon at my computer. :DDDDDDDDD
Thank you, writer, thank you so very, very much for writing this for me. I could gush forever, but I will just sum up by saying I really, really love this and I'm so grateful that you wrote it! ♥ ♥ ♥
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Date: 2012-01-07 04:17 am (UTC)Ugh yes, I'm so glad you liked it. YAY :DDD To no surprise, we like SO MANY of the same fic tropes, so I was super stoked to write this! ♥♥♥♥
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Date: 2011-12-24 06:00 pm (UTC)Just lovely.
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Date: 2012-01-07 04:13 am (UTC)