FIC: Plain Sight [The Dresden Files]
Oct. 23rd, 2008 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darktrent182TITLE: Plain Sight
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 5,478
RATING: PG.
WARNINGS: Minor spoilers from the TV series and the books. Spoilers especially for Hair of the Dog.
SUMMARY: Harry goes on a date.
PRAISE BE:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shiplizard, gehayi, and beachkid continue to be the beta-readers who make these fics even better than they were before. Thank you for dialogue help, direction-pointing, and the title!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is an installment in the Forged series.
***
Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed. If you're a private investigator like me, however, you get used to another day of making enough to scrape by and not being able to sleep until it's almost not worth it.
The past couple of days had been something of an exception, though. Over the course of three days, Bob's skull had been stolen from me, Bob had been returned to mortality, and we were going to be facing down the High Council on Monday in order to negotiate for Bob's right to mortality. Bob had been vague on how he was going to argue his case in front of the Council, but if watching him in action over the past couple of days had been any indication, Bob was going to give the Council a run for its money.
Another part of the exception to my morning routine was that I'd accidentally started eating breakfast regularly. I'd originally made pancakes yesterday in order to share the wonder that is nirvana with syrup, but this morning, when I had made scrambled eggs for him, he shoveled half of the mountain of egg onto a second plate and pointedly deposited it in front of me.
Hrothbert of Bainbridge, deadly necromancer with 100% more mothering instinct.
I was chewing a mouthful of slightly burned scrambled eggs when Bob said, "You were standing in a darkling wood, surrounded by fireflies."
I blinked. At first, I didn't get it. I'm not much of a morning person, so it took a second for the statement to sink in, but when it did, I finished chewing and swallowed. "Bob--"
He shot me an irritated glance, unafraid to meet my eyes now that we'd soulgazed. "I'm in the middle of describing what I saw, Harry. You should eat. Stars know you need it."
I shook my head. "I don't want to hear it, Bob. I don't want to talk about it."
Bob shot me a confused look. "Whyever not? I'm rather curious to know what you saw."
"Well, I'm not," I said shortly. He looked like he was about to ask me why, but I beat him to the punch. "And no, I don't want to talk about why."
Bob glared at me briefly before an idea struck him. "All right, then, how about you tell me what you saw?" He leaned forward in his chair, looking curious.
I frowned at him. "Why?"
He rolled his eyes. "Harry, you are a thoroughly maddening man. I want to know. Considering the last person to soulgaze with me saw me when I... wasn't at my best, I'm rather curious to see what's changed since then."
"At your...?" As I spoke, I got a sudden mental image of Bob, in the height of his necromantic powers, dragging one of his victims off to be drained of their life force so that he could resurrect Winifred.
I didn't want to think of what that poor person saw when they looked at Bob's soul just then.
Bob looked at me steadily. "Please. Tell me what you saw."
I started to tell him, but then the phone rang. I got up from the table and answered it. "Dresden."
"Harry?" A feminine voice asked. It took me a second to place it. "It's Heather Bram."
"Heather?" I blinked. "Hey, how's it going?" I asked, smiling a little. I'd met Heather on one of the cases I'd worked with the Chicago PD last year. Her roommate had been killed by a crazy FBI agent-turned-werewolf who'd taken drastic measures to try to get rid of her curse. By the end of it, the agent had been sent to a rubber room while Heather had been left as a brand-new werewolf, still trying to figure out how to control herself. The last I'd heard from her, she'd moved to somewhere in Wisconsin.
"Pretty good, actually," Heather said, a smile in her voice. "I'm actually in town for a business trip, and I thought I'd look you up, see how you were doing. Are you free for lunch?"
I glanced at Bob, who was giving me a curious look. I shook my head, and then replied, "Sure, I'm free." We talked for a bit about the where and when. I wrote down the address and time to meet her, and when I hung up the phone, Bob's eyes were narrow.
"Who was that?" he asked mildly, but I could tell that he wasn't pleased.
"Heather Bram," I replied, sticking the slip of paper under a magnet on the fridge. "You remember her, don't you?"
"The redheaded werewolf you helped last year?" he asked. "I presume you two have plans for lunch?"
"Yeah." I nodded, picking up my plate and putting it in the sink. When I didn't get a request to share all of the juicy details, I glanced at Bob. He was staring at me, looking none too pleased. "What?"
"Harry, do you really think this is wise?" he asked.
"Bob, it's just lunch," I said defensively. "It's not like I'm asking her out on a date."
"Oh, really?" Bob asked, pretending to sound surprised. "And here I sat thinking that you never smile like that when you're speaking with Lieutenant Murphy."
I blinked, surprised by the sharpness in his voice. "Murphy usually calls when she has a corpse that she needs me to investigate. Lunch plans usually don't come up, and call me crazy, but I actually like the thought of food."
"Hopefully, you won't turn out to be dessert," he said snidely.
"Okay, now hang on a sec," I said. "I get exactly one phone call and an offer to go out to lunch, and you're jumping on my case? What gives?"
Bob picked up his plate of half-eaten eggs and dumped the rest of it in the trash before rinsing the plate. "I have a serious problem with you wandering off alone with someone who was turned into a werewolf against her will only a year ago."
I rolled my eyes. "Bob, you were there when she showed up on my doorstep. Hell's bells, even when she wanted to rip my throat out, she was fighting against it."
"Just because she initially fought against her instincts doesn't mean that she hasn't learned to embrace them," Bob said. He picked up the dish rag and started washing the dishes one by one, setting them in the dish strainer to dry.
"It's lunch, Bob," I said, getting exasperated. "Even if she wanted to kill me now, we'd be out in public and right in the middle of a crowd of people. I'm guessing she'd cause a pretty big scene if she managed to go furry and turn me into cottage cheese."
Blue-green eyes narrowed at me. "I'll thank you not to take this so lightly," he nearly snapped, drying his hands on a dish towel.
I stared at him, at a loss to figure out why he was acting like this. And then it hit me. "You're jealous."
Bob stared at me like I'd grown another head. "What?"
I could feel myself smirking. "I'm going out to lunch with a woman, and you're jealous." I shrugged. "You can go out, y'know. It's not like I'm keeping you here under lock and key." I could feel a twinge in my chest as I said it, but I told myself it was better this way. If Bob started going out at night instead of staying here, so close and yet so far away, it'd be easier to get over not being able to have him the way I wanted.
"Harry, that's not it," Bob began.
Something occurred to me. "Dammit," I cursed, accidentally cutting him off.
Bob blinked. "What?"
"My Jeep's still where I left it where we went into the sewers," I muttered. "Great." I glanced at the clock. "I better go now to make sure it's not booted." I glanced back at Bob. "We'll finish this later." I swiped my hoody from where I usually kept it laced between two of the spokes on my banister and slipped it on. I patted the pockets until I found the keys, and then headed for the back door. "Later!"
Bob started to say something, but I firmly closed the door behind me and went to get my Jeep.
***
It took me about half-an-hour to get to my Jeep, and as I suspected, my Jeep was booted. Again. A phone call to Murphy didn't pan out, as she told me to pay the tickets. Growling and kicking the stupid thing, I cursed my luck with the city of Chicago and ran a hand through my hair, wondering if I'd have enough money to get it unbooted, or even enough for cab fare home.
With a sigh, I shoved my hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders against a stiff wind that picked just that moment to rise up and send a shiver down my spine. Fall had descended on Chicago hard and fast this year, and with the skyscrapers, the streets of Chicago had turned into canyons of steel and concrete, wind tunnels that channeled the roaring winds into loud things that whistled in my ears.
I walked for a little bit, trying to get my bearings until I happened on a small mom-and-pop grocery store, the words painted on the windows bright and colorful. Fresh produce on sale.
I blinked, and stared at the words as if they'd been written in Greek.
Given my typically frayed and knotted shoestring of a budget on any given day, my fridge wasn't stocked with the healthiest foods in the world. Considering that I'm a wizard, and my average life expectancy is about five or six times longer than your average person's, I didn't necessarily have to worry about natural causes anytime soon. Butters had a theory that a wizard's body tended to regenerate better than most, but I wasn't sure if that had been it, at least not entirely. Wizards are in touch with the living forces of creation itself. Magic could be used to destroy, but it could also be used to create. Hell's bells, it came from the essence of life itself. It would make sense if wizards lived longer just by the fact that they had a better understanding of the natural forces that most people weren't even aware of.
Whatever it was, it meant that I'd never had to worry about developing diabetes, or anything else related to not eating your fruits and veggies. Since there was no guarantee I would be home on any given night, I tended to stock things that were non-perishable. The fact that my milk hadn't gained sentience and rallied the Coke in the fridge to overthrow me was a victory for my side.
And yet, Bob had never had the luxury of fresh produce. I mean, sure he would've eaten apples at some point, since apple trees were native to England, but would he have been able to eat fresh oranges?
The more I stood outside, staring at the grocery store windows as if they were a shrine, the more possibilities started popping up. Hell's bells, chocolate hadn't even been around when Bob was alive, at least not the way it was made nowadays. Granted, I didn't have a solid timeline for what he'd experienced before his death, but "almost nine hundred years" was a good ballpark to start from.
I ducked inside, and started looking around, preparing a mental list of all the things I wanted to see Bob try out for himself.
***
"I lived in Chicago for six years," Heather said as she glanced around, "and I never knew this place existed."
We had just walked into McAnally's, a pub I like to go to which is just a few blocks from my place. I go there when I have the cash, or when I want to unwind and running hasn't helped.
I'm sure I've waxed poetic about McAnally's before, but it bears repeating. It's a quiet place with a small flight of stairs leading down to the hardwood floor, thirteen tables placed around the room, and a bar along one wall. There's enough ceiling fans to make tall people like me walk cautiously, and there are thirteen columns with carvings of fairy tales from the Old World stand in places throughout the room, making walking an adventure. Mac, the pub's owner, brews his own ale, and cooks the food on a wood-burning stove. For years, it's been a haven for the fringe types.
One reason for that was the fact that, along with the feeling of returning home that you felt as soon as you walked in, the pub's layout helped to diffuse and disrupt magical energies that surrounded practitioners. While it wouldn't stop a targeted spell entirely, I'd never wanted to test the theory of just how well magic would work inside.
"I'm not surprised," I said, leading the way to an empty table. "I didn't find out about it for a year when I first moved here."
For a Saturday afternoon, the place was pretty empty. There were two guys in the corner playing a chess game, the air around them sweet-smelling from their pipe smoke. Some kids sat at one of the tables, and one pimple-faced kid gave Heather an appreciative once-over before turning back to the conversation.
Heather glanced around, and then frowned. "There's no wait staff?"
I shook my head, smiling a little. "If you want to eat here, you get up and get your own food." When I realized how that sounded, I added, "Which means I'll go ahead and pick it up. The steak sandwiches here are pretty good, and you should try the ale." I walked around the table and pulled her chair out for her.
Heather sat down, looking amused. "Sounds good to me. How much does it run?"
"Oh, no, you don't," I said with a smile. "I'm paying."
She arched a dark red eyebrow. "Even if I was the one to suggest a lunch date?"
I nodded. "I like being chivalrous. Sue me."
Heather blinked, and then let out a very nice laugh that made dimples appear. They were cute. "I see. But what if I had another reason for paying my way?"
"Which is?" I asked, my eyebrows rising.
She glanced around, looking self-conscious before she leaned in, her forearms resting on the table. "If I'm paying, then I'm reminding myself that you're my friend, not an entree."
I nodded. "I see what you mean." When she'd been turned into a werewolf, the first couple of hours had been... intense. In my line of work, I've gotten used to people threatening to rip my throat out. Heather had been the first to be scared that she would.
And that had been the first time I'd been scared someone would make good on it.
I tried to convince her to let me pay, but she insisted. I told her how much it ran, and when I took the money from her, I felt like crap. Call me a chauvinist, but I like treating women like ladies. I like pulling chairs out for them, opening doors, paying for shared meals. When I'd opened her car door for her, she'd shot me a surprised look, but now I think she was just amused. Maybe it was the gentlemanly charm. Whatever it was, I'd gotten points for it in her book, and I didn't mind that.
I headed over to Mac, ordered for Heather and myself, and then sat back down across from Heather. "So, how've things been with you? You haven't called needing a refill lately."
Heather smiled a little, probably at the wording, but she nodded. "I've been all right. I found a supplier in Madison who's pretty cheap. I can put you in touch with him, if you'd like?"
I shook my head. "It's all right. The postage would get expensive, and it's almost a three hour drive up there. But, thanks." I rested my forearms on the table, unconsciously mirroring her pose. "Is that where you live now?"
Heather nodded. "Yeah, I was able to get a job up there with the alumni association at the University of Wisconsin. It's pretty good, but I miss Chicago."
I nodded sympathetically. "I can't imagine ever moving away. Do you like it up there?"
"It's all right," she said, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "A bit colder than I'm used to, and it's not on the lake, but it's nice there. Quieter."
I could hear what she wasn't saying. Quieter meant there were fewer people she could hurt if she lost control and transformed. The recipe I'd given her was supposed to help somewhat, but Bob had told me that there hadn't been a way to reverse what had been done to her permanently. When I'd told her, she'd taken the news better than I'd expected.
"At least you're not in the middle of nowhere, right?" I offered. She'd mentioned it as a possibility before she headed out of Chicago, to live out in the middle of nowhere so that even if she did transform during the full moon, there'd be less of a chance she'd hurt anybody.
Heather smiled, looking pretty and wistful. "There is that, yeah. I tried renting a cabin, but pretty soon, the silence got to be too much, y'know?" She laughed a little. "I actually had trouble going to sleep without hearing the traffic outside my window."
"I've heard that the crickets can make up for it." I smiled.
She snorted, a smile still tugging at her pale lips. "I had an invasion the first couple of months I was up there. I was tempted to get a lizard to deal with them, but I decided against it. I'm pretty bad with pets."
"A lizard?" I asked, surprised.
"Well," she said with a shrug, "cats don't really do pest control, and dogs just kind of stare at the bugs while they crawl around the house. A friend of mine had a gecko that she had while she was living in Georgia, and it dealt with the roaches, so I figured some kind of lizard would help with the crickets."
"Huh," I said. "I figured what with you being..." I paused, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say it without tipping off the kids at the table nearby.
"More than what I was when I was still here," Heather supplied.
I nodded my thanks. "Exactly. I figured you wouldn't have that much of a problem with bugs."
Heather shook her head. "No, they still invade the house. The only thing that's really changed is that strays don't come near me."
"That makes sense," I said. Animals were more in tune with their instincts than humans were, and werewolves were pretty much at the top of the food chain, along with vampires and some creatures from the Nevernever. Dogs and cats would know that Heather was a bigger, nastier predator than your average person, and as a result, they'd shy away from her.
There was an awkward pause, and then the conversation turned to lighter topics. She'd asked how my business was going, I asked about her job, that kind of thing. Since I didn't have a lot of experience about what you were supposed to talk about during a date (I'd had a date or two with Susan, but she was usually trying to get information out of me about a case I was working), I just let Heather talk about whatever she liked. Surprisingly enough, she was something of a baseball enthusiast, and we ended up talking about the Cubs' chances of getting to the play-offs. In between topics, I got our lunch from the bar, and she set into it with gusto. By the end of lunch, we were sated and happy.
After lunch was finished, I insisted on paying my share of the tab, so we ended up going dutch. Considering I hadn't had enough to cover both of us, it was pragmatic but I still felt lousy. I like being a gentleman, but sometimes when chivalry and reality meet, chivalry doesn't always win. When she saw that I didn't have my Jeep, I ended up telling her about how it had gotten booted, and pretty soon, she was giving me a lift home in a nice-looking Trans Am. I invited her to come inside, but she begged off, saying that she had to get back to her hotel for an evening meeting. She did ask if I was free for lunch tomorrow, so I counted that as a win.
I headed inside as Heather pulled away, pulling off my hoody and called, "Bob?"
When I didn't get an answer, I frowned, setting the bag of groceries I'd gotten earlier down on a kitchen counter. Heather had asked about the bag, and I told her it was secret ingredients. She'd laughed, and let the matter drop. Sure, I could've told her it was groceries, but that was kind of a weird thing to bring on a date.
Have I mentioned that I'm not that experienced with women?
I finally found Bob in the lab after a few minutes of searching. He was standing over the copper ring that I'd nailed into the floor, his eyes narrowed as he glared at it. I glanced down curiously, only to find a flickering image of Heather driving through Chicago traffic. As I watched, she tried her radio (it had burst into white noise when she was driving me home), and started to bob her head in time with the music, a smile on her lips.
Bob waved a dismissive hand, like slapping at a persistent mosquito, and the image winked out, revealing the bare concrete floor again.
I stopped in my tracks. "Bob?"
Bob glared at the floor for a minute longer before looking up at me. "Yes, Harry?"
"What were you doing just now?" I asked in a slow, even tone. I had already seen the scrying window Bob had opened, and it had very obviously been centered on Heather, or at least her car.
I don't like being spied on, especially not by a friend who might've thought he was acting in my best interests.
Bob blinked. "Testing out my scrying abilities. It's been a while since I've used them."
"On Heather?" I growled.
Bob snorted. Behind him on the shelf, one of the jars wobbled dangerously before righting itself. "I was a bit less concerned with her welfare during your 'date' than yours." He said the word as if it had left a bad taste in his mouth. "She is still a werewolf, full moon or no."
I glared at him and folded my arms across my chest in order to better resist the urge to smack him. "And when exactly did I give you permission to spy on me?" I asked, trying to sound mild. The unimpressed look on Bob's face showed how effective that had been.
"When you showed all of the survival instinct of a lemming when confronted with a very tall, very steep cliff," Bob said, much more mildly than I'd managed. He turned back to the table, where it looked like he'd started brewing a potion. I couldn't tell what was in it, except that the liquid was a dark red color. "And that was years ago. The only reason I haven't done it sooner is, well, I was dead at the time." He shrugged as if to show it was no big deal.
I remember growling, because one moment, I was blocking the door to the hallway, and the next, I had grabbed Bob's shoulder and had shoved him into a solid oak cabinet door. Inside of it, I could hear bottles rattling. "I don't give a damn what you think about me and my survival instinct, but if you think you can scry me and not get your ass kicked, you're sadly mistaken," I snarled at him.
For the first time during the entire conversation, Bob looked genuinely surprised. At this close a range, I could see how the blue and green swirled together in his eyes, smell the instant coffee on his breath that he must've had before I'd gotten back, smell his sweat through his borrowed T-shirt. If I hadn't been so pissed off at him, I would've had the guilty pleasure of drinking it all in for exactly two seconds before my shame grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me off to a corner so that it could remind me that ogling someone who Isn't Interested is rude.
As it was, I just wanted to beat him senseless for invading my privacy.
"Now, really, Harry," Bob said, still maddeningly calm, "You know as well as I that even in social situations, creatures new to their power have trouble controlling themselves. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself if you and she got onto a topic she felt passionately about."
"It was a date with a very nice woman who happens to like me," I gritted out. I almost didn't recognize my own voice because of how hoarse it sounded. "Not a werewolf attack."
Bob stared at me for a second before sighing very gently. I could feel the warm puff of air against my skin. "She isn't the only person in the world who 'likes' you, Harry," he whispered.
And then he kissed me.
It wasn't complicated as kisses went. His lips pressed against mine, smooth skin meeting chapped. He held it for a moment, not asking for anything more, and then it ended just as quickly as it had begun.
He pulled back and looked at me.
I stared at him.
After a long silence stretched between us, he cocked a grey eyebrow. "Well?"
I blinked. "You just kissed me."
At this close a range, I could see the tiniest of smiles tugging at Bob's lips. "I did."
"You just..." My brain must have short-circuited because the only thing I could think of to say was to repeat myself. Hell's bells, even Bob's aura felt smug.
Maybe that's what snapped me out of it. Here I was, having slammed Bob against a cabinet in my lab, and he just kisses me. The man who, after I'd finally confessed the deepest secret I'd been holding for the past twenty years, had told me that he didn't feel the same way about me. He'd said it with a straight face, and after that, I'd clammed up and just told myself that it was typical, that I wasn't cut out for love. It was better that way.
Bob had just kissed me, and now he was two inches away from me, and he was smug about it.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked, my voice now a low, dangerous whisper.
If Bob had been expecting a reaction out of me, that one definitely hadn't been it. "Harry?"
"You..." I could feel my anger boiling up inside of me, quickly approaching fury. "You manipulative, possessive..."
Behind me, I could hear jars shattering with tiny little explosions of glass and ingredients.
"Arrogant asshole!" I finished, slamming the palm of my hand into the cabinet door a few inches from Bob's left ear. The pain shot through my arm, the fire feeding into my anger. It was going to hurt like hell in a few hours when I wasn't pissed off anymore, but at that point, I really didn't care.
Bob jumped at the sound, the smugness replaced with surprised worry. "Harry, what--"
"You said you weren't interested," I snapped. "I laid out all the cards on the fucking table, and you didn't love me that way. Do you even know what that felt like? Huh? You were so fucking concerned I was falling to the Dark Side, and you weren't going to be satisfied until you knew."
There was the shame, the regret I wanted to see in his eyes. Only, instead of feeling like the winner, I just wanted to hurt him more. "Harry, please, you must understand." He drew himself up as best he could against the cabinet. "I was trying to protect you."
I let out a harsh laugh at that. "Protect me? From what? Your lecherous side? In case you hadn't noticed, it's a little late for that."
Blue-green eyes narrowed. "Wrong," he snapped. "I was protecting you from yourself. What do you think would have happened had I admitted the truth? You would have declared your undying love for me, and then you would have immediately set to work on how to return me to mortality."
"So what if I would have?" I demanded. "It should've been my choice to make."
"How many times have you returned home bloodied and exhausted?" Bob shot back. "How many times have you still had to worry about the rent after you damn well saved the world? All because of the choices you've made." I saw the muscles in his jaw tense. "How many times have I had to stand here and do nothing while you risk your life for people you don't even know?"
"At least they were my choices," I snarled.
"Your choices have driven you into the ground more than once, Harry," Bob said, his voice breaking a little. "You would have spent so long trying to bring me back to life that you would have forgotten to live your own life. I know you. And I also know that I traveled that path before, and it led to disaster and ruin."
"Who says that I was going to make your mistakes?" I demanded. "I wouldn't have been dragging you back from the other side. You were right here."
"Neither of us knew what it would take until Mai stole my skull from you," Bob shouted. "And I'm the one who was cursed to begin with!"
"I would've figured it out," I growled. "We would have figured it out together."
"No, we wouldn't have," Bob said, his uneven teeth bared. "Because I would have refused to help you. And I refuse to see you chain your future to a ghost."
"What's changed?" I asked. "You get killed now, and you go right back to your curse."
"I have a sense of self-preservation," Bob said stiffly. "And I'm capable of protecting you now. I'm capable of much more..." He reached up to touch my cheek, but I grabbed his hand in a crushing grip.
"Funny," I sneered. "You were protecting me when you lied to me."
"I didn't actually tell you--" Bob managed, pain in his voice.
"Of course not," I snapped. "You're worse than the goddamn Sidhe, Bob. All you had to do was let me rip myself apart in front of you, and you could just nod and look sad. I bet it was really simple for you."
Bob twisted his wrist, and suddenly his fingers weren't crushed in mine anymore. "Do you think I enjoyed that?"
"I don't know, Bob, did you?" I asked sharply. "Because you didn't even bother correcting me as soon as you were alive again. Hell's bells, you didn't even mention it until after I go out on a date with the first woman who's actually shown an interest since Susan."
"In case you hadn't noticed," Bob sneered, "we've been rather busy as of late, or are you forgetting the Council meeting scheduled for Monday?"
"It wouldn't have taken that long to say, 'Harry? I love you, I'm sorry I lied to you before, and I hope that you'll find it in your heart to forgive me'," I said.
Despite the lack of space between us, Bob managed to fold his arms over his chest. "That assumes two things. First, that I would even say all of that in the first place, because despite the way this conversation has gone, I'm not sorry for protecting you from yourself. And secondly, I did try to tell you, but you were in such a hurry to get to your 'date' that you weren't listening to me."
"If it was really that important, why didn't you come after me?" I asked.
Bob arched an eyebrow at me. "Harry, you weren't listening to me," he said with exaggerated patience. "I daresay that you aren't listening now."
"Oh, now I'm not listening?" I asked. "Fine. Here's me, not listening."
I turned away from him and headed for the door.
"Harry--"
I went out into the hallway and shut the door behind me.
END
***
This way to the prequel, Seeing Things.
This way to the sequel, Fair Trial.
And if you're just plain lost, here's the table of contents.
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 5,478
RATING: PG.
WARNINGS: Minor spoilers from the TV series and the books. Spoilers especially for Hair of the Dog.
SUMMARY: Harry goes on a date.
PRAISE BE:
shiplizard, gehayi, and beachkid continue to be the beta-readers who make these fics even better than they were before. Thank you for dialogue help, direction-pointing, and the title!AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is an installment in the Forged series.
***
Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed. If you're a private investigator like me, however, you get used to another day of making enough to scrape by and not being able to sleep until it's almost not worth it.
The past couple of days had been something of an exception, though. Over the course of three days, Bob's skull had been stolen from me, Bob had been returned to mortality, and we were going to be facing down the High Council on Monday in order to negotiate for Bob's right to mortality. Bob had been vague on how he was going to argue his case in front of the Council, but if watching him in action over the past couple of days had been any indication, Bob was going to give the Council a run for its money.
Another part of the exception to my morning routine was that I'd accidentally started eating breakfast regularly. I'd originally made pancakes yesterday in order to share the wonder that is nirvana with syrup, but this morning, when I had made scrambled eggs for him, he shoveled half of the mountain of egg onto a second plate and pointedly deposited it in front of me.
Hrothbert of Bainbridge, deadly necromancer with 100% more mothering instinct.
I was chewing a mouthful of slightly burned scrambled eggs when Bob said, "You were standing in a darkling wood, surrounded by fireflies."
I blinked. At first, I didn't get it. I'm not much of a morning person, so it took a second for the statement to sink in, but when it did, I finished chewing and swallowed. "Bob--"
He shot me an irritated glance, unafraid to meet my eyes now that we'd soulgazed. "I'm in the middle of describing what I saw, Harry. You should eat. Stars know you need it."
I shook my head. "I don't want to hear it, Bob. I don't want to talk about it."
Bob shot me a confused look. "Whyever not? I'm rather curious to know what you saw."
"Well, I'm not," I said shortly. He looked like he was about to ask me why, but I beat him to the punch. "And no, I don't want to talk about why."
Bob glared at me briefly before an idea struck him. "All right, then, how about you tell me what you saw?" He leaned forward in his chair, looking curious.
I frowned at him. "Why?"
He rolled his eyes. "Harry, you are a thoroughly maddening man. I want to know. Considering the last person to soulgaze with me saw me when I... wasn't at my best, I'm rather curious to see what's changed since then."
"At your...?" As I spoke, I got a sudden mental image of Bob, in the height of his necromantic powers, dragging one of his victims off to be drained of their life force so that he could resurrect Winifred.
I didn't want to think of what that poor person saw when they looked at Bob's soul just then.
Bob looked at me steadily. "Please. Tell me what you saw."
I started to tell him, but then the phone rang. I got up from the table and answered it. "Dresden."
"Harry?" A feminine voice asked. It took me a second to place it. "It's Heather Bram."
"Heather?" I blinked. "Hey, how's it going?" I asked, smiling a little. I'd met Heather on one of the cases I'd worked with the Chicago PD last year. Her roommate had been killed by a crazy FBI agent-turned-werewolf who'd taken drastic measures to try to get rid of her curse. By the end of it, the agent had been sent to a rubber room while Heather had been left as a brand-new werewolf, still trying to figure out how to control herself. The last I'd heard from her, she'd moved to somewhere in Wisconsin.
"Pretty good, actually," Heather said, a smile in her voice. "I'm actually in town for a business trip, and I thought I'd look you up, see how you were doing. Are you free for lunch?"
I glanced at Bob, who was giving me a curious look. I shook my head, and then replied, "Sure, I'm free." We talked for a bit about the where and when. I wrote down the address and time to meet her, and when I hung up the phone, Bob's eyes were narrow.
"Who was that?" he asked mildly, but I could tell that he wasn't pleased.
"Heather Bram," I replied, sticking the slip of paper under a magnet on the fridge. "You remember her, don't you?"
"The redheaded werewolf you helped last year?" he asked. "I presume you two have plans for lunch?"
"Yeah." I nodded, picking up my plate and putting it in the sink. When I didn't get a request to share all of the juicy details, I glanced at Bob. He was staring at me, looking none too pleased. "What?"
"Harry, do you really think this is wise?" he asked.
"Bob, it's just lunch," I said defensively. "It's not like I'm asking her out on a date."
"Oh, really?" Bob asked, pretending to sound surprised. "And here I sat thinking that you never smile like that when you're speaking with Lieutenant Murphy."
I blinked, surprised by the sharpness in his voice. "Murphy usually calls when she has a corpse that she needs me to investigate. Lunch plans usually don't come up, and call me crazy, but I actually like the thought of food."
"Hopefully, you won't turn out to be dessert," he said snidely.
"Okay, now hang on a sec," I said. "I get exactly one phone call and an offer to go out to lunch, and you're jumping on my case? What gives?"
Bob picked up his plate of half-eaten eggs and dumped the rest of it in the trash before rinsing the plate. "I have a serious problem with you wandering off alone with someone who was turned into a werewolf against her will only a year ago."
I rolled my eyes. "Bob, you were there when she showed up on my doorstep. Hell's bells, even when she wanted to rip my throat out, she was fighting against it."
"Just because she initially fought against her instincts doesn't mean that she hasn't learned to embrace them," Bob said. He picked up the dish rag and started washing the dishes one by one, setting them in the dish strainer to dry.
"It's lunch, Bob," I said, getting exasperated. "Even if she wanted to kill me now, we'd be out in public and right in the middle of a crowd of people. I'm guessing she'd cause a pretty big scene if she managed to go furry and turn me into cottage cheese."
Blue-green eyes narrowed at me. "I'll thank you not to take this so lightly," he nearly snapped, drying his hands on a dish towel.
I stared at him, at a loss to figure out why he was acting like this. And then it hit me. "You're jealous."
Bob stared at me like I'd grown another head. "What?"
I could feel myself smirking. "I'm going out to lunch with a woman, and you're jealous." I shrugged. "You can go out, y'know. It's not like I'm keeping you here under lock and key." I could feel a twinge in my chest as I said it, but I told myself it was better this way. If Bob started going out at night instead of staying here, so close and yet so far away, it'd be easier to get over not being able to have him the way I wanted.
"Harry, that's not it," Bob began.
Something occurred to me. "Dammit," I cursed, accidentally cutting him off.
Bob blinked. "What?"
"My Jeep's still where I left it where we went into the sewers," I muttered. "Great." I glanced at the clock. "I better go now to make sure it's not booted." I glanced back at Bob. "We'll finish this later." I swiped my hoody from where I usually kept it laced between two of the spokes on my banister and slipped it on. I patted the pockets until I found the keys, and then headed for the back door. "Later!"
Bob started to say something, but I firmly closed the door behind me and went to get my Jeep.
***
It took me about half-an-hour to get to my Jeep, and as I suspected, my Jeep was booted. Again. A phone call to Murphy didn't pan out, as she told me to pay the tickets. Growling and kicking the stupid thing, I cursed my luck with the city of Chicago and ran a hand through my hair, wondering if I'd have enough money to get it unbooted, or even enough for cab fare home.
With a sigh, I shoved my hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders against a stiff wind that picked just that moment to rise up and send a shiver down my spine. Fall had descended on Chicago hard and fast this year, and with the skyscrapers, the streets of Chicago had turned into canyons of steel and concrete, wind tunnels that channeled the roaring winds into loud things that whistled in my ears.
I walked for a little bit, trying to get my bearings until I happened on a small mom-and-pop grocery store, the words painted on the windows bright and colorful. Fresh produce on sale.
I blinked, and stared at the words as if they'd been written in Greek.
Given my typically frayed and knotted shoestring of a budget on any given day, my fridge wasn't stocked with the healthiest foods in the world. Considering that I'm a wizard, and my average life expectancy is about five or six times longer than your average person's, I didn't necessarily have to worry about natural causes anytime soon. Butters had a theory that a wizard's body tended to regenerate better than most, but I wasn't sure if that had been it, at least not entirely. Wizards are in touch with the living forces of creation itself. Magic could be used to destroy, but it could also be used to create. Hell's bells, it came from the essence of life itself. It would make sense if wizards lived longer just by the fact that they had a better understanding of the natural forces that most people weren't even aware of.
Whatever it was, it meant that I'd never had to worry about developing diabetes, or anything else related to not eating your fruits and veggies. Since there was no guarantee I would be home on any given night, I tended to stock things that were non-perishable. The fact that my milk hadn't gained sentience and rallied the Coke in the fridge to overthrow me was a victory for my side.
And yet, Bob had never had the luxury of fresh produce. I mean, sure he would've eaten apples at some point, since apple trees were native to England, but would he have been able to eat fresh oranges?
The more I stood outside, staring at the grocery store windows as if they were a shrine, the more possibilities started popping up. Hell's bells, chocolate hadn't even been around when Bob was alive, at least not the way it was made nowadays. Granted, I didn't have a solid timeline for what he'd experienced before his death, but "almost nine hundred years" was a good ballpark to start from.
I ducked inside, and started looking around, preparing a mental list of all the things I wanted to see Bob try out for himself.
***
"I lived in Chicago for six years," Heather said as she glanced around, "and I never knew this place existed."
We had just walked into McAnally's, a pub I like to go to which is just a few blocks from my place. I go there when I have the cash, or when I want to unwind and running hasn't helped.
I'm sure I've waxed poetic about McAnally's before, but it bears repeating. It's a quiet place with a small flight of stairs leading down to the hardwood floor, thirteen tables placed around the room, and a bar along one wall. There's enough ceiling fans to make tall people like me walk cautiously, and there are thirteen columns with carvings of fairy tales from the Old World stand in places throughout the room, making walking an adventure. Mac, the pub's owner, brews his own ale, and cooks the food on a wood-burning stove. For years, it's been a haven for the fringe types.
One reason for that was the fact that, along with the feeling of returning home that you felt as soon as you walked in, the pub's layout helped to diffuse and disrupt magical energies that surrounded practitioners. While it wouldn't stop a targeted spell entirely, I'd never wanted to test the theory of just how well magic would work inside.
"I'm not surprised," I said, leading the way to an empty table. "I didn't find out about it for a year when I first moved here."
For a Saturday afternoon, the place was pretty empty. There were two guys in the corner playing a chess game, the air around them sweet-smelling from their pipe smoke. Some kids sat at one of the tables, and one pimple-faced kid gave Heather an appreciative once-over before turning back to the conversation.
Heather glanced around, and then frowned. "There's no wait staff?"
I shook my head, smiling a little. "If you want to eat here, you get up and get your own food." When I realized how that sounded, I added, "Which means I'll go ahead and pick it up. The steak sandwiches here are pretty good, and you should try the ale." I walked around the table and pulled her chair out for her.
Heather sat down, looking amused. "Sounds good to me. How much does it run?"
"Oh, no, you don't," I said with a smile. "I'm paying."
She arched a dark red eyebrow. "Even if I was the one to suggest a lunch date?"
I nodded. "I like being chivalrous. Sue me."
Heather blinked, and then let out a very nice laugh that made dimples appear. They were cute. "I see. But what if I had another reason for paying my way?"
"Which is?" I asked, my eyebrows rising.
She glanced around, looking self-conscious before she leaned in, her forearms resting on the table. "If I'm paying, then I'm reminding myself that you're my friend, not an entree."
I nodded. "I see what you mean." When she'd been turned into a werewolf, the first couple of hours had been... intense. In my line of work, I've gotten used to people threatening to rip my throat out. Heather had been the first to be scared that she would.
And that had been the first time I'd been scared someone would make good on it.
I tried to convince her to let me pay, but she insisted. I told her how much it ran, and when I took the money from her, I felt like crap. Call me a chauvinist, but I like treating women like ladies. I like pulling chairs out for them, opening doors, paying for shared meals. When I'd opened her car door for her, she'd shot me a surprised look, but now I think she was just amused. Maybe it was the gentlemanly charm. Whatever it was, I'd gotten points for it in her book, and I didn't mind that.
I headed over to Mac, ordered for Heather and myself, and then sat back down across from Heather. "So, how've things been with you? You haven't called needing a refill lately."
Heather smiled a little, probably at the wording, but she nodded. "I've been all right. I found a supplier in Madison who's pretty cheap. I can put you in touch with him, if you'd like?"
I shook my head. "It's all right. The postage would get expensive, and it's almost a three hour drive up there. But, thanks." I rested my forearms on the table, unconsciously mirroring her pose. "Is that where you live now?"
Heather nodded. "Yeah, I was able to get a job up there with the alumni association at the University of Wisconsin. It's pretty good, but I miss Chicago."
I nodded sympathetically. "I can't imagine ever moving away. Do you like it up there?"
"It's all right," she said, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "A bit colder than I'm used to, and it's not on the lake, but it's nice there. Quieter."
I could hear what she wasn't saying. Quieter meant there were fewer people she could hurt if she lost control and transformed. The recipe I'd given her was supposed to help somewhat, but Bob had told me that there hadn't been a way to reverse what had been done to her permanently. When I'd told her, she'd taken the news better than I'd expected.
"At least you're not in the middle of nowhere, right?" I offered. She'd mentioned it as a possibility before she headed out of Chicago, to live out in the middle of nowhere so that even if she did transform during the full moon, there'd be less of a chance she'd hurt anybody.
Heather smiled, looking pretty and wistful. "There is that, yeah. I tried renting a cabin, but pretty soon, the silence got to be too much, y'know?" She laughed a little. "I actually had trouble going to sleep without hearing the traffic outside my window."
"I've heard that the crickets can make up for it." I smiled.
She snorted, a smile still tugging at her pale lips. "I had an invasion the first couple of months I was up there. I was tempted to get a lizard to deal with them, but I decided against it. I'm pretty bad with pets."
"A lizard?" I asked, surprised.
"Well," she said with a shrug, "cats don't really do pest control, and dogs just kind of stare at the bugs while they crawl around the house. A friend of mine had a gecko that she had while she was living in Georgia, and it dealt with the roaches, so I figured some kind of lizard would help with the crickets."
"Huh," I said. "I figured what with you being..." I paused, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say it without tipping off the kids at the table nearby.
"More than what I was when I was still here," Heather supplied.
I nodded my thanks. "Exactly. I figured you wouldn't have that much of a problem with bugs."
Heather shook her head. "No, they still invade the house. The only thing that's really changed is that strays don't come near me."
"That makes sense," I said. Animals were more in tune with their instincts than humans were, and werewolves were pretty much at the top of the food chain, along with vampires and some creatures from the Nevernever. Dogs and cats would know that Heather was a bigger, nastier predator than your average person, and as a result, they'd shy away from her.
There was an awkward pause, and then the conversation turned to lighter topics. She'd asked how my business was going, I asked about her job, that kind of thing. Since I didn't have a lot of experience about what you were supposed to talk about during a date (I'd had a date or two with Susan, but she was usually trying to get information out of me about a case I was working), I just let Heather talk about whatever she liked. Surprisingly enough, she was something of a baseball enthusiast, and we ended up talking about the Cubs' chances of getting to the play-offs. In between topics, I got our lunch from the bar, and she set into it with gusto. By the end of lunch, we were sated and happy.
After lunch was finished, I insisted on paying my share of the tab, so we ended up going dutch. Considering I hadn't had enough to cover both of us, it was pragmatic but I still felt lousy. I like being a gentleman, but sometimes when chivalry and reality meet, chivalry doesn't always win. When she saw that I didn't have my Jeep, I ended up telling her about how it had gotten booted, and pretty soon, she was giving me a lift home in a nice-looking Trans Am. I invited her to come inside, but she begged off, saying that she had to get back to her hotel for an evening meeting. She did ask if I was free for lunch tomorrow, so I counted that as a win.
I headed inside as Heather pulled away, pulling off my hoody and called, "Bob?"
When I didn't get an answer, I frowned, setting the bag of groceries I'd gotten earlier down on a kitchen counter. Heather had asked about the bag, and I told her it was secret ingredients. She'd laughed, and let the matter drop. Sure, I could've told her it was groceries, but that was kind of a weird thing to bring on a date.
Have I mentioned that I'm not that experienced with women?
I finally found Bob in the lab after a few minutes of searching. He was standing over the copper ring that I'd nailed into the floor, his eyes narrowed as he glared at it. I glanced down curiously, only to find a flickering image of Heather driving through Chicago traffic. As I watched, she tried her radio (it had burst into white noise when she was driving me home), and started to bob her head in time with the music, a smile on her lips.
Bob waved a dismissive hand, like slapping at a persistent mosquito, and the image winked out, revealing the bare concrete floor again.
I stopped in my tracks. "Bob?"
Bob glared at the floor for a minute longer before looking up at me. "Yes, Harry?"
"What were you doing just now?" I asked in a slow, even tone. I had already seen the scrying window Bob had opened, and it had very obviously been centered on Heather, or at least her car.
I don't like being spied on, especially not by a friend who might've thought he was acting in my best interests.
Bob blinked. "Testing out my scrying abilities. It's been a while since I've used them."
"On Heather?" I growled.
Bob snorted. Behind him on the shelf, one of the jars wobbled dangerously before righting itself. "I was a bit less concerned with her welfare during your 'date' than yours." He said the word as if it had left a bad taste in his mouth. "She is still a werewolf, full moon or no."
I glared at him and folded my arms across my chest in order to better resist the urge to smack him. "And when exactly did I give you permission to spy on me?" I asked, trying to sound mild. The unimpressed look on Bob's face showed how effective that had been.
"When you showed all of the survival instinct of a lemming when confronted with a very tall, very steep cliff," Bob said, much more mildly than I'd managed. He turned back to the table, where it looked like he'd started brewing a potion. I couldn't tell what was in it, except that the liquid was a dark red color. "And that was years ago. The only reason I haven't done it sooner is, well, I was dead at the time." He shrugged as if to show it was no big deal.
I remember growling, because one moment, I was blocking the door to the hallway, and the next, I had grabbed Bob's shoulder and had shoved him into a solid oak cabinet door. Inside of it, I could hear bottles rattling. "I don't give a damn what you think about me and my survival instinct, but if you think you can scry me and not get your ass kicked, you're sadly mistaken," I snarled at him.
For the first time during the entire conversation, Bob looked genuinely surprised. At this close a range, I could see how the blue and green swirled together in his eyes, smell the instant coffee on his breath that he must've had before I'd gotten back, smell his sweat through his borrowed T-shirt. If I hadn't been so pissed off at him, I would've had the guilty pleasure of drinking it all in for exactly two seconds before my shame grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me off to a corner so that it could remind me that ogling someone who Isn't Interested is rude.
As it was, I just wanted to beat him senseless for invading my privacy.
"Now, really, Harry," Bob said, still maddeningly calm, "You know as well as I that even in social situations, creatures new to their power have trouble controlling themselves. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself if you and she got onto a topic she felt passionately about."
"It was a date with a very nice woman who happens to like me," I gritted out. I almost didn't recognize my own voice because of how hoarse it sounded. "Not a werewolf attack."
Bob stared at me for a second before sighing very gently. I could feel the warm puff of air against my skin. "She isn't the only person in the world who 'likes' you, Harry," he whispered.
And then he kissed me.
It wasn't complicated as kisses went. His lips pressed against mine, smooth skin meeting chapped. He held it for a moment, not asking for anything more, and then it ended just as quickly as it had begun.
He pulled back and looked at me.
I stared at him.
After a long silence stretched between us, he cocked a grey eyebrow. "Well?"
I blinked. "You just kissed me."
At this close a range, I could see the tiniest of smiles tugging at Bob's lips. "I did."
"You just..." My brain must have short-circuited because the only thing I could think of to say was to repeat myself. Hell's bells, even Bob's aura felt smug.
Maybe that's what snapped me out of it. Here I was, having slammed Bob against a cabinet in my lab, and he just kisses me. The man who, after I'd finally confessed the deepest secret I'd been holding for the past twenty years, had told me that he didn't feel the same way about me. He'd said it with a straight face, and after that, I'd clammed up and just told myself that it was typical, that I wasn't cut out for love. It was better that way.
Bob had just kissed me, and now he was two inches away from me, and he was smug about it.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked, my voice now a low, dangerous whisper.
If Bob had been expecting a reaction out of me, that one definitely hadn't been it. "Harry?"
"You..." I could feel my anger boiling up inside of me, quickly approaching fury. "You manipulative, possessive..."
Behind me, I could hear jars shattering with tiny little explosions of glass and ingredients.
"Arrogant asshole!" I finished, slamming the palm of my hand into the cabinet door a few inches from Bob's left ear. The pain shot through my arm, the fire feeding into my anger. It was going to hurt like hell in a few hours when I wasn't pissed off anymore, but at that point, I really didn't care.
Bob jumped at the sound, the smugness replaced with surprised worry. "Harry, what--"
"You said you weren't interested," I snapped. "I laid out all the cards on the fucking table, and you didn't love me that way. Do you even know what that felt like? Huh? You were so fucking concerned I was falling to the Dark Side, and you weren't going to be satisfied until you knew."
There was the shame, the regret I wanted to see in his eyes. Only, instead of feeling like the winner, I just wanted to hurt him more. "Harry, please, you must understand." He drew himself up as best he could against the cabinet. "I was trying to protect you."
I let out a harsh laugh at that. "Protect me? From what? Your lecherous side? In case you hadn't noticed, it's a little late for that."
Blue-green eyes narrowed. "Wrong," he snapped. "I was protecting you from yourself. What do you think would have happened had I admitted the truth? You would have declared your undying love for me, and then you would have immediately set to work on how to return me to mortality."
"So what if I would have?" I demanded. "It should've been my choice to make."
"How many times have you returned home bloodied and exhausted?" Bob shot back. "How many times have you still had to worry about the rent after you damn well saved the world? All because of the choices you've made." I saw the muscles in his jaw tense. "How many times have I had to stand here and do nothing while you risk your life for people you don't even know?"
"At least they were my choices," I snarled.
"Your choices have driven you into the ground more than once, Harry," Bob said, his voice breaking a little. "You would have spent so long trying to bring me back to life that you would have forgotten to live your own life. I know you. And I also know that I traveled that path before, and it led to disaster and ruin."
"Who says that I was going to make your mistakes?" I demanded. "I wouldn't have been dragging you back from the other side. You were right here."
"Neither of us knew what it would take until Mai stole my skull from you," Bob shouted. "And I'm the one who was cursed to begin with!"
"I would've figured it out," I growled. "We would have figured it out together."
"No, we wouldn't have," Bob said, his uneven teeth bared. "Because I would have refused to help you. And I refuse to see you chain your future to a ghost."
"What's changed?" I asked. "You get killed now, and you go right back to your curse."
"I have a sense of self-preservation," Bob said stiffly. "And I'm capable of protecting you now. I'm capable of much more..." He reached up to touch my cheek, but I grabbed his hand in a crushing grip.
"Funny," I sneered. "You were protecting me when you lied to me."
"I didn't actually tell you--" Bob managed, pain in his voice.
"Of course not," I snapped. "You're worse than the goddamn Sidhe, Bob. All you had to do was let me rip myself apart in front of you, and you could just nod and look sad. I bet it was really simple for you."
Bob twisted his wrist, and suddenly his fingers weren't crushed in mine anymore. "Do you think I enjoyed that?"
"I don't know, Bob, did you?" I asked sharply. "Because you didn't even bother correcting me as soon as you were alive again. Hell's bells, you didn't even mention it until after I go out on a date with the first woman who's actually shown an interest since Susan."
"In case you hadn't noticed," Bob sneered, "we've been rather busy as of late, or are you forgetting the Council meeting scheduled for Monday?"
"It wouldn't have taken that long to say, 'Harry? I love you, I'm sorry I lied to you before, and I hope that you'll find it in your heart to forgive me'," I said.
Despite the lack of space between us, Bob managed to fold his arms over his chest. "That assumes two things. First, that I would even say all of that in the first place, because despite the way this conversation has gone, I'm not sorry for protecting you from yourself. And secondly, I did try to tell you, but you were in such a hurry to get to your 'date' that you weren't listening to me."
"If it was really that important, why didn't you come after me?" I asked.
Bob arched an eyebrow at me. "Harry, you weren't listening to me," he said with exaggerated patience. "I daresay that you aren't listening now."
"Oh, now I'm not listening?" I asked. "Fine. Here's me, not listening."
I turned away from him and headed for the door.
"Harry--"
I went out into the hallway and shut the door behind me.
END
***
This way to the prequel, Seeing Things.
This way to the sequel, Fair Trial.
And if you're just plain lost, here's the table of contents.
