Elena said “Thank you,” but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She stabbed some salad with her fork as if she was irritated with it.

Jimmy said “Could you give us a moment?”

“Gladly,”

Jimmy led Faith outside, where she thought about bumming a cigarette, but changed her mind.

“You’re welcome. You know, for a detective, you’re surprisingly easy to follow.”

Jimmy replied in the kind of hoarse whisper he used when Michael was about to run out in traffic. “Good to know, considering there’s about to be a three-car pileup at the intersection of Thank You and What The Fuck? What is all that, Faith?”

“Just because I usually don’t play chick games doesn’t mean I don’t know what they are… having a well-lubricated mother teaches you a few things. Besides the little woman looks like a tight-ass.’

“You’d be surprised….I mean…she’s the mother of my children, so I don’t think her ass is any of your business.” “But I think you’re more bent because her ass isn’t any of your business, either. Oh, sure, she’ll probably drop her fork tonight just so you get a glimpse of what she shows the Pilates instructor that she might even be making you pay for…”

“I thought she said it was chiropractic for her repetitive stress,” Jimmy admitted. “But you’re hardly the person to talk about outfits that…promise things.”

She moved in closer. Even after a few weeks, it was still pretty intoxicating. “I don’t just promise. I deliver. Usually. But if you don't let go of her, you'll be the one with the carpal tunnel." Faith made the jerk-off hand gesture probably still beloved by schoolkids and Jimmy still thought she was hot. Which, on some level he knew wasn't playing with a full deck, but there it was.

“Are you…disappointed about, you know. Me? Because…” He felt close to the point where, if he were watching himself in the Box, he might think “Jeez, stop talking, you shit-for-brains,” and this time he could. He guessed that’s what sobriety(Ok, so he wet his beak a little with the so-so chianti, but he wasn’t tempted by it.) gave him that he missed.

“If that bothered you,” he persisted, in that tone that gave Jimmy’s bosses migraines. “Why did you come down here?”

“It wasn’t that far,” Faith replied. “Is that what ‘Smalltimore’ is? Cause I think we know what it isn’t.”

“Thank you. So, why did you?"

"Fun, Jimmy. Remember fun?"

Nice work, erika! Very fun stuff

Thanks! Glad you think so. I love these characters, even if they don't keep a tight grip on their threes.(Jimmy *might* have a pair of threes, but not much more than that.)

More from Faith and Jimmy:

What’s it like?”

“Mmm?” Once again, Jimmy had thought Faith was asleep. He found himself looking at his own hands and wondering about the same thing. “What? To have magic hands?”

“No, although you got the job done well enough…finally.”She sat up in bed and gave him a teasing smile.

“Damned by faint praise.” He replied. “What’s what like? I’m not some kind of moron, but there are limited things that I know., and you’ve seen both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat…which I’m not gonna go on about so I don’t jinx myself.”

“What’s it like saving people?” For once, Jimmy thought, she was acting her age. Like someone at the tail end of her teens getting excited about starting a new gig. Scrub away some of the mystical crap and she could be an academy, recruit, almost. It made him happy to hear it, but also made him feel really old.

Jimmy frowned. “You don’t really get to do that in Homicide. Maybe a little, if you think long-term and all, but mostly? I doubt I’ve met very many ‘stop me before I kill again’ Hannibal Lecter types. Just people who are stupid or crazy enough to find a really extreme answer to their problems. When I was in uniform, I stopped a purse-snatching once…that was pretty cool.”

“I’ll bet everyone was really impressed.”

“Not really…I was supposed to be at a training about preventing sexual harassment and I pulled over and caught the thief instead. Still not sure I ever finished the class either, but saving an old lady’s grocery money felt more like why we’re here, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

Faith didn’t freak out about all the dreams she’d always had a lot of. Because, like, seriously, even if her mother weren’t like…chemically enhanced all the time, she was in a living situation where going to her mom with a nightmare was more like Tuesday, than “Poor baby,”. Faith had tried her share of chemicals, and had never really had the hangovers that plagued the little crew of dropouts she used to halfway be the mayor of. She could push her brain and always could push it a little bit more, but being even halfway called? Made acid…what do you call it? Redundant.

Still, that night as she lay next to McNulty, she knew it had to mean more than disappointment with herself for breaking her personal “Get some, get gone” rules, that she dreamed of a tiny blonde in a white prom dress and weeds in her hair that hugged her close at the same time she said “This town won’t be big enough for the two of us.” The hug felt good, if damp enough to be startling. The emotion made her tear up and feel frustrated at the same time.

Faith woke, gasping, expecting to be wet in a different way than she was when she went to sleep, but when she felt around in the bed the lake water was part of the dream, not in the room. Jimmy mumbled in his sleep, and for the briefest, most deluded instant, she imagined he knew what she was going through. As if she’d really gotten to be that young girl who could believe things besides heavy destinies are meant to be, she touched his hand, and he held it for an instant before mumbling something to “Elena” and smacking her hand away. Guess he didn’t have a white horse in his closet.

Oooooooooof. That packed a punch. Or three, maybe.

Thank you!

Just a little drabble, like one of Victor's ones.

About A Girl

Seattle 1990

“Ooh, Spike, look at the sad, pretty boy. Do you think it would help him to play with Miss Edith?”

“Oh, Dru, love,” Spike replied. “Tell me you didn’t really bring that doll to a show.” Spike looked at the slender Cobain. “Bit wet for a rocker. Even in a town that never dries out.”

“Do you think it rains so much because he has clouds around his head?”

“Makes as much sense as anything, dear."

More of my Baltimore Faith prequel. Despite his best intentions, when he gets back to the bar where he met Faith, he gets a little…overserved. He may be a stupid guy as much as a detective, but he knows it’s partially because she’s planning to leave, he’ll miss her, and they both know any time she would be sitting around in a frilly apron, she won’t be wearing anything else. Already, even she can probably tell part that doesn’t last, which, in his lubricated state, threatens to make him tear up. He’s still together enough to keep it within a drop or two. Damn allergies.

So maybe the shadows looked kind of ominous because he was stumbling out…kind of polluted, not at his full tolerance,ironically because he’d been feeling young and full of energy, but Faith noticed something too. ”Stay back,” she said, and kind of tried to hold him back with her arm as if she were a mother in a station wagon that stopped too fast. “ You can’t treat me like that. I’m one of Baltimore’s finest.”

A moment later, he could see a slight figure in a hoodie and Timberlands…he braced for them to get robbed, but instead he saw something else, all yellow eyes and sweatpants swoop down on them while the first guy, seemingly unaware that his face had gotten bumpy, goes into some patter about not knowing what time it is or needing change for the last bus. He was probably bad at stick-ups when he was alive too, which is how the things that went bump in the night nabbed him anyway…in the weeks that followed, Jimmy marveled at how quickly he could accept that the things he knew from horror comics were real, but the streets of Baltimore were always crazy. Maybe it was a relief to know it wasn’t always just people being stupid that did it.

He didn’t expect it to make him sad. Like, what, this guy was going to have a long, fruitful life robbing people as they weaved home on some Saturday night? Maybe learn the art of the family armed robbery? Jimmy mocked himself as his head cleared a bit.

Faith pulled something from her cleavage(lucky object, he still had an instant to think) before she said “Maybe it’s stake o’clock,” and plunged it in somewhere. The other guy(Were they still guys? Yes and no.) took off, but she grabbed him by his jacket collar, as if this time *he* were the misbehaving son, and poof, pile of dust and sudden quiet. Jimmy looked around out of habit in case of hidden cameras.

“You would save me *hours* in paperwork.”

“Right?” He only wishes he made her glow that much, talented tongue or not.

This might be a real story sometime; it might not. People are finally catching up to my Grosse Pointe quarantine fic(Which, incidentally, is the thing I wrote the most cause I liked it since I was about twelve.) Maybe this could be one of those. Friends "The One Where The Plot Bunny Grieves" [link]