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]

Ok, be gentle people, first show-related fanfiction I've written in forever.

The Bear, pre-series. Eventually part of a story called "Three Important Meals Carmy Made That Never Got Reviewed"

Carmy was stressed and Donna was going through another one of her bad patches. When Donna was hungover, she liked to try to eat ice cream bars or popsicles(She didn’t usually have much appetite, though and never ate more than a bite or two. Probably trying to settle her stomach, he realized later, though the walls of the apartment were thin enough that he could hear it didn’t work.

His mother looked tired, but not in a bad mood, despite the headache that made her wince. “You don’t have to worry about me,” but her voice wasn’t steady so it kind of said the opposite

She mumbled good morning and he watched,already known for the big, serious blue eyes.”You can’t start your day that way,” Carmy argued. “Breakfast is important….they said so in school.”

Bobby said “Since when do you pay attention in school?” and made Sugar snicker, a moment of unity between them.

Carmy stuck to his guns. “Well, that part makes sense.” He clambered up on a kitchen chair and checked the bread box and then somehow found a package of cinnamon that Donna couldn’t remember buying, and not like she couldn’t remember stuff that year, more like it had been, maybe an actual fucking wedding present.

But Carmy made that cinnamon toast. Like he was splitting atoms or doing magic. He was so committed and serious that the other kids couldn’t make fun of him and that Donna found some long-buried appetite and ate half.

Another part of my "The Bear" backstory:

One Christmas, Sugar got an Easy-Bake oven. Carmy couldn’t remember if it was something she’d longed for but never got for other Christmases or if some relative had just sort of forgotten that his sister was at the end of Fake Oven Age and kind of at the beginning of Shoplifting Age. Maybe somebody was trying to stop time a little bit, which might have made Sugar roll her eyes and make some withering comment, except maybe she was into it, just a little, and dutifully mixed up the wet-looking, brownie-like “Cake” made with the power of all those lightbulbs or whatever. They guessed it tasted good, but after what the commercial showed, some disappointment was inevitable. “Girl presents are so fun.” Sugar complained. “Not only is the cake not that good, but now I get to wash dishes.”

Carmy wasn’t even listening…just went to that place in his head that he he went to sometimes, holding two little packets of cake mix. “Do you trust me?”

“No!”

He looked so disappointed that she said “I was just kidding,..I’m sure what you do will be fine.” She still had an eye on him as he dug out two big sandwich bags and opened up the white cake mix, too. He mixed it all together together, without anyone telling him to do it, as far as the rest of the family knew. And it was a decent-tasting tiny marble cake, if not as perfect as it would be in a movie.