look at me still talking when there's science to do

For ecwoodburn, a drabble that fell out of my head like she asked for

Audra's new job is this: forensics, coroner and general medical slash biogeek for the time police in Seattle. She got it through eighty-five percent pure knowledge and fifteen percent nepotism: her mother is still part of the same organization, although on a more international level, and she made a phone call or two. Audra's not ashamed of that in the least. Connections are worthless if left unused, like a muscle that atrophies in zero-gravity. At first she thinks this use of connections and backtalk to do business is more the case in Hong Kong and that's why Americans have so many issues with the practice: in time she realizes that it's the same in both countries, but for some reason Americans hide it in shame instead of allowing it enough sunlight and air to grow naturally.

Audra thinks, not for the last time, that she will probably never understand Americans.

She remembers her coworkers, but with younger faces: Anthony with tousled hair and overalls, serious, studious even in the simple act of stacking blocks, Fabian staggering around in his mother's high heels and an outrageous pink spangled camisole that hung limply on his wire-thin frame.

Anthony is now khakis and coffee and looks eerily like her memories of Jack; she has to retag that face in her brain, now. She's nearly slipped and called him fu chan Jack, has to stop herself from bowing. Fabian grins and calls her jeih je like old times - big sister - but he's checking out her ass and the heels are on boots made of butter-soft leather that fit like they'd grown onto his calves.

---

*Author's note - fu chan Jack means something like "maternal uncle Jack" in Cantonese according to the niternet but if I've totally messed that up, TELL ME. I want to change it.

judgement (fabian/jakob)

"You ate my cereal." Fabian suffering an artist's block was routinal, grouchy and indignant, which just went to show that absolutely nothing was impossible in science, just varying degrees of statistically improbable.

"I did no such thing." Jakob shrugged and leaned against the breakfast bar, studying his own rippled reflection in the stainless steel fridge. He took a quiet step forward, closing the gap between them as gently as possible.

"You did. I saw you -"

"I do live here. You think you'd have noticed, sleeping in the same bed and all, but I know sometimes you get distracted." Another step.

"-with a bowl-"

"Shocking! What an utter bastard, that Jakob Vanderschpiegle is, carrying bowls."

"eating something."

"You do know there are other, better tasting things to eat in this kitchen besides that cereal? Like plywood?" A third step. They were almost touching now.

Fabian swirled on his toes and screamed, top-of-his-lungs-lack-of-sleep vibrant. "You ate my fucking cereal."

Jakob slammed their mouths together, knocked Fabian ass-first into the fridge, held him there with lips and tongue and hands until the crankiness melted away.

"I bet the kids ate it." Jakob breathed, biting his ear.

"I'll find something else." Fabian dragged him toward the pantry.

---

elaborate (audra/fabian)

Audra is not one for elaborate gestures. She works in shades of subtle: gradual shifts on the evolutionary scale, minor tweaks of acids and bases. But tiny things cause elaborate changes, like Mendel's peas which changed the thoughts of billions, but their descendents were still eaten last night with lemon and butter.

Fabie is not exactly subtle. Huge canvases, too many piercings, brightest colours and black vinyl pants. He's nearly a caricature of an artist, of a modern bohemian, and that's the way he likes it. But large things trickle down, reduce; a tiny brush painting watercolour birds for her, a post-it-note doodle in her lunch signed with his crooked smile.

---

journey (audra/jakob)

They take planes and trains and automobiles to the same conferences; physics and biology aren't the same, of course, but closer than some. They write papers together, names twinned together in the abstract as well as reality. They argue semantics over linguini. Both share a deep-seated suspicion of chemists.

They twist together in the bed at night, feeling not so alone, but still one-third lonely.

This is kind of silly and fluffy like spun cotton candy, but it amuses me somewhat, similar to the Law and Order bit. I wasn't quite sure what to call this: it's an idea I've had for a while, and I'm writing it to amuse myself, because sometimes I'm like that.

I could call it 'Thies has Two Daddies' or 'Looking for Miss Goodbar' or 'Jakob and Fabian go to Kindergarten' ... or I could just call it ( Genderqueer in the Pre-K. )

(A silly little piece: this is what happens if you watch too much Law and Order and spend too much time writing. It's not quite fanfic - it's more the kinds of games kids (and their extremely tolerant uncles) play. I thought I'd post it now: I mean, what with Briscoe leaving the show and all.)



"Uncle Stephen?"

Anthony poked Stephen with his toy fish experimentally. Uncle Stephen didn't move.

"Maybe he's dead." Audra stared at Stephen's prone body sprawled on the couch.

"Uncle Stephen can't die." Anthony replied confidently.

"Din't he say that uncle Wally would be the dead of him one day?"

Uncle Stephen had said that, Anthony reflected.
( Doink doink. )

(Crossposted: drabblemania)

"Hold still." Audra instructed, putting on her doctor-face as she slopped some clear, slimy gunk from the bottle onto his hand. The skin was an angry tropical-frult-gum pink and already starting to blister, butterflying over his fingers.
He bit his lip until the colour drained away, but was silent except for the flicker of pain in his eyes. The cool aloe base seemed to warm almost immediately, as if it were pulling the heat out of the wound, and he sighed, shivering a little with a sudden chill.
"Watch." Audra instructed, a slight smile haunting the corners of her mouth, nodding toward his hand.
Before his eyes, the skin seemed to turn from an angry burn to the smooth paleness that had been there before. He blinked, rubbing his eyes with his good hand. "What the hell?"
"It's got a local temporal accelerant in it." Audra chuckled. "It's engineered that way."
"Did you do that?"
"Of course I did. With you around I need all the help I can get."
"I love you." Fabian laughed delightedly, rubbing the rest of the salve into his newly healed skin.
"I know. Don't do it again."
"Don't love you again?" He chuckled at her flustered expression. "I know, I know. You should say what you mean though. Accuracy is important."
"I'm the one that's supposed to say that."
"See?" He put his arm around her shoulders. "I can learn. Especially from such a beautiful teacher."

Note: Crossposted to drabblemania. Posted friends as opposed to my writing filter, because I can, and because it's short.
(Want more? It's on the filter. Opt in in the poll in my userinfo or comment here.)

There's a good reason why Fabie never joins me in my lab. I love him, honestly; but he's not much of a scientist. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he really, really gets into things he shouldn't. You know, painting with reagents, that kind of thing. I remember when we were living in London, with Trish - I had a little lab set up at the back of the house, for practical work and stuff, because I was working remotely? And I actually had to lock him out of it after I caught him mixing hair dye in one of my beakers - he was tipping his hair and Trish threatened to kill him if he used her bowls again. What possessed him to use my lab to dye his hair I will never know. *laughs*
But he'd go to any lengths to get me out of there, for his own nefarious purposes. Bad boy. Like the time he climbed the tree outside the window and hung upside down from one of the branches - nearly scared me to death. Imagine if you look up from the microscope and you see someone hanging upside down, waving at you. He's lucky I wasn't carrying around acid.
My favorite was the bubbles.
You have to understand that Fabie's really just a big kid. Anthony calls him Peter Pan, and that's kind of the way he is, you know? He'll never grow up.
It was late evening in early summer. I had a test in a few days, and so I was cramming like crazy - my Organic Chem final. He'd go to work, I'd cram all day.
Comes home from Amsterdam Friday afternoon. I heard him come inside, I heard him talking to Trish, but I was in the back, so I didn't hardly look up.
All of a sudden I heard a tap on the window.
I look up, and he's got a bunch of containers of bubble-mix ... and he'd tinted the stuff with dye. Just grins at me from the tree with that manic little grin of his, and then starts blowing bubbles, sitting in the tree like some demented pixie, surrounded by bubbles; red ones, green ones, blue ones, clear ones.
They were floating past the window. It was like fairyland.
And people wonder why I put up with his antics?
I put up with his antics because of moments like that one.