Fic: Vacation (3/?)
Spoilers: Definitely spoilers up to the beginning of Fool Moon, though there may be bits and pieces I've picked up from fandom that creep their ways in. I apologize for some OOC-ness and the complete fabrication of Lea's character. I know almost nothing about her, including how to spell her full name. I also don't really care, since it isn't important to the story.
Rating: this chapter is probably still PG.
Pairing: Marcone/Dresden (eventually)
Warnings: Marcone is again not wearing a suit!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the premise, that belongs to prompter roseinlove12.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six
It was still light out when I woke, and today I had a mission. The mission would wait until after some breakfast, though. I swindled a guard out of half the meat on his sandwich and some of the cheese, which the cat body wasn’t sure it liked. Then I prowled the manor, looking for open doors or windows.
I found one on the third floor that I headbutt the screen out of, and I squeezed out the opening into the Chicago air.
Let me pause my daring escape narrative for a moment. Chicago in early November is a disgusting place to be. The rain is exceedingly frigid, and it rains a decent amount of the time. It was raining that day. I wished I’d had the forethought to check the weather before choosing this for my day of escape, but the screen was less permissive from the outside, so I was pretty damn committed now. It was probably in the lower 40s Fahrenheit, a temperature I don’t like even when I’m dressed for it. My fur was pretty warm, but it was definitely not waterproof, and the damper I got, the colder I felt.
I trotted over to a corner of the roof that was relatively close to a tree, and tried to judge the distance while I shivered. Could I make the jump? Then I looked down: a mistake. The window had been on the third floor, which meant I was on a roof covering the second floor. Twenty-odd feet isn’t too much to a human; enough to discourage you from jumping, but not enough to legitimately raise concerns of fatal injury. But I was less than two feet tall, making it more like a sixty-foot drop.
On the other paw, I was a cat. And cats are better at landing than humans…but I wasn’t sure if the instincts would take over in time to save me some broken limbs, which would really slow down the escape.
So I took my chance with the tree. I made it - barely - onto the limb I was aiming for, and skittered along the branch. Pouncing down to lower limbs was nerve-wracking but achievable. I clung to the lowest, still ten feet off the ground, and decided to risk it, aiming for a patch of mud that I knew I would hate when I was in it.
I did. I felt disgusting, and was already frozen to the bone. I stayed close to the walls of the manor when possible, making my way to the front and using it for shelter where I could. Following the driveway was easy enough, and I didn’t need to bother hiding.
There was a gate at the end, of course. It was too tall to jump, and did not have conveniently wide spaces between the steel-reinforced wood slats. In a lot of ways, Marcone’s manor was more fortress than house.
The gate flummoxed me for a moment until I decided to belly-crawl under it. It wasn’t like I was getting any cleaner, drier, or warmer standing around out here, so dragging my vulnerable stomach across a mud-filled rut on the side, inhaling some of the muddy water, that stuff sucked but everything would get better once I was out of there. I revised this assertion with the addendum “Once I was out of there and I could cough up or sneeze out whatever crap just got in my lungs.”
Finally I was free - free, homeless, and very unhappy with myself and my situation. I made my way out of Marcone’s neighborhood, headed towards…nothing, really. I ended up downtown two or three hours later, curling up under a butcher shop awning.
Probably not my best idea, but it smelled good and they had an awning.
I had a little nap, half-waking when the door opened a few times. The third or fourth time, it was a man in a butcher’s apron.
“Hello there,” he said, offering me a chunk of meat that was mostly fat and all raw. It tasted better than steak. The butcher stroked my head while I ate. “This is pretty miserable weather for you, isn’t it? I’d invite you in, but I can’t have a cat in the shop, it wouldn’t be clean. You should find a nice little old lady to take you home.”
I was shooed away gently.
I found a restaurant next, they were not so nice. Once the kitchen boy noticed me hanging out by the back door, he flicked a cigarette butt at me, scowling. I ran before his aim got any better.
There was another awning across the street. I watched the lights and made a dash for it when the cars were out of my way. I squeezed up against the wall, under the awning. Blocking the door would get me kicked out faster. I yowled piteously, the human equivalent to, “Let me innnnnnnnnnnnn.”
A twenty-something in an apron opened the door, looking around. She blinked at me. “That’s a lot of noise for just one cat! Oh, you’re soaked through…come in, honey.” She stepped aside and made kissy noises. I guess that works on some cats.
It looked like it worked on me, too, since I came inside. Once I got a look around, it was pretty obvious this was an art supply store, the kind I didn’t have much use for. (I go to stores for “The Art.” Haha. Anyway, I get my chalk much cheaper from other sources.)
“Let’s get you dry,” she muttered, and dug up a pair of towels. I could have kissed her, if I had lips. Instead, while she dried me off, I licked her hands. She giggled. “I have to go back to work, honey. You be good, don’t knock anything over or get muddy pawprints everywhere.” She rubbed my paws with the towel and threw the thing over me. I yowled and fought free while she laughed. Mister was way too dignified for me to pull this kind of crap. I thought only dogs had to suffer stupid stuff like this.
There were other cats in the store. I had smelled them as soon as I came in. Once I was dry and the cashier was finished torturing me, they came out: a female tabby and a female tortoiseshell.
~Big fella, aren’t you?~ the tabby purred, nosing my chest and rubbing alongside me. I yowled, mostly surprised that I understood her. It made sense: people couldn’t understand me, even though I knew what I was saying (and similarly knew it was coming out in cat-noises). Why wouldn’t cat’s hear me instead, and me understand them?
The girl scratched my head. “You guys getting along?” she asked, flashing a pretty smile. “This is Bomba,” she pointed to the tortoiseshell, “and that’s Pepper.”
I nuzzled the hand and got another giggle.
~Suck-up,~ the tortoiseshell snorted. I flicked her with my tail.
The girls weren’t really interesting conversationalists, but I learned a few things. They didn’t actually live in the store; the owner of the place took them home at night. They were sure I wouldn’t last. Tomcats didn’t get on with them, apparently, and they were more important to their human than any stray could ever be.
I didn’t plan to last. I just wanted warm and dry, for as long as the rainstorm. I fell asleep on the towel, missing the catnip mouse and the pillow that smelled like John. I could have brought the mouse with me, I realized belatedly, but that would feel like stealing from John.
The owner came out soon enough. “Our mascots appear to have multiplied,” she said, bemused. “Melissa…?”
Melissa, the cashier, said, “I couldn’t just leave him in the storm, Mrs. Stone.” Tricky girl probably checked under the tail while she was drying me off.
“No, of course,” Mrs. Stone agreed. “But what will you do after that? My girls don’t like toms, or I’d take him in.”
They continued talking quietly as the storm raged on, arguing about what would happen to me. Melissa kept offering names that kept getting turned down by Mrs. Stone, and of course I couldn’t stay here. They only trusted the cats around supplies when supervision - and quick cleanup - was available. There were no kennels or empty closets to lock me into, and the absence told me they wouldn’t have done that even if they could.
“Fine, I’ll take him home tonight,” Melissa said. “It’s supposed to rain on and off until morning, and I don’t want to be out in that any more than he does. But after that, I need to let him go or take him to a shelter; my boyfriend’s too allergic to put up with a cat for more than a night.”
Mrs. Stone winced. “I’d hate to send a pretty thing like this to a shelter. He’s probably too old to get adopted, though he seems perfectly intelligent.”
The spell had a lot to work with, with Mrs. Stone; she was clearly a cat lover. Still, I wondered if she would have been so reluctant to trust a shelter with any other cat. I also distrusted anyone who called me pretty.
Melissa took me home and had a small fight with her boyfriend, Aaron, until he realized I wasn’t staying. It probably helped that I looked so miserable, bedraggled from the fresh exposure to rain and still faintly muddy from my adventure in downtown Chicago.
I wondered if Marcone missed me. I wondered if I wanted him to.
I got a bath in the sink, an experience I really did not enjoy, but Aaron sneezed less afterward and I felt clean-dry instead of caked-with-mud-dry. A welcome change.
Melissa made me a nest out of towels and a few spare pillowcases. I still missed having a bed to myself, but this was pretty nice.
I closed my eyes and Lea was waiting. “Harry, why didn’t you just stay with Johnny?” she scowled. “He would have taken very good care of you. Now I have to keep a closer eye on you!”
“I don’t want him manipulated into things. I don’t want anyone manipulated into things!”
“Oh it’s not that bad! Hardly more than a suggestion, really. Say Marcone gets to thinking, completely unaided, ‘I’m bored.’ So instead of watching TV he sees a cat as a good amount of entertainment, until the owner is found. And a well-groomed,
pretty thing like you must have an owner, right? You’re neither of those now that you’ve dragged yourself through every puddle in Chicago, of course.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed any of what she had just said. But I didn’t want to fight it out. I just wanted to be left alone until the spell wore off.
“I’m trying to do you a favor, Harry,” Lea pouted. She was scratching behind my ears again. I yawned. “Just go back to sleep.”
“I thought I was asleep,” I said.
“Talking to me requires you be at a different level of sleep than the restful dreaming sleep. Dreams are the part of sleep you need the most.” She was petting my hair now, and all I could do was yawn. “Go back to sleep. Sweet dreams.” She vanished.
I dreamt of drowning in puddles, of the warm, dry pillow I had abandoned, and of playing fetch with Marcone. There were other dreams, but I didn’t remember them, except a vague impression of a large mouse watching me.
Rating: this chapter is probably still PG.
Pairing: Marcone/Dresden (eventually)
Warnings: Marcone is again not wearing a suit!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the premise, that belongs to prompter roseinlove12.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six
It was still light out when I woke, and today I had a mission. The mission would wait until after some breakfast, though. I swindled a guard out of half the meat on his sandwich and some of the cheese, which the cat body wasn’t sure it liked. Then I prowled the manor, looking for open doors or windows.
I found one on the third floor that I headbutt the screen out of, and I squeezed out the opening into the Chicago air.
Let me pause my daring escape narrative for a moment. Chicago in early November is a disgusting place to be. The rain is exceedingly frigid, and it rains a decent amount of the time. It was raining that day. I wished I’d had the forethought to check the weather before choosing this for my day of escape, but the screen was less permissive from the outside, so I was pretty damn committed now. It was probably in the lower 40s Fahrenheit, a temperature I don’t like even when I’m dressed for it. My fur was pretty warm, but it was definitely not waterproof, and the damper I got, the colder I felt.
I trotted over to a corner of the roof that was relatively close to a tree, and tried to judge the distance while I shivered. Could I make the jump? Then I looked down: a mistake. The window had been on the third floor, which meant I was on a roof covering the second floor. Twenty-odd feet isn’t too much to a human; enough to discourage you from jumping, but not enough to legitimately raise concerns of fatal injury. But I was less than two feet tall, making it more like a sixty-foot drop.
On the other paw, I was a cat. And cats are better at landing than humans…but I wasn’t sure if the instincts would take over in time to save me some broken limbs, which would really slow down the escape.
So I took my chance with the tree. I made it - barely - onto the limb I was aiming for, and skittered along the branch. Pouncing down to lower limbs was nerve-wracking but achievable. I clung to the lowest, still ten feet off the ground, and decided to risk it, aiming for a patch of mud that I knew I would hate when I was in it.
I did. I felt disgusting, and was already frozen to the bone. I stayed close to the walls of the manor when possible, making my way to the front and using it for shelter where I could. Following the driveway was easy enough, and I didn’t need to bother hiding.
There was a gate at the end, of course. It was too tall to jump, and did not have conveniently wide spaces between the steel-reinforced wood slats. In a lot of ways, Marcone’s manor was more fortress than house.
The gate flummoxed me for a moment until I decided to belly-crawl under it. It wasn’t like I was getting any cleaner, drier, or warmer standing around out here, so dragging my vulnerable stomach across a mud-filled rut on the side, inhaling some of the muddy water, that stuff sucked but everything would get better once I was out of there. I revised this assertion with the addendum “Once I was out of there and I could cough up or sneeze out whatever crap just got in my lungs.”
Finally I was free - free, homeless, and very unhappy with myself and my situation. I made my way out of Marcone’s neighborhood, headed towards…nothing, really. I ended up downtown two or three hours later, curling up under a butcher shop awning.
Probably not my best idea, but it smelled good and they had an awning.
I had a little nap, half-waking when the door opened a few times. The third or fourth time, it was a man in a butcher’s apron.
“Hello there,” he said, offering me a chunk of meat that was mostly fat and all raw. It tasted better than steak. The butcher stroked my head while I ate. “This is pretty miserable weather for you, isn’t it? I’d invite you in, but I can’t have a cat in the shop, it wouldn’t be clean. You should find a nice little old lady to take you home.”
I was shooed away gently.
I found a restaurant next, they were not so nice. Once the kitchen boy noticed me hanging out by the back door, he flicked a cigarette butt at me, scowling. I ran before his aim got any better.
There was another awning across the street. I watched the lights and made a dash for it when the cars were out of my way. I squeezed up against the wall, under the awning. Blocking the door would get me kicked out faster. I yowled piteously, the human equivalent to, “Let me innnnnnnnnnnnn.”
A twenty-something in an apron opened the door, looking around. She blinked at me. “That’s a lot of noise for just one cat! Oh, you’re soaked through…come in, honey.” She stepped aside and made kissy noises. I guess that works on some cats.
It looked like it worked on me, too, since I came inside. Once I got a look around, it was pretty obvious this was an art supply store, the kind I didn’t have much use for. (I go to stores for “The Art.” Haha. Anyway, I get my chalk much cheaper from other sources.)
“Let’s get you dry,” she muttered, and dug up a pair of towels. I could have kissed her, if I had lips. Instead, while she dried me off, I licked her hands. She giggled. “I have to go back to work, honey. You be good, don’t knock anything over or get muddy pawprints everywhere.” She rubbed my paws with the towel and threw the thing over me. I yowled and fought free while she laughed. Mister was way too dignified for me to pull this kind of crap. I thought only dogs had to suffer stupid stuff like this.
There were other cats in the store. I had smelled them as soon as I came in. Once I was dry and the cashier was finished torturing me, they came out: a female tabby and a female tortoiseshell.
~Big fella, aren’t you?~ the tabby purred, nosing my chest and rubbing alongside me. I yowled, mostly surprised that I understood her. It made sense: people couldn’t understand me, even though I knew what I was saying (and similarly knew it was coming out in cat-noises). Why wouldn’t cat’s hear me instead, and me understand them?
The girl scratched my head. “You guys getting along?” she asked, flashing a pretty smile. “This is Bomba,” she pointed to the tortoiseshell, “and that’s Pepper.”
I nuzzled the hand and got another giggle.
~Suck-up,~ the tortoiseshell snorted. I flicked her with my tail.
The girls weren’t really interesting conversationalists, but I learned a few things. They didn’t actually live in the store; the owner of the place took them home at night. They were sure I wouldn’t last. Tomcats didn’t get on with them, apparently, and they were more important to their human than any stray could ever be.
I didn’t plan to last. I just wanted warm and dry, for as long as the rainstorm. I fell asleep on the towel, missing the catnip mouse and the pillow that smelled like John. I could have brought the mouse with me, I realized belatedly, but that would feel like stealing from John.
The owner came out soon enough. “Our mascots appear to have multiplied,” she said, bemused. “Melissa…?”
Melissa, the cashier, said, “I couldn’t just leave him in the storm, Mrs. Stone.” Tricky girl probably checked under the tail while she was drying me off.
“No, of course,” Mrs. Stone agreed. “But what will you do after that? My girls don’t like toms, or I’d take him in.”
They continued talking quietly as the storm raged on, arguing about what would happen to me. Melissa kept offering names that kept getting turned down by Mrs. Stone, and of course I couldn’t stay here. They only trusted the cats around supplies when supervision - and quick cleanup - was available. There were no kennels or empty closets to lock me into, and the absence told me they wouldn’t have done that even if they could.
“Fine, I’ll take him home tonight,” Melissa said. “It’s supposed to rain on and off until morning, and I don’t want to be out in that any more than he does. But after that, I need to let him go or take him to a shelter; my boyfriend’s too allergic to put up with a cat for more than a night.”
Mrs. Stone winced. “I’d hate to send a pretty thing like this to a shelter. He’s probably too old to get adopted, though he seems perfectly intelligent.”
The spell had a lot to work with, with Mrs. Stone; she was clearly a cat lover. Still, I wondered if she would have been so reluctant to trust a shelter with any other cat. I also distrusted anyone who called me pretty.
Melissa took me home and had a small fight with her boyfriend, Aaron, until he realized I wasn’t staying. It probably helped that I looked so miserable, bedraggled from the fresh exposure to rain and still faintly muddy from my adventure in downtown Chicago.
I wondered if Marcone missed me. I wondered if I wanted him to.
I got a bath in the sink, an experience I really did not enjoy, but Aaron sneezed less afterward and I felt clean-dry instead of caked-with-mud-dry. A welcome change.
Melissa made me a nest out of towels and a few spare pillowcases. I still missed having a bed to myself, but this was pretty nice.
I closed my eyes and Lea was waiting. “Harry, why didn’t you just stay with Johnny?” she scowled. “He would have taken very good care of you. Now I have to keep a closer eye on you!”
“I don’t want him manipulated into things. I don’t want anyone manipulated into things!”
“Oh it’s not that bad! Hardly more than a suggestion, really. Say Marcone gets to thinking, completely unaided, ‘I’m bored.’ So instead of watching TV he sees a cat as a good amount of entertainment, until the owner is found. And a well-groomed,
pretty thing like you must have an owner, right? You’re neither of those now that you’ve dragged yourself through every puddle in Chicago, of course.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed any of what she had just said. But I didn’t want to fight it out. I just wanted to be left alone until the spell wore off.
“I’m trying to do you a favor, Harry,” Lea pouted. She was scratching behind my ears again. I yawned. “Just go back to sleep.”
“I thought I was asleep,” I said.
“Talking to me requires you be at a different level of sleep than the restful dreaming sleep. Dreams are the part of sleep you need the most.” She was petting my hair now, and all I could do was yawn. “Go back to sleep. Sweet dreams.” She vanished.
I dreamt of drowning in puddles, of the warm, dry pillow I had abandoned, and of playing fetch with Marcone. There were other dreams, but I didn’t remember them, except a vague impression of a large mouse watching me.