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Ficlet: untitled Kate Lockley goes on summer vacation thingie, PG (cliffhanger); fandom: Angel
Not mine, as always. Written for the summer holiday/vacation challenge at womenverse.
800 words or so. no spoilers that I can think of (I mean, it's totally a Torchwood crossover, but that's not a spoiler, and that doesn't really impact it right now)
also, been a good long while since I wrote or saw Kate, so apologies for any mishaps/oocness (and apologies to Cardiff, I don't know it that well in the '00s)
As a rule, Kate Lockley didn't do summer vacations. She found them tedious, pointless, and always far more stressful than her actual job (facing down a suspect with a gun pointed at your face is nothing compared to a screaming child in the seat next to yours). There was always more paperwork piled on her desk after a vacation--even if it was one day off to nurse a concussion or the bruises left over from getting shot in her bullet-proof vest.
Staying away for an entire week wasn't a good idea. Two weeks? Her desk would drown.
But when the captain says you go, you go.
Two weeks in July, she could do it. She swore to herself she could do it, but she still dragged her feet, tried to get out of it--not even getting the collar on one of the local drug kings got her an out.
Four days into July, Kate was home, alone. And there was nothing else she had to do for fourteen days.
"I am going to die," she muttered as she stared at the suddenly too-small space and tried to think of all the places she could go to get the hell away from solitude.
OK, she wasn't going to die. She was just going to leave, hit up a bar or a beach. Get out of the apartment, go for a walk--none of which would get her any closer to putting the several cases sitting on her desk to bed. The captain had said Smith would handle most of them, but to Kate they were her cases, and damn if someone else was going to do her job.
It was out of her hands, she reminded herself. Someone would probably call her a workaholic, accuse her of not knowing how to have fun. Kate knew how to have fun--usually, it was with a suspect across the table from her and the evidence to back her supposition up.
Kate didn't care about the label, she did care about results. She also cared about the captain's threat to have her walking a beat should she show her face anytime near the precinct in the next two weeks.
That meant getting out of L.A. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to resist.
With a sigh, Kate tried to decide where to go and failed. So she decided to be arbitrary about it, and called up the first travel agent in the phonebook to ask about their current specials.
-=-
Wales. Kate wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't been talked into the ticket to Wales, but she still wasn't entirely sure the whole thing wasn't just some nightmare fragment that she wasn't ever going to get out. In five minutes, she'd wake up at her desk and drink ice-cold coffee, trade insults with Smith or Finkelstein, and try to file yet another form in triplicate about expenditures and suspect rights.
But five minutes lapsed, and she was still standing in Cardiff, staring across the Bay at the newly-built Barrage that had been a source of complaint amongst several of her fellow passengers on the bus ride down from the airport.
If it was newly-built. Kate wasn't exactly up on her Welsh architecture and history. She was worse than some of the tourists with their gigantic guidebooks and ugly sunhats. Not even a tourist, just an interloper. She made a face at the bay, then turned away and began walking towards what looked like a bar. She could do with a drink.
As she walked, she took note of the people around her. They were a mixture of types, and she wondered if they would look just as alien in L.A.
Of course, she was the alien here, she reminded herself as she stepped out of the sunlight and into the dimly-lit tavern with too many ll's in its name. Her eyes hadn't adjusted before a man was standing nearby, his lips spread in a vastly over-confident smile.
"Buy you a drink?"
"No."
Perhaps it was the glare she gave him, but she doubted it. He looked prone to push the matter, but just then his watch beeped and he shrugged and stepped back to let her pass.
It wasn't that he wasn't her type, Kate reflected as she took the chance to appreciate his exit (swirling coats didn't usually seem practical, but it fit his quick grin and the cleft in his chin in some indefinable way). She was just on vacation, which meant no complications.
"Whiskey and soda," she ordered as she took a still-warm bar stool, and began flipping through the brochure one of the bus attendants had thrust at her.
The travel agent had given her a whole itinerary, and she was paying for the damned thing so she ought to at least try to go.
It was just as well that Kate hadn't really convinced herself with that argument.
-tbc-
800 words or so. no spoilers that I can think of (I mean, it's totally a Torchwood crossover, but that's not a spoiler, and that doesn't really impact it right now)
also, been a good long while since I wrote or saw Kate, so apologies for any mishaps/oocness (and apologies to Cardiff, I don't know it that well in the '00s)
As a rule, Kate Lockley didn't do summer vacations. She found them tedious, pointless, and always far more stressful than her actual job (facing down a suspect with a gun pointed at your face is nothing compared to a screaming child in the seat next to yours). There was always more paperwork piled on her desk after a vacation--even if it was one day off to nurse a concussion or the bruises left over from getting shot in her bullet-proof vest.
Staying away for an entire week wasn't a good idea. Two weeks? Her desk would drown.
But when the captain says you go, you go.
Two weeks in July, she could do it. She swore to herself she could do it, but she still dragged her feet, tried to get out of it--not even getting the collar on one of the local drug kings got her an out.
Four days into July, Kate was home, alone. And there was nothing else she had to do for fourteen days.
"I am going to die," she muttered as she stared at the suddenly too-small space and tried to think of all the places she could go to get the hell away from solitude.
OK, she wasn't going to die. She was just going to leave, hit up a bar or a beach. Get out of the apartment, go for a walk--none of which would get her any closer to putting the several cases sitting on her desk to bed. The captain had said Smith would handle most of them, but to Kate they were her cases, and damn if someone else was going to do her job.
It was out of her hands, she reminded herself. Someone would probably call her a workaholic, accuse her of not knowing how to have fun. Kate knew how to have fun--usually, it was with a suspect across the table from her and the evidence to back her supposition up.
Kate didn't care about the label, she did care about results. She also cared about the captain's threat to have her walking a beat should she show her face anytime near the precinct in the next two weeks.
That meant getting out of L.A. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to resist.
With a sigh, Kate tried to decide where to go and failed. So she decided to be arbitrary about it, and called up the first travel agent in the phonebook to ask about their current specials.
-=-
Wales. Kate wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't been talked into the ticket to Wales, but she still wasn't entirely sure the whole thing wasn't just some nightmare fragment that she wasn't ever going to get out. In five minutes, she'd wake up at her desk and drink ice-cold coffee, trade insults with Smith or Finkelstein, and try to file yet another form in triplicate about expenditures and suspect rights.
But five minutes lapsed, and she was still standing in Cardiff, staring across the Bay at the newly-built Barrage that had been a source of complaint amongst several of her fellow passengers on the bus ride down from the airport.
If it was newly-built. Kate wasn't exactly up on her Welsh architecture and history. She was worse than some of the tourists with their gigantic guidebooks and ugly sunhats. Not even a tourist, just an interloper. She made a face at the bay, then turned away and began walking towards what looked like a bar. She could do with a drink.
As she walked, she took note of the people around her. They were a mixture of types, and she wondered if they would look just as alien in L.A.
Of course, she was the alien here, she reminded herself as she stepped out of the sunlight and into the dimly-lit tavern with too many ll's in its name. Her eyes hadn't adjusted before a man was standing nearby, his lips spread in a vastly over-confident smile.
"Buy you a drink?"
"No."
Perhaps it was the glare she gave him, but she doubted it. He looked prone to push the matter, but just then his watch beeped and he shrugged and stepped back to let her pass.
It wasn't that he wasn't her type, Kate reflected as she took the chance to appreciate his exit (swirling coats didn't usually seem practical, but it fit his quick grin and the cleft in his chin in some indefinable way). She was just on vacation, which meant no complications.
"Whiskey and soda," she ordered as she took a still-warm bar stool, and began flipping through the brochure one of the bus attendants had thrust at her.
The travel agent had given her a whole itinerary, and she was paying for the damned thing so she ought to at least try to go.
It was just as well that Kate hadn't really convinced herself with that argument.
-tbc-
no subject
no subject
I have some ideas, but they're a bit nebulous.