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Lust
The first time she saw Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett he was just a hot guy sharing space with her. She looked, hell yeah she did, he was like a glass of ice cold water on a particularly hot day in the desert and she was nervous enough about her meeting with Denning that she let herself go a little. That was her first mistake.
Her second came in Denning’s office after her mild panic attack at being called in there with the wet dream made flesh she had just been undressing in her lizard brain and she was a little off balance about it. She had honestly not considered that she’d ever even find out Mr. Delicious’ name let alone be hit with the dual sucker punch of not getting the job she wanted and then being told she was joining the elite task force everyone knew was insane as an open mole for the Governor. In her shock she had blurted out that stupid, stupid comment about not wanting to be a babysitter and, oh boy, had that not gone over well with her new boss.
Christ, her boss. Seriously, nobody outside of bad reality television and implausible rom-coms ever really wants a hot boss. Hot co-workers sure, but a boss? That way lays madness and a mire of unprofessionalism all wrapped up in a big red bow of power struggle and erotomania.
Which brings her to her third mistake, and this one is a doozy. She had then tipped over the line from idle fantasy into a school-girl crush that she thought for about two seconds she was hiding well. Then she started seeing the amused-slash-pitying looks Kono and Chin were sliding her way and the studied blankness Steve would fall into whenever she would sway towards him physically or verbally.
It’s damn embarrassing because she is intelligent, experienced, and kick-ass all over, but the team all looks at her like she’s window dressing and they all seem to metaphorically pat her on the head like a cute little lap dog that thinks it’s a pit bull and oh-look-isn’t-she-darling!
The worst, absolute worst part is she can’t seem to stop. Sure she’s pushed aside her foolish notions of a grand romance, but she can’t prevent the instinctive gut clench she gets every time she catches sight of McGarrett’s purposeful stride or, especially humiliating, his humorous grin when he’s giving her shit alongside Danny. She’ll lose a few seconds here and there, distracted by Steve’s shoulders stretching his shirt, or his arms as he crosses them for intimidation purposes, or his lips shaping the syllables of Hawaiian words, or his eyes staring with intense focus at something, or, God, she needs to stop listing things. It’s just depressing.
Anyway, she’ll suddenly snap to, realizing she’s been staring in slack-jawed worship at (and this needs to be reiterated) her fucking boss. It is demeaning, mortifying, and hell on her self esteem because she is not this woman. She is not someone who loses her head over an unattainable dream to the detriment of her effectiveness, her reputation, and her self-respect.
All of this leads up to her fourth and, hopefully, final mistake. By getting focused on Steve’s physical attractiveness she is criminally, idiotically neglecting to concentrate on how very, extremely, terrifyingly dangerous he is.
McGarrett is one of the world’s natural predators. He’s like a tiger. A tiger is a truly gorgeous thing; the gleaming coat, the jewel-like eyes, the stalking grace of raw power harnessed into glorious living machinery. One can get lost gazing upon such overwhelming beauty. But if one gets caught up in looking ravenously at such perfection, one makes the fatal mistake of forgetting that perfection is watching just as ravenously back.
Steve doesn’t trust Lori. He told her that to her face her very first day on the job. She got so caught up in her moronic desire that she only barely registered his awesome intelligence, analytical and tactical skill, incredibly thorough and lethal training, and his sheer vindictiveness.
Steve will never, ever forget that Lori is not his choice but the Governor’s animal. Lori herself might forget, but it will lurk in the corners of Steve’s mind until the end of time. As a result, he cannot possibly ever trust her as completely as the rest of his team. He’s just not made for it.
If Lori can’t get over her fascination with Steve’s looks, she’s going to get complacent. She’s going to underestimate him. She is, in effect, going to trust that he won’t hurt her, won’t sacrifice her for the good of his chosen family, which he would do in a heartbeat without mercy or remorse. She is going to get caught up gawking longingly at the tiger and miss how he is gazing calculatingly back.
And then she’ll be prey.
So yeah, Lust.
What a bitch.
Envy
Lori has a pretty healthy view of herself. She isn’t vain or narcissistic, but she also isn’t given to false modesty either. She knows her strengths and she admits her weaknesses. She hones the former and tries to overcome the latter. As a psychologist and profiler, a professional reader of human emotions and motivations, she knows the danger of tipping the balance between too much and too little. She works at this. It is a skill she’s constantly updating and maintaining.
She’s a small woman, she knows this. She describes herself as wiry when she needs to feel strong and petite when she needs to feel pretty. She’s short, she has a body that has only slight curves, and she has a small pointed face with big eyes that’s been described to her as ‘kittenish’ by more than one lover.
So, to overcome her natural slightness, she works hard. She runs, she trains, she lifts weights, she spars with far bigger people in hand to hand, and she makes it her business to know every weapon she puts her hands on inside and out. In short, she is small, cute, blond, and she is a fucking badass chick. So there.
She works hard in other areas too. She knows her looks are both an asset and a detriment. She can rock the hell out of a honeypot undercover gig when she has to. She can make the good ole boys she inevitably has to work with grudgingly admit she’s way more than a pretty face when she needs to. She’s excellent at her overall job and there are few better in her area of expertise. She gets respect for it all. She earns respect for it all. She is just that good.
Officer Kono Kalakaua is better.
Kono is also a small woman, though she has inches on Lori in height. She too has a slim body with minimal curves, but where Lori is sometimes referred to as scrawny, no one would ever describe Kono as anything but athletic. Lori has a pale waifish look to her. Kono is a golden goddess of health and strength. Lori could never work an undercover assignment that wasn’t a submissive of some sort. Kono could be a anything from a resigned victim to a sultry geisha to a particularly attractive muscle –(wo)man.
Lori is tough, but Kono…..
Kono has a round-house kick that would drop a Mack truck and leave it nursing a severe concussion. Lori is good with a gun, but Kono is a fucking elite sniper. She can shoot a dime from 500 yards and then put a hole through George Washington’s head on a dollar bill another 50 yards along two seconds later. Kono has no fear. She will jump any distance, tackle any suspect, and take on any comers that are stupid enough to underestimate her. Then she’ll pick herself up, dust herself off, and deliver a grin that is half exhileration, half laid back charm, and all infectious joy.
Kono has to prove herself, sure, all women in law enforcement do, but Kono never has to prove herself more than once. Lori has to do it over and over and over….
The most infuriating thing about all of it is that while Lori has been busting her hump in her chosen profession since she decided she wanted to be an FBI agent while she was still in high school, Kono’s status as a super-cop is her second choice. Kono had been a champion pro-surfer since the age of fifteen. That’s what she would still be doing if she hadn’t blown her knee. Which means Kono is a year and a half into her second career and she is just as infuriatingly successful as the first time around already. Also, for an extra ego slam, if anyone is interested in the math, Kono is a whole three years younger than Lori on top of it all.
It makes Lori positively seethe with jealousy.
So she watches from the sidelines as the men on her team treat Kono as one of the guys while never insinuating she is anything other than all woman. Kono never gets mocking once-overs from the team, not even when she’s dripping wet and wearing a barely there bikini. Nobody ever hints that Kono would dress as a slutty anything, and nobody ever calls her Wonder Woman as a joke.
The awful thing is that Kono is so nice. She is the one teammate who has tried to welcome Lori to the taskforce with genuine enthusiasm. She’s cheerful, funny, thoughtful, and empathetic to all and Lori feels so small next to her because Lori can’t help but hate her fucking guts a little bit.
Kono is the golden girl of Five-0. Lori wants it to be her.
Why can’t it be her?
Pride
Lori hates Chin Ho Kelly.
She hates, hates, hates him and if anyone ever finds out they’ll lynch her from the top of the Palace as a warning to all who would dare to despise a man who had sacrificed his career, his personal life, and his honor to protect a loved one. Lori has heard how Chin had had it pretty rough for a pretty long time, but since he’s been exonerated he is a living legend among Hawaii’s cop community. Everybody loves and admires him. Everybody says how the respect of Chin Ho Kelly is worth having because a man who would give it all up for his principles is exactly the kind of man whose opinion matters.
Lori loathes him.
Chin is calm and unruffled. He’s handsome and stoic. He’s competent, reliable, experienced, and efficient. He’s one of the best law enforcement officers Lori has ever worked with and he pings every one of her nerves just by looking at her with those serene, fathomless eyes. He’s like a wise kung-fu master or something, a dispenser of age-old wisdom and knowledge. He’s fucking Yoda.
And just like Yoda, Chin isn’t just a caring teacher. He rides an awesome Harley. He wields a shot-gun like a goddamn video game character. He rocks a pair of Ray Bans like he’s being sponsored to look cool as hell. He keeps up with two SEALs tracking a hit man in the frigging jungle and comes back with both sailors recounting with admiration how he hadn’t panicked over that tripwire he’d nearly broken. He’s not just the tech support for Five-0 who happens to also be the older father figure as well. He does more than just hold his own. He is impressive.
He is unimpressed with Lori.
Of course, the first thing anyone ever says about Chin is how Zen he is. The first thing Lori ever says about Chin is how Zen he is. Nobody would believe her if she mentioned what she really thought. Because the absolute last thing anybody ever describes Chin as is judgmental, but Lori knows he is. Oh, is he ever. He certainly judges the hell out of Lori.
The first time she had ever really worked alone with Chin was for that pointless ambush in the motel room they had to sit through. His comment of ‘You know, you’re a lot like Steve.’ as she’d prowled the room hadn’t seemed like an insult until a few days later when she had come back from lunch just in time to hear Danny yelling at Steve about not waiting for backup again.
‘Why can’t you just wait five freaking minutes?! You have absolutely no patience! How were you ever a sniper?! Huh? You weren’t were you? You were actually the waterboy weren’t you? Weren’t you?!’
‘I was not Danny, and I have patience when I need to! This time, I didn’t need to!’
‘Oh my—did you—are you—Chin! Help me out here!’
‘Sorry brah, Danny’s right. You couldn’t wait for water to boil. You’d stand over the pot and stir it with a spoon before just ordering takeout.’
‘I hate you both.’
Lori had gone directly to her office, closed the door, and sat at her desk staring at nothing for a good fifteen minutes while her chicken and avocado melt had roiled in her stomach like it was doing a samba. Because she had gotten why Chin had looked at her like she was crazy when she had babbled like an idiot about Steve (hey, she was still in her juvenile smitten phase then), but she hadn’t realized that his comparison of her to their boss was a subtle dig at her expense. It made her listen a lot more closely to Chin’s throwaway remarks and she realized his idle observations were almost always negative and almost always about her.
It stings. It stings a lot because how can she defend herself against such seemingly innocuous comments? She would look like a fruit loop, paranoid and overly sensitive to nonexistent criticism. It is ridiculous for the new girl to object to the most senior veteran on the team calling her ‘kid’. It’s silly for her to point out that Chin never really looks at her when he’s discussing some point of interest he’s dug up with them all around the tech table. Who else has even noticed that Chin always seems to go still when she speaks as if he’s just waiting for her to shut up before paying attention again?
It’s ludicrous. It’s a persecution complex. It’s all in her head. She could hear every objection any of the others would make to her claims ringing in her head every time Chin executes one of his barely there snubs. There’s no defense against it.
That’s why every time Chin looks at her with his expression of non-judgmental judgment her spine gets a little straighter, her hate burns a little brighter, and her uncertainty ratchets up another notch. Because everyone knows that the respect of Chin Ho Kelly is something to be proud of.
So what does it mean that she doesn’t have it?
Wrath
Possibly her most visceral reaction, her most powerful sin, is all for Danny. It kind of makes sense, because, well, he’s Danny, and strong emotion just seems to cling to him. All her other sins; Lust, Envy, Pride, they all pale in comparison to the burning, freezing, red-cold Wrath she feels when faced with Detective Danny Williams.
Danny is a short guy, okay, he’s barely a hair taller than Lori herself, and as previously stated, Lori is small even for a woman. Physically, Danny should be unassuming and unnoticeable, but he is decidedly not. Not even a little bit.
Danny is like the sun. He shines brighter, burns hotter, and he is inescapable when he’s in your line of sight. When Danny walks into a room, everyone turns to him like flowers starved after a long winter.
Kono’s wide smile stretches just that little bit wider for Danny. Chin’s cool gaze is a few degrees warmer for him. As for Steve, well, Steve just lights up when Danny is even mentioned. When Danny is actually physically present there is no hope of keeping his attention. If Danny is the sun then Steve is solar-powered. Steve is just more Steve when Danny’s around.
And Lori becomes less.
She’s less noticeable unless Danny notices her, then she’s the center of attention. Unfortunately, Danny seems to delight in poking fun at her. She’s the butt of every joke when Danny is around.
She is listened to less unless Danny listens to her, and God help her if he disagrees with her, especially if it’s just him, her, and Steve. If Danny has a differing viewpoint there is no hope of Steve going with her suggestion. Danny’s instincts, his observations, his conclusions, they all hold more weight than Lori’s just because they’re his.
It’s like she becomes a piece of furniture or another database or encyclopedia. She loses form or definition or something, a dim shadow of herself in the glare of Danny’s personality. It’s like she shifts down the visible spectrum and the others just kind of forget she’s there until she speaks or moves, and then they go back to ignoring she exists when she becomes still again.
Danny glows and Lori fades. Always.
So every time Danny strides into a room or his voice and hands take off on one of his diatribes Lori can feel the rush of honest to God rage like lava flowing through her veins. She wants to claw his bright blue eyes out. She wants to rip his tanned skin to shreds. She wants to beat his gilded head in until he lays unconscious and silent and his overwhelming thereness is gone.
She wants him gone.
She wants to never have to see Danny fucking Williams ever again. She doesn’t want to have to admit that his suggestions, gut feelings, and conclusions are better than hers. She doesn’t want to concede that she usually walks right into his little verbal traps and that his jokes are pretty damn clever actually. She especially doesn’t want to acknowledge that his dedication to his daughter, his team, his convictions are indicative of a truly stellar person and sexy as all hell.
As a defense to her diminishment in the face of Danny’s cult of personality she lets the whiteout fury slither through her senses. She indulges her fantasies of pulling Danny apart until there is nothing left for her to fall into. She nurses the cold fire of anger to prevent herself becoming just another acolyte, another of his fawning, worshipful subjects.
She doesn’t want to admit that her soul brightens in his presence even as her physical impact dwindles into pale insignificance.
She doesn’t want to be just another sun starved flower.
Greed
This is the big one because it encompasses the whole of the team. This is the one that plagues her constantly, the one that has its hooks good and tight in her guts and is never going to let go. This is the defining sin.
Lori wants, God, how she wants. It is consuming, driving, devouring this desire, this avarice. It twists her up, makes her clumsy and weak, makes her so very, very desperate. She doesn’t even recognize herself.
She might become immune to Steve’s beauty. She may one day be able to concede Kono’s superiority. She might slough off the hurt of Chin’s disregard. She may even, theoretically, be able to accept Danny’s magnetic pull and just fall into his orbit with her sense of self intact.
But she is never going to be able to shake this clawing, unbearable need to belong. She so, so wants to belong, to be one of them truly and completely. She wants these exceptional, extraordinary people to enfold her into their ranks, to point her out to less significant people and say, ‘Yes, she’s ours.’
She can see what they have, this tight-knit group of complementing individuals. She can see the bond of ohana glowing like strings of starlight, gossamer and ephemeral, between them, connecting them. It’s like being a beggar child in a Dickens novel pressing her nose to the glass to watch longingly as the happy, fortunate family has a picture-perfect Christmas dinner in the warmth and light as she stands cold and alone in the swirling, snow covered darkness.
It’s so cold on the outside looking in. She’s so very tired of being cold.
They love each other, it’s so obvious a blind man could see, and why not? Each of them is so amazing how could they not love each other? How could anybody not love them? How could she?
Because she does love them. She loves them all feverishly, these quality people. They are some of the best human beings she has ever had the privilege of knowing.
She wants them to love her back, but they don’t. She’s a year too late to the party. A party she hasn’t even been invited to, a party she’s gate crashed. They might never love her and it hurts so deeply she’s lost hope that she could ever accept her fate with equanimity.
Therefore she lives with her hunger and collects the rare and scattered crumbs of affection and approval tossed her way, always famished, ever yearning that she’ll be welcomed to the feast. She carries the Greed with her always as it balloons and shrinks within her, but never dissipates. It lives in her heart like a bloated, stinking thing, souring her enjoyment of her days and torturing the solitude of her nights. It is like a shark swimming through her essence, constantly moving, circling, hunting, ever and eternally insatiable.
She knows it will be with her until the day she finally abandons an untenable situation.
Of course, there is always the possibility that she will be accepted into the inner circle. That outcome technically, theoretically exists. However, the longer she has to wait for what she wants the bigger her need becomes until she isn’t sure if her voraciousness can be sated.
Would she ever be content with equality or would she never be happy until she is the fixed point they all revolve around? Would even that impossibility be enough? Would anything ever be enough?
No.
Heaven’s Light
There is one point of salvation for her. One thing that makes the dark, filthy sins die away, at least for a little while. There is one person who provides shelter, escape, sanctuary from her own personal purgatory.
Max.
The first time Lori encountered Five-0’s go-to ME, he had appeared as if by magic swathed in the type of cloak and dagger disguise you only found in noir films and penny dreadfuls from the 30s and 40s. Steve had called Max Inspector Gadget and he had really looked the part of the cartoon spy. Lori had been a little taken aback. It hadn’t really screamed ‘dedicated professional’ to her.
She had been so wrong.
The next few times she saw Max she was with one of the other members of the team and Max had been courteous, precise, and, mostly importantly to Lori, completely equal in his treatment of everyone in the room. There had been no difference in his address to her as to anyone else. After the first few weeks of complex inner turmoil Lori had been suffering through, such simplicity of regard had been like manna from Heaven.
The first time she had entered Max’s lair on her own, there had been no real pressing need to do so. Danny had wanted to file the paperwork, but there was some sort of confusion between his notes and Max’s report. After a brutal six hours surrounded by all four of her teammates, Lori had volunteered to run the paperwork down to Max and then bring it over personally to the admin offices.
Danny looked at her doubtfully.
“Are you sure Weston? I can just e-mail him since he has this bizarre thing about phones. He’s pretty prompt with this stuff.”
Lori shrugged.
“I can go down. I’ve been stuck in my office all morning, I could use a break anyway, stretch my legs. It’s no trouble.”
Danny had shrugged back and handed her the file.
“Okay then, knock yourself out.”
Lori had taken the offering and high-tailed it out of the fishbowl of Five-0 HQ. The minute the glass doors had closed behind her and she had taken a step down the hallway she could feel the tension start to lessen in her shoulders. She strolled to the elevators and spent a half minute in blissful solitude during the hushed ride to the basement.
When she stepped from the elevator into the cool air of the ME’s office she had heard the most beautiful sound. She had tiptoed down the hallway, hunting the strains of Beethoven she could hear, astonished when she reached Max’s lab and could see him sitting at an upright piano with his fingers flying over the keys. She’d slipped through the door, stepping hesitantly, helplessly closer, trying to envelope herself in the soothing, crystalline music.
Lori loves music. She adores it, all different genres of it, will listen to any song or piece at least once. There is little that can relax her more than to recline on her couch, fit her obscenely expensive headphones around her ears, and lose herself in the swelling notes. It’s one of the few things that no matter how hard she tries she can never master. She has negative talent with all instruments, her singing voice is like the call of an elderly crow with a touch of laryngitis, and she has no ability to wrestle with the mysteriousness of sheet music.
But oh, how she loves it.
Max is good, he’s incredible, and he can play anything. He also doesn’t mind playing with an audience and, as Lori would scurry to his sanctum more and more often to get some relief from her exhausting co-workers, he also would take requests. They began to make a game of it too. Lori would try to stump him and Max would never be stumped.
He plays everything she can throw at him; ragtime, doo wop, classical, bubblegum pop, jazz, rock, punk, everything she can think of. Once, he had even done a rendition of Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’ that should have sounded awful but had nearly brought tears to her eyes. His reimagining of Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ is a thing of beauty. His interpretation of Edith Piaf’s ‘La Vie en Rose’ is sublime.
Now, Lori is making time to visit with Max at least once a day whether there is a case related need or not. After all the energy she has to expend deciphering and dissecting the machinations and motivations of her teammates, hanging out with Max is incredibly soothing. Max doesn’t have hidden agendas. He doesn’t look down on her for being new or a little out of sync. Max takes her at face value and likes her just because she’s her.
She is so grateful to him for it.
Of course, Max doesn’t judge her because he doesn’t care if anyone judges him. Max is an unabashed geek. He’s a little strange, a little odd and he makes no apologies for it. He embraces his peculiarities and just lets the incomprehension of others roll off of him. He even seems to pity those who don’t have knowledge of any of his many and varied interests since he is well aware of what they’re missing out on.
Max loves all things nerd. He watches sci-fi. He knows every episode of every Star Trek series and has encyclopedic knowledge of the details of all of them. He uses Firefly quotes in his everyday life and has even shared his DVDs of the show with her, converting her as well. They have fun talking Douglas Adams and Monty Python. He educates her on the Marvel-verse and tutors her on the finer points of Batman: The Animated Series.
It might be possible that Lori is a bit of a geek too.
The best part is that Max understands without her having to say anything how hard it is to be the outsider on Five-0. It doesn’t matter if they had been playing mental chess while reminiscing about their favorite Buffy moments just that morning. The minute Lori steps into his office in the company of one or all of the others, she becomes Agent Weston to be addressed with respect and appreciation for her rank.
It is so wonderful to be called by her title in front of her teammates she often feels like weeping in relief. She does routinely give Max a hug and a chocolate bar in thanks for his passive defense on her behalf. He always smiles and winks extravagantly at her on these occasions to make her laugh.
The whole theme movie night at Max’s debacle was really fucking sweet for Lori. She had already been tickled over it because Max had made a point of putting her e-mail address first in his mailing list and she had been smug at the subtle insult to the others even though none of them had probably even noticed. It was a tiny piece of vindication.
Their little pantomime for Steve and Danny in autopsy when Max got annoyed about them ignoring his invite to his party had been totally awesome. Lori had stolen back later to recount the little whispered flailing conversation between the bewildered men and had been just in time to hear the two of them try to quiz Max on what they did to piss him off from the Camaro.
Max had had to hang up so quickly because the two of them were hunched, red faced and shaking, with tears streaming down their cheeks and hands clapped tightly over their mouths at the obvious dismay coming over the line. When the call had disconnected the two of them had had to lean on each other as their laughter pealed through the whole department.
Walking away on Max’s arm in their fantastic costumes as Steve and Danny had gawped at them foolishly had been icing on the cake really.
Yes, Max is definitely the best part of being on Five-0. He is fast becoming Lori’s best friend, something she hasn’t had since her days in the college dorms. They’re thick as thieves and nobody even knows. It makes their united front against the cool kids that much better.
Of course, it can’t all be sunshine and roses. Lori wouldn’t be Lori if she couldn’t find some hidden source of secret angst. It’s inevitable really.
Max is so integral to her happiness at work that his effect just seems to spill over into the other spaces of her life. They have a standing date to watch Fringe on Friday nights since neither of them has the time or energy to go trolling for other singles.
Any day she can get home, sluice off the day’s grime in her shower, and bolt down a meager dinner before nine o’clock will find her turning on her current favorite tunes and booting up her laptop to play online games with Max and their gaming buddies. She’ll always have a little chat window open just for Max’s comments so she won’t miss anything he says.
When she had first met him and at the beginning of their friendship, Lori had looked at Max and seen what everyone else saw; a short Asian guy with geometric glasses, a round face and body, and a somewhat stilted manner. It wasn’t until they had really started to gel that she began to notice other things too.
Max has a very mobile mouth. It can quirk in amusement, purse in thought, or curve in sly glee. His true grin of bright delight would flash on like a flash of a popping light bulb and could vanish into the tucked in corners of his blank flat line of lip just as quickly, which it never did for Lori. Max wouldn’t do that to her the way he did it to others. His Cheshire smile would come even quicker and melt away like slow molasses when it was just the two of them.
His eyes, obsidian dark and hidden behind the glare of his lenses were actually the rich brown of high quality chocolate. Those eyes were so expressive if you knew what to look for. Most people missed the varied and delicate shifts of scorn and mischief that seemed to be Max’s default state with most people. For Lori, they twinkled with shared humor, crinkled at the corners in warm companionship, and softened in sympathy on the particularly hard days when she’s fled to him almost in tears due to some thoughtless cruelty one of the others had inflicted.
It’s getting so Lori’s motivation to drag herself out of bed and to work is less about catching bad guys and more about the prospect of seeing Max. The worst days of her current life are the ones where Five-0 is running itself so ragged that Lori has barely any time to eat or dash to the ladies room let alone make a stealth visit to autopsy. Those are the days she just wants to stand in the middle of HQ and scream at the top of her lungs that they could all go and fuck themselves because she quit!
Slowly but surely Max and his acceptance, his freely given friendship are washing away her sins. He’s cleansing her of the sticky tar of unhappiness oozing around her. He’s balm to soothe her pitted and beaten soul. He is fast becoming her very favorite person, her special person.
Lori is beginning to be more and more positive that Dr. Max Bergman is the best thing to ever happen to her. Period.
In the mornings, in the sleepy haze of not quite wakefulness just before her alarm begins to shriek at her to get up and strap on her metaphorical armor in preparation for another day of battle, she’ll blink groggily. She’ll open her eyes to the rosy dawn light creeping into her room and stretch and revel in the clean shining hope that she isn’t the only one in this. She isn’t alone.
She’ll cuddle her pillow close and drift dreamily in that in-between place where all is possible and everything she could ever want or need is right there for the taking. As the cobwebs begin to clear without her consent as cobwebs are wont to do, Lori will smile as her optimism solidifies. Every new day she lets go of her sins and embraces her grace a little more.
Then the alarm will begin to blare and she’ll slap it off and roll to her feet to march determinedly head-on towards the day.
She’ll march ever onwards, ever closer, ever towards Max and she will hope with all her heart that he is marching towards her too.