Chapter Text
Part 1
The singing took him by surprise.
In all the years he'd known her, he couldn't ever recall hearing Lana sing. She might have howled along at a Dave Matthews Band concert once or twice while they were still in grad school, but that was about it. And if he'd heard her sing then, he must have been too stoned out of his mind to notice how flat-out bad she was at it, because the sounds emanating from the upstairs bathroom window could not properly be called "singing," not by any stretch of the imagination.
Chuck paused on the sidewalk outside Lana's house and listened. The caterwauling rose in pitch and intensity, and he winced. "Opera?" he muttered. "Is she standing in the shower and singing opera? I didn't know she had it in her." He shook his head, drops of sweat flying from his face and close-cropped hair, and climbed the porch steps.
His legs felt rubbery beneath him, fatigued from the long run. Eight miles was probably overdoing it, but this, the first Saturday after school was out for the summer, had beckoned him out of bed for a long run by the lake. His standing date to walk his old friend's dog at the end of his usual Saturday morning run was just an added bonus on this perfect, gorgeous June day.
On the porch, Chuck paused. Standing date or not, he didn't want to just barge into the house and frighten Mira, Lana's four-year-old daughter, who was probably playing in the living room while her mother showered. He tapped on the front door and peeked through the open window next to it. "Hey, Mira!" he called. "It's Uncle Chuck. Can I come in?"
He cocked his ear for the sound of small feet, and sure enough, a moment later Mira pushed aside the living room curtains and pressed her little face up against the screen. "Hey, Uncle!" she beamed, and darted to the door, leaving a sticky smear of…something…behind on the screen.
Mira unlatched the screen door and then the front door from the inside. Chuck pulled it open and scooped the little girl up in his arms. "Hey, Sweet Pea! How's my girl?"
Mira giggled and tried to push away from him. "You stink, Uncle!"
"I bet I do!" He pressed his sweaty face to hers. "I'm all wet, too!"
"Ew, gross!" Mira scrabbled down and headed for the kitchen. "Want some juice? Mama says I should always offer 'freshments to people who come over."
Chuck smiled. "Juice would be fine. Want some help?"
"No, I can do it!"
"Okay, if you're sure." Chuck toed off his running shoes inside the door and bent to stretch his hamstrings. "Where's Roofus?"
"Upstairs," Mira called from the kitchen. Her voice was muffled, as if she were half-buried in the refrigerator -- which probably wasn't far from the truth. Mira was small for her age, just like her mother, but whip-smart and resourceful and determined enough to do most things for herself.
Chuck stepped over to the bottom of the staircase and glanced up. Roofus, Lana's energetic Irish Setter, was perched in front of the closed bathroom door at the top of the stairs, tail thumping against the hardwood floor. When the "singing" started up from the shower again, Roofus tilted his head back and let out a howl that might have been called harmonic, if only the singing itself had been in any way melodic.
With a soft laugh, Chuck ambled into the kitchen, where Mira was seated at the breakfast bar with two glasses of orange juice and only a small spill. "I don't think Roofus likes your Mom's singing."
Mira took a long drink and wiped her face on the back of her hand. "That's not Mom," she said. "Mom's out in the garden."
Chuck paused with his glass halfway to his lips. "Then who's in the shower?"
"That's Aunt Katie. She's here visiting." Mira sipped her juice. "She's nice. I like her. Roofus loooooves her." The girl rolled her eyes. "Silly dog."
Another ear-splitting aria drifted down from the upstairs bathroom, and after it, another long howl. "I didn't know Lana had company," he said, and strolled back into the living room to peer up the stairs.
Several things happened all at once, then, and years later, Chuck would be hard-pressed to explain the sudden chaos. The dog, spying Chuck at the bottom of the stairs, jumped up and turned around to greet him with a series of happy barks. At the sound of the barking, the bathroom door flew open and a petite redheaded woman wearing an even more petite blue towel charged out. "Mira!" she called. "Are you all right?"
She started toward the stairs, caught sight of Chuck standing at the bottom in his running shorts and bare feet...and screamed.
Caught between two urges -- one, to explain his sudden presence to the woman in the towel, and two, to fling himself at her tiny, gorgeous feet -- Chuck froze.
Mira came running, juice in hand. "It's okay, Aunt Katie!" she cried. "It's just Uncle Chuck!"
Not expecting to find Chuck immobilized by shock, Mira slammed into the backs of his knees, knocking him forward onto the staircase. The juice glass went flying.
Roofus barked again at the scene unfolding in front of him. He darted toward Chuck, then back toward the bathroom, and the woman in the towel, self-consciously adjusting her too-small garment, tripped over the confused dog and fell in a heap at the top of the stairs.
Chuck and Katie regarded each other for a long, charged moment, her flashing blue eyes colliding with his warm brown ones across the span of a hardwood staircase.
As one, they both took a breath and bellowed. "LANA!"
The back door slammed open and Lana sailed through the kitchen and into the living room, brown curls flying. "What the --" She stopped and stared. "Oh."
Mira disentangled herself from Chuck's long legs and stood up. "We forgot to tell Aunt Katie about Uncle Chuck," she said.
"We sure did, kiddo." Lana laughed. Chuck and Katie both turned to stare at her. "Well, this is awkward. Um, Katie, this is my friend Chuck, who teaches English at the high school. He takes my dog to the dog park sometimes on Saturdays."
Katie, still face-down at the top of the staircase, gave a curt nod. "Nice to meet you," she said. Her whiskey voice sent a tingle down Chuck's spine.
"And Chuck, this is my friend Katie from college. She's going to be working at Delta Labs starting in a couple weeks, but she's staying here while her new townhouse is being repainted."
Chuck gazed back at the redheaded, blue-eyed -- and freckled, he noticed with a jolt -- woman sprawled in front of him. "Nice to meet you," he murmured, and then, perhaps because he'd momentarily lost his mind in the face of all that glowing, freckled skin, he smiled. "You have a lovely singing voice."
Roofus, unconcerned by the chaos around him and wearing a happy doggy grin, hopped down the stairs and began to lap up the spilled juice.
-END Part 1-