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Erin wakes up feeling kind of funny.
She’s commandeered the top floor of the firehouse, mainly because it’s the quietest. Sure, it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but there’s a floor between her and the lab to make it feel less like she was living at her job, and more importantly, another between her and Patty’s floor. She stayed with her while they were painting, and Patty can only fall asleep to Ken Burns documentaries. Erin knows more about the First Battle of Bull Run than anyone should ever have to.
The top floor means she gets a lot of street noise bouncing up through the canyon of the streets, even in the shorter buildings of Tribeca. But she also gets the morning light streaming through her windows first thing in the morning, waking her up for a fresh new day of the best job of her life (or afterlife, ha! Good one, Erin. Gotta remember that one for later).
Her alarm goes off again.
Erin blinks at the ceiling. That’s weird. She never hits snooze. She practices excellent sleep hygiene (also why she has never had a TV in her bedroom, and therefore why she doesn’t have a weird crush on Alice Roosevelt). Could she have dreamed she awoke before? Has she experienced sleep paralysis?
Erin wiggles her toes and sighs. Like she’d be so lucky. She slaps the alarm, and presses her shoulders back against the mattress. There is something to be said for sleeping in, she thinks, eyes half-lidded, feeling the sunlight warm against her face. Her hair bunched around her shoulders, freshly-shaven legs sliding across the clean sheets, the smell of detergent and a little bit of sweat, the heavy quilt pressing down just enough so she can feel the weight. She moans softly.
Her eyes snap open. Well, that’s new.
She’s gotten in the habit of quick showers – they haven’t replaced the hot water heater yet, and it takes for-freaking-ever to heat up. And Abby insists on buying these weird soaps off of Etsy. Erin never knows whether she’s going to smell like grape jam or fresh erasers. But this new one wasn’t too bad, kind of lavender and cinnamon, and maybe chilies? There’s something spicy in there, and it tickle-itches Erin’s skin as she chases the suds with the cool water. Funny, you wouldn’t think capsaicin would sell very well – isn’t it usually an irritant? She makes a note to look up any possible exfoliating properties later as she wraps a towel around herself.
Hey, Kevin figured out the order to use the washer and dryer! This towel’s so darned fluffy! Erin pets it for a minute. She’s so proud of him.
“Kevin?” she calls down the poleway. She has to congratulate him. And maybe it’s still early enough that she could get to the coffeemaker before him.
Abby appears in the poleway one floor down, wearing a brain-scanning helmet and an X-Files t-shirt old enough to serve its country. “He’s not here!” she shouts. “And where were you, huh? It’s almost 8:45!”
Erin winces. “Where is he, then?” she asks as she crosses to the stairs. “He does know we pay him, right?”
Abby shrugs. “He’s got a Skype-date with Michael.”
“Isn’t it almost midnight in Sydney?”
“Yeah, but he says his mom trusts Mike to stay up late just so long as he checks the locks and turns off the lights before he goes to bed.”
There is nothing she could say to that – doubly so now. “Nnrghru!” Erin says, pointing at the sad little coffeepot: short, stout, and most of all, empty.
“Early bird catches the worm,” Patty say from the couch, half-hidden behind an enormous atlas. She raises a mug in a mocking toast.
“Faint heart never won fair spectre, et cetera,” Abby mumbles from behind her desktop, having already departed the conversation for more mathematical climes.
Erin looks at the coffeepot despairingly. She’d had her heart set on it – sweet coffee, lubricant of the sciences! – and now, gone? She feels a weird squeezing in her chest.
A familiar honk and the grinding of the garage door opening below rises above the street noise.
Erin has a weird sensation under her feet, like what she’d read the effects of vertigo were like. She feels like she’s lost her depth perception; the next step might be ten inches or ten yards beneath. Her vision narrows to a pin, and then, like in an old movie, the aperture widens.
And there is Holtzmann, walking towards her, wiping her hands free of motor oil on an “I Survived the 2003 Blackout” shirt. She smells like an overheated engine, basil, and Oil of Olay. Half her hair is standing up more than usual, and one curl lies in the precise middle of her right eyebrow.
“Hi,” says Erin. And then she puts her hands on Holtzmann’s cheeks and kisses her.
“WHOA!” shouts Abby, jumping up and knocking over her stool. That makes Patty look up and scream, “WHEN DID THIS—“ and knock over her mug, which spills on the atlas, which makes Patty scream even louder.
“THAT WAS AN INTER-LIBRARY LOAN!”
“Calm down, calm down, it’s okay!” yells a panic-stricken Abby, grabbing the blanket from the back of the couch and dabbing at the pages. “I’m sure maps of Carpatho-Ukraine are actually really common!”
It’s then that Kevin arrives in his new favourite manner (hauling himself arm-over-arm up the pole until he finds the floor with the most people, usually). “Mike says hi,” he announces, and wanders off to the kitchen.
And in the middle of it all, Erin’s fingers bite tight into Holtzmann’s hips – Holtzmann’s soft, real, warm hips. Holtzmann looks back at Erin – a little confused maybe, but with her lips so soft and those eyes, god, those eyes, how has Erin never written a poem about that shade of blue! – and smiles.
Holtzmann’s lips were soft – Erin kisses her again, just to check – and she tastes a little bit like root beer. She can’t take her eyes off those lips, wet and shiny like that. She’s never seen that shade of pink before, like the inside of a rose before it opens. Holtzmann swallows, and Erin follows the line of her throat past a slash of silk ascot, down to the slope of her shoulder and to where freckled skin disappears again beneath blue oxford.
“You’re so hot.”
And Erin can’t help it, she blushes. Trust her not to be suave in a moment like this, when she can wrap her finger in one of Holtz’s curls. She watches the hair twist round and round and thinks about a barbershop pole. No matter how closely she watched, the illusion would always trick her brain. Was this Holtzmann’s hair around her finger, or Erin’s finger inside the curl?
“No, really, you’re very hot. Abby, feel this.”
Erin ducks her head against Holtzmann’s chest, cheek in the open V. Abby puts her hand on Erin’s forehead and listen, Erin loves Abby, always did, always would, sisterhood of the traveling jumpsuit and all that, but three’s a crowd, y'know? She raises her eyebrow at Abby in the beautiful ancient language of, ‘did you not see the sock on the door?’
“Oh jeez, she’s really burning up.”
Abby and Patty are trying to pull her away from Holtzmann. Fuck that. Erin clings on tight and tilts her hips, shimmying up Holtzmann’s legs until she’s wrapped around her waist, pelvis pressed flat to Holtz’s belly. Holtzmann makes a little noise back in her throat, almost so quiet no one else hears.
Erin’s new goal in life is to hear that noise again.
A succubus. Of course. Abby could never just get a nice G-rated ghost. No, she gets ectoplasm and undead neckbeards and unstoppable sex fiends. Wendy never had to deal with Casper getting all horny.
“That’s because Casper was, like, ten years old,” Patty reminds her.
Oh yeah. That was a weird story to tell kids, wasn’t it?
Anyway, it doesn’t take Abby long to figure out what had happened (she’s totally in the top four paranormal researchers of all time, ha! Gotta save that one to tell Erin once she’s restored to her right mind). She’s seen enough cheap horror films to recognize a succubus when one possesses her best friend. She should have guessed something was wrong when she saw Erin come downstairs wearing her sluttiest turtleneck.
Speaking of right mind, how are they going to get hers back? “All the books say Erin’s going to suck the life out of Jillian,” Patty says.
Holtzmann laughs from the couch, “what a way to go!” They’d managed to get Erin to quit the impression of creeping ivy by promising her she could stay on the couch with Holtzmann. Which reminded Abby:
“Hey, Gilbert! Hands where I can see them!”
But that’s regrettable. Abby never needed to see her best friend’s fingers sliding out of her colleague’s mouth while they both give her the Bad Dog look. In the end, she and Patty have to split them up to have The Talk.
Abby and Erin
Erin’s eyes are a little glazed over, but so long as Abby keeps moving around, it seems to focus her attention. Sure, she’s biting her lip more than Kristen Stewart heartily embracing auto-cannibalism, but they’re able to have a conversation if Abby keeps the sentences short.
“Hellooooooo, Errrrr-innn.”
Erin looks at her like she’s a moron. “I have a Ph.D, Abby. Da-doyyy. You’ve seen it.” This would be more impressive if she weren’t opening and closing her legs like windshield wipers on a cross-town bus.
“Listen, you’ve got a grade 5 succubus in there with you, probably from a Greek island from the looks of it, and your fever is building. I can try to find a cure, and Patty’s contacting her librarian network, but I’m really worried about the pressure on your brain.”
Again with the look. “Abby, you know the cure.”
“Yes, but,” Abby clears her throat. “In situations like these, with diminished capac—“
Apparently succubi have super strength. Huh. She should write that up. It’s like Erin’s biceps have been doing kegels.
“Abigail Milhouse Yates, so help me God, if you try to say I don’t really want to perform the physical act of love with the most incredible woman I have ever met, the pervy little bitch in here with me is going to take off her earrings.” Erin takes a deep breath and looks Abby in the eyes. “You do not want that to happen.”
Abby just glurgles, but it’s a positive sort of glurgle, and Erin lowers her gently back down to the ground.
Patty and Holtzmann
“You cool with this?”
Holtzmann leans back and spreads her arms across the back of the couch. She grins and nods quickly, snapping her goggles down from her forehead and onto her nose. “I am if she is.”
Abby’s calculations suggest if it’s timed just right – at the critical juncture, so to speak – the succubus can be safely captured. Holtzmann dictates a list (because she’s back on the couch with Erin, and maybe Abby could be a chaperone at school dances if the whole ghostbusting thing ever falls through.
They may need to burn the couch)
and Patty and Abby (but really, mostly Kevin) haul the equipment to her room: handcuffs, rope, water bottles, lube, dental dams, energy bars, a portable clean generator, two traps in case of malfunction, a proton pack, and a bunch of bananas.
“For potassium,” Patty whispered to her.
Holtzmann had insisted (really more insinuated) that she could handle capturing the succubus herself, and so Abby and Patty retreated to the office to wait.
And wait.
“Listen, I don’t want to sound like, super-hetero, but this cannot be normal,” Abby eventually said.
“I swear to god, if you talk over Paul Giamatti as T.R. again, I will have to get violent.”