Chapter Text
vocabulary = the words that make up a language
Holtzmann spoke four languages.
English, obviously. Then Danish from her art school years. Quechua, an indigenous South American language. And French.
And a bit of Russian, but only a bit, so she didn’t count it.
In her experience, people were a lot like languages. Definitely more like languages than like nuclear engineering. Once she understood a reaction perfectly, she was set. (Unless she blew it up. But even that, in its own way, was consistent.)
On the other hand, people, like languages, changed.
Second, new people were especially confusing, a bundle of sounds and silences that Holtzmann couldn’t parse into phrases. There were no patterns, only noise.
Third, if she tried to truly figure out someone, there was a steep learning curve. Metaphorically, she might know that nouns came before verbs, but that didn’t mean she could speak in full sentences.
The whole process usually lasted too long to hold Holtzmann’s attention. That, and it took too much energy. She preferred to expend her energy in a lab, where the unstable elements were still more stable than people.
When she needed to interact, she relied on the image she had developed: fearless and strange. In many ways, it was the truth, but it, too, took energy.
Holtzmann remained monolingual in people for a long time.
Then, during college, she picked up a few phrases of Rebecca Gorin.
At Higgins, she built a small but solid Abby Yates vocabulary.
And then Erin and Patty entered her world, and the four of them together became a family, and Holtzmann decided that learning several words of each of her teammates’ languages would be worthwhile … and plenty sufficient.
Until today. Today the Shift happened, as she mentally referred to it.
Holtzmann was sitting on a swivel chair with her feet propped up on a table, cutting a long wire into smaller wires. She snipped off the end and glanced up to see Erin chewing on a pencil. It was a very stereotypical pencil, yellow and wooden with a small “#2” printed on the side.
In that small moment, more than anything else, Holtzmann desperately wanted to rearrange her molecules and reform herself into that pencil.
She blinked in surprise at the realization, and the wire cutters narrowly missed clamping down on her finger. She slid her goggles away from her eyes and up her forehead, leaned her chin in her palm, and stared openly at Erin.
The pencil twirled, its eraser disappearing between Erin’s ChapStick-coated lips. Holtzmann couldn’t look away.
Now that she thought about it, she should have noticed sooner. The real shift had begun weeks ago, maybe even months, and it wasn’t subtle.
She had noticed the way Erin liked to divide her calculations into chunks so she could see all the components. (So Holtzmann bought her a pack of neon dry-erase markers for color-coding.)
She had learned which of her songs were most likely to result in Erin dancing with her fingers. (So Holtzmann played those songs more often, and skipped past the others.)
She had memorized the way Erin liked her coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and even apple cider. (So Holtzmann always came back from the corner cafe with two cups, one for her and one for Erin.)
And she had done all of it, all of this learning bits and pieces of Erin, by accident. But it still wasn’t enough. She wanted more.
She wanted to become fluent in Erin Gilbert.
Holtzmann painstakingly ignored Erin for the rest of the day while her head buzzed with too many questions and not enough answers. She went home earlier than usual, but by the next day she had formulated a basic game plan.
The first step, Holtzmann decided, was expanding her Erin vocabulary. That meant all the words that made up her language—all the little things that made Erin Erin.
The first one she noticed was posture.
Erin held herself like she had to be prepared to give a lecture on the Higgs boson at the drop of a hat. It wasn’t stiff, not entirely, but it was guarded and professional. Too professional, in Holtzmann’s opinion, for the firehouse.
Erin was standing at her white board, an uncapped neon green marker in one hand and a plain black one in the other. Even though she was clearly immersed in her work, she had her spine straight and her shoulders carefully down and back.
Holtzmann abandoned her own work and sidled up next to Erin without her noticing.
“You would make a great advertisement for a scoliosis clinic,” she said. “People would be all over your skeleton.”
Erin dropped the green marker and it clattered on the floor. She spun her head so fast that her hair lifted up before settling back against her shoulders. Gorgeous, thought Holtzmann.
“What … what was that?” said Erin.
“Spine realignment therapy,” Holtzmann elaborated. “Your spine is very … aligned.”
Erin’s mouth fell open a bit, and then closed. It reminded Holtzmann of the guppies at the New York Aquarium. (She had an annual membership, primarily so she could go pet the sting rays whenever she wanted.)
That, Holtzmann realized, was another vocabulary word she didn’t know.
“Erin,” she said slowly, “do you like fish?” She bent to retrieve the marker while she said it, head popping back up on the word “fish.”
Erin considered her. “Alive or as food?”
“Alive,” said Holtzmann.
“Sure,” said Erin.
Holtzmann nodded thoughtfully. “Good to know. Thanks.”
She returned the neon marker to the object of her affection, and went back to her work for all of two minutes before Erin interrupted her.
“You were talking about my posture, weren’t you?”
Holtzmann peered at Erin over the top of a heap of tools and metal parts. The world overall looked better through her glasses, but yellow-tinted Erin was maybe better than yellow-tinted anything else. She had a feeling that Erin would look good tinted any color.
Erin did an odd sort of nervous shuffling movement with her feet. Holtzmann thought it was magnificent.
“I’m too uptight, I get it,” Erin said.
Holtzmann shook her head quickly and emphatically. The last thing she wanted was for her studying of Erin to make her feel more insecure.
“Aligned spines are hot, Gilbert,” she said.
Erin’s cheeks reddened, and Holtzmann counted it as a success.
The second thing Holtzmann noticed that day—or third, including the fact that Erin approved of fish—was her sentimentality, and it only took Holtzmann nearly throwing up from a spring roll overdose to discover it.
Erin didn’t have any photographs on her desk, and her jewelry was varied enough that Holtzmann doubted any of the pieces held personal significance. So before today, she had assumed that Erin did not attach excessive value to inanimate objects.
In this area, clearly, they were different. Holtzmann glanced down at the Screw U necklace hanging around her neck.
It was just after lunch—well, for the other three Ghostbusters, at least—and Holtzmann was sitting cross-legged on the floor, head resting against the side of Erin’s desk, trying to prove that she could indeed eat ten spring rolls in addition to her meal. She had made it through eight so far. The ninth was proving challenging. She held it up in front of her face and frowned at it.
Erin was sitting at her desk, too, but in the chair— “like an adult,” she’d said. Holtzmann could hear the scratch of a pencil against paper. Then it stopped.
“Holtz, you’re going to make yourself sick.”
“You dared me.”
“I did not.”
“Patty dared me.”
“No, she didn’t. You dared yourself.”
Holtzmann sighed and moved the spring roll half an inch closer to her lips.
“I can’t watch this,” Erin complained.
“You have to. You’re the witness.”
Erin huffed.
Holtzmann heard the paper rustle, the chair squeak, and then Erin was on the floor facing her, mimicking her cross-legged position.
“Fine,” she said. “If I can’t stop you, then I’m going to help you do it.”
Holtzmann lowered her eyes to the floor. Erin was nice. Erin was sitting on the floor with her for encouragement. Erin was wonderful. Erin—
“Holtz.”
She looked back up.
“You can do it,” said Erin, and shook her fists lightly as if she were waving pom-poms. Holtzmann’s face split open into a grin.
“Are you my cheerleader?” she said.
“Just eat the damn spring roll.”
Holtzmann shoved the whole thing into her mouth, using her fingers to keep pieces from falling out. Erin’s eyes had gone very wide.
“Can do anyfing if you bewief in me,” Holtzmann said mid-chew. She swallowed with a gulp.
“Okay, one more,” said Erin.
The final spring roll mocked Holtzmann from its Styrofoam carton. She would have bet money it was larger than the others.
“Do you know what cheerleader is in French?” she asked, postponing the inevitable.
“No,” said Erin. “But it’s alimañas in Spanish.” Holtzmann was pretty sure that was wrong. “Do you know the word for cheerleader in French?”
“Pom-pom girl,” said Holtzmann, with an exaggerated accent.
“It is not.”
“Is too. Look it up.”
Erin still looked unconvinced.
“So will you cheer for me, ma pom-pom girl?” Holtzmann said.
There was a narrow line to walk when flirting with Erin Gilbert. If she was too outlandish she might scare her away, but she didn’t want to be so subtle that Erin would fail pick up on it, either. Unfortunately, Holtzmann had never been very good at staying on straight, narrow lines.
But to her shock, Erin took a small breath and began.
“Holtzmann can do an-y-thing,” she said, voice small and not very sure of itself. “Holtzmann can eat that spring… roll,” she tacked on at the end.
Holtzmann gaped at her.
“That is the most inspiring cheer I have ever heard in my life,” she said. “I expect I will go to my grave without hearing a better one. Then I will return as a ghost to haunt high school athletics programs, and still I will never hear a better cheer.”
Erin blushed again, prettily.
Holtzmann suffered through the last spring roll, but kept her eyes on Erin’s face. She was two-for-two on the pink cheeks.
Feeling triumphant but now more than a little bit sick, she closed the lid of the carton.
“How’s your stomach?” asked Erin.
Holtzmann winced. “She’s seen better days.”
“She?”
“My stomach is a laaady,” said Holtzmann, but then she leaned forward and groaned. “An unhappy lady,” she said weakly. “I shouldn’t have taken that dare.”
“Again, you dared yourself. But I think I have some medicine in my desk to settle it, hold on.”
Erin stood and went to her desk, sliding open the bottom drawer. Holtzmann lifted her head to watch, intrigued. She had never seen inside that particular drawer before.
There were several pill bottles, lined up in ascending order by height. There was also a clear glass jar that looked like it was full of black powder.
“What’s that?” Holtzmann asked, and pointed.
“Oh,” said Erin. “Um. It’s, um, embarrassing.”
Holtzmann immediately forgot her queasiness.
“I love embarrassing,” she said, scooting forward until her face was an inch from Erin’s knee. “Tell me everything.”
Erin still looked uncomfortable, but she nodded and sank back into her squeaky chair. She began to play with her hands in her lap. Holtzmann observed and resisted the urge to imitate her.
“So you know Ghosts from Our Past?” said Erin.
“I may have heard of it, go on.”
“After Abby and I … had our falling out, I mean, after I left her … there were two copies of the book that I owned. I was scared, and I burned them.”
“With fire?”
A new vocabulary term. Repressed pyromaniac.
“Yes, Holtzmann, with fire.”
“I like fire, too,” said Holtzmann. She leaned an elbow against the open drawer. “We have so much in common.”
Erin didn’t blush this time, but Holtzmann attributed it to distraction with her story. Holtzmann looked between Erin and the glass jar and then she understood. She raised her eyebrows at Erin questioningly.
“Yep,” said Erin. “Those are the ashes from the books.”
“Why did you keep them?”
“At first, because my friendship with Abby was over. Dead. I kept the cremated remains.”
“Cryptic,” said Holtzmann, enunciating each of the consonants.
She wasn’t being flippant. She wanted to lighten Erin’s mood, to let her know that she could talk to her without being self-conscious. Erin gave her a small smile in response to the word, and she was pleased.
“Yeah,” Erin continued. “But now I keep them because of what I have. Abby’s friendship again, but stronger. And also Patty and … you. And I don’t ever want to burn that. So the jar is there to remind me not to repeat my mistakes.”
Holtzmann thought about her apartment, where she had three framed pictures of their team. Three photographs of the Ghostbusters on her wall, as if they were family portraits.
Because they were.
But she didn’t tell Erin about that. Instead she said, “I wouldn’t worry. I don’t burn as easily as paper. I’m practically flame-retardant.”
Erin laughed sincerely, though she sounded a bit tired, and then she remembered the reason the drawer was open in the first place.
“I forgot the medicine, I’m sorry—” she started.
Holtzmann shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said. “Storytime with Erin made me feel better.”
Holtzmann decided it was time for a romantic gesture.
She reviewed her new Erin Gilbert vocabulary—posture, fish (tentatively), repressed pyromania, sentimentality—and considered how she could apply one of them.
Posture was out, almost immediately. Holtzmann’s existence was characterized by slouched shoulders, propped-up feet, and social impropriety. She wanted to show Erin how much she cared about her, but she wanted to do it without pretending to be something she wasn’t. Normally Holtzmann was decent at pretending, but for some reason … not with Erin.
For some reason, she scoffed mentally. She knew the reason.
She also eliminated fish, because “Sure” was too vague a response on which to base an entire romantic gesture. And Holtzmann was not very experienced with romantic gestures anyway, so she needed to make a solid choice.
Burning things was always fun, but Erin would probably just tell her to grab the fire extinguisher, and fire extinguishers were notorious for ruining the moment.
That left her with sentimentality.
For a moment, she considered going with fish after all, because Holtzmann did feelings even worse than she did posture.
But no. Erin deserved to be properly wooed. Sentimentality it was.
A week later, the perfect opportunity finally presented itself. Holtzmann had worked straight through multiple mealtimes (again), and so she reached into the pocket of her robe for the miniature Pringles tube she had brought just for this sort of occasion. She popped open the lid, peeled back the foil covering, and looked reverently at the first chip.
The first chip was the best chip. It was the moment Holtzmann broke her Pringles fast (even if that fast was less than a day long). It was the freshest, having been exposed to air the least amount of time. It was usually structurally sound, being on the top of the tube, unlike the broken pieces at the bottom. It was the introduction to an entire tube of salty parabolic joy.
For these reasons, when Holtzmann shared her Pringles (or any snack, for that matter) she never shared the first chip (or bite, or sip). Abby had learned that the hard way, when she had tried to steal the first M&M out of Holtzmann’s bag shortly after they had started working together.
In sum, Holtzmann was sentimental about first chips.
She thought about how Erin had connected the ashes of her book, a physical thing, with the relationships that were important to her. And so Holtzmann decided to do the same.
Admittedly, she had tried something similar with the Swiss army knife, and Erin hadn’t seemed to fully grasp the significance, but back then Holtzmann hadn’t even realized the extent of her own feelings yet, so things were certain to go better now.
She closed the lid on the Pringles tube and went to stand at the top of the stairs. Often Erin worked on the second floor with her, but today she was downstairs, talking to Patty about historical approaches to particle physics.
“Erin!” she called. “I need you. Can you come up here for a sec?”
Erin appeared moments later, looking slightly winded, as if she had jogged up the steps. Perhaps she had.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
Holtzmann’s train of thought was momentarily derailed by the concern in Erin’s eyes, and what that might mean, but she snapped herself back on track. She was on an important mission.
“No, I’m peachy,” she said. “I just wanted to give you something.”
She walked up to Erin until there was barely enough space to hold up the mini tube of chips between them.
“Pringles?” asked Erin.
“No,” said Holtzmann. “These are mine.”
“Oh.”
“But I do want to give you a Pringle.”
“… oh.”
“This is a new tube,” Holtzmann explained. “I’ve just opened it. I’m going to eat them, but before I do … I want you to have the first chip.”
She removed the lid again and presented the open container to Erin, almost like a trophy. Erin obligingly removed the top Pringle from the stack. Her fingers brushed against Holtzmann’s as she did it.
Holtzmann watched, waiting.
“Okay …” said Erin. She bit off a corner of the chip. Holtzmann had never seen anyone eat a Pringle so slowly before, and she decided in that moment that all other methods of Pringle consumption were patently inferior.
Erin finished the chip and looked at Holtzmann uncertainly. “Um, thanks,” she said. “I’ll just … be going back downstairs now … unless there’s something else?”
Holtzmann tilted her head. What had she done wrong?
“Until next time,” she choked out, even managing a half-smile.
When Erin was gone again, she sank down to the floor. She had been as clear as possible. She had given her the first chip. She didn’t understand.
She reached a hand into the Pringles tube, but she didn’t want to eat them anymore. She set the tube on the floor and pushed it away from her, sending it skidding into the wall.
This was the position Abby found her in when she came upstairs a few minutes later with a question about the energy source of her proton glove.
“… so I wanted to know, how long do you think the charge could last, assuming—”
Abby finally noticed Holtzmann’s uncharacteristic stillness and cut herself off. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Holtzmann shook her head dismally.
“What’s wrong?”
She pointed at the Pringles tube where it lay on its side against the wall, several chips spilling out onto the floor.
“I’ve never known you to refuse to eat something that fell on the floor,” said Abby, misinterpreting.
“No,” said Holtzmann. “Can’t you tell? One is missing. There are usually twenty-five. Now there are twenty-four.”
“Okay,” said Abby, “later I want to know how you can tell the exact number of chips immediately by sight, but right now, I need you to explain to me why the missing Pringle is a problem.”
Holtzmann picked at the hem of her pants.
“Holtz,” Abby prompted.
“IgaveErinthefirstchipandshedidn’tcareaboutit.”
Abby’s face softened. “The first chip? Wow.” She paused. “I doubt Erin understood what that meant. I think you two just need to communicate better.”
Holtzmann glared at the floor. That was exactly what she had been trying to do.