OK, so I know I've got "Fury and Flames" going, but I just had to put Marshall-muse's idea into action. He was whining too loudly in my ear about it. Besides, I was eager to bring back The Trips and the rest of the Mann Family and just plain old get into the genre I'M more fit for. Humor/Romance. So here is Marshall-muses next inspiration, the indefinite-chaptered "Facets"
The Many Facets of Marshall and Mary
Facet 1: Bullet Casings
Blue eyes crossed down the bridge of her Mann-family nose, teeth gnashed, and Maya Mann had a permanent eye twitch as she stared holes into her computer screen as if the answer to her joint English-History assignment would magically appear if she stared at it for a while.
'Facets,' she read silently, frustrated by her seeming inability to put words onto the screen and make Parker eat his socks by finishing the project first. 'What facets? My dad is a walking encyclopedia with a gun and my mother is a walking time bomb…with a gun. Not much mystery there, really.'
OK, so that was a lie. There was plenty of mystery. It was just…Maya had no idea where to look. Their house was filled with thousands of things because dad is a pack rat and can't throw anything away due to the varied interests of her father and cleaning allergy of her mother.
She flipped her computer screen off and stretched, eyes narrowing as she exited her room and wandered into the living room – the central hub for junk extraordinaire. According to the project, every little item had a story to tell – a history waiting to be shared. So they had to write about them – to tell the story of whatever items they chose in their home – but where to start?
Marshall found his vexed looking 14 yr old daughter this way when he came home, immediately intrigued because very little actually vexed her short of James's mood swings and Parker's strange ability to look good in boys or girls clothes that Marshall never wanted to remember AGAIN. "Are you and James at it again?" The last thing he needed was to walk into one of their pranks. Not after the emergency transfer and the stupid druggie who made him and a half dozen of APD's finest run nearly a mile and a half after his ill-timed escape attempt. His legs were screaming at him, his head was pounding like a conga drum, and he doubted Mary's day was much better, which meant he still had a long couple of hours listening to her rant about her own witnesses and the stupidity of leaving a cat and a bird in the same damn room and then explaining to the distraught children of a recently moved family why Tweetie was in heaven and Garfield was a few pounds heavier.
"No, no." But she still frowned, hands on hips and glaring at the fake ficus plant by the door. "It's a joint English-History assignment. We're supposed to tell the stories of random things in our house, because according to Ms. Collins every item has a story."
Marshall twitched – once – and thought of Dana reading about his and Mary's life with only mild discomfort. She was still over the moon and one million peanuts in the trunk of Mary's Probe crazy, but that was years ago. Right? "That sounds simple enough. She's right, too. Everything in this house has a story to tell."
"Like what?" Maya challenged, lips pursed in thought. "Everything seems…normal to me."
Marshall fell back against the couch and glanced around, sighing as his legs finally relaxed and fell into crying puddles to the floor in relief. God, I ache. "Well…" He looked around, put out as he stumbled on the same problem she was having. He couldn't pick out one thing in particular because, after so many years, they were all just part of the house to him. "Huh. I see your trouble. Well…" His eyes finally landed on the fireplace mantle, grimacing. Of all the memories to focus on, it has to be that? "You see that bullet casing there on the mantle?"
Maya walked close to eye it curiously, nodding. "Ordinary casing, isn't it? What's the story behind it?"
"It's the very first bullet your mother ever shot as a US Marshal," he informed her, shifting uncomfortably on his butt in memory.
His daughter's interest perked. "Who'd she shoot?"
"Your damn mother shot me."
The first time he worked with U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon, she shot him.
Marshall Mann, Senior WITSEC Inspector and US Marshal…and all around good guy in a quirky computer nerd kind of way, was very popular among the officials who worked with him daily in the Albuquerque branch. He could tell you the boiling point of mercury or the exact placement of the mole on President George Washington's backside without batting an eyelash, his head a jumble of random facts and tidbits that were both useless but sometimes handy.
It was a month before his birthday when she arrived, all fire and brimstone with a gaze that could petrify on sight and a hand that many suspected would be trigger happy. Stan McQueen, Chief WITSEC Inspector and the Albuquerque branch's unassuming and mild-mannered boss, knew she would be trouble the minute she stepped through the wire gates and saw fit to assign her to his most responsible and subsequently mild-mannered team of inspectors for her probationary month in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, they would rub off on her.
Years later, despite the multitude of headaches, Stan would still insist it was the best decision he ever made despite all the stress that made him bald prematurely and the fact that she shot his best marshal by accident on her first day in the field.
It was, of all places, in the ass. Marshall could not think of a suitable description of how mortifyingly embarrassing it was to get shot in the ass by FRIENDLY FIRE. It hurt, too, but the shock of where she got him kept Marshall from feeling it for the most part. Every new agent had quick fingers in the beginning, but it was his ass.
He had a bullet…in his ASS!
His partner was not amused. Mary was, though she did keep the laughing to a minimum. But it was definitely her and the local LEO's laughing as he was driven to the hospital, and Marshall never forgot the sound of that rough, free, and boisterous sound.
"She's a menace!"
"That may be a bit harsh," Marshall pointed out when Stan called them into a private meeting for their assessments on Mary Shannon. "She got over the trigger-happy reflex in a week. Her compassion with the witnesses is…unique."
Stan considered this, though the definition of unique was admittedly more tilted coming from Marshall who was his most "unique" inspector by far.
Josephina "Jo" Sciolla, his partner, scowled at him. "If by combative and downright nasty you mean unique, then yes. And she shot you, Marshall!"
"Once." He crossed his legs and wiggled his bum in the seat he was in pointedly with his trademark grin. "It's all good now. And I like her." To Stan, he said with a grin that inched even higher, "She's a pit bull while investigating." To himself, he mused, "Though her phone sex voice could use work…"
"What?" Before he could answer, Stan retracted the thought as quick as it came. "Never mind. I don't want to know. You both can go home."
They did, his partner shooting him one last annoyed look before punching the elevator button harder then necessary. Despite being the senior most inspector in the office (other then Stan) and only a year or two younger then their easy-going boss, she looked like she was in her thirties and had an Italian temper to go with her name. Marshall liked her for the most part, having been partnered with her for about 7 years now, but she was too straight-laced even for him sometimes. And she'd never seen Star Wars. Or anything made after the 1980's for that matter…
He was packing the last of his things in for the night when Stan called Mary to his office and Marshall didn't need to hear their conversation to know what he was telling her. Her wide grin was telling enough. So when she came out, a bounce in her step, he paused and called out, "Shannon!"
She cocked her head to the side and stared at him, silent but acknowledging. What?
She was prickly and borderline combative. Gorgeous in a smart, bad ass blonde kind of way and could probably stop a man in his tracks at 20 yards if she really tried with just a swing of her hips, but with a personality that spoke of deeply rooted issues he was not nearly close enough to be privileged to. She was a complex puzzle, and Marshall Mann liked puzzles. A lot.
So he just grinned, saluted her with two fingers as the elevator dinged and opened for him, and said, "Happy hunting. See you Monday."
"Damn right!" she shouted after him, her smile part gleeful, part naughty, and her voice echoing in the tiny space even after the doors closed and took him down to the parking garage.
The office just got a little bit more interesting.
The effects of her hire came like the woman herself – fast and immediate.
Marshall didn't see her for much of her first year as an agent, since the other teams in the office worked on the floor below and his workload was considerably larger and more dangerous while the other, less experienced teams typically dealt with the non-emergent and low level threat witnesses. He and Jo did the heavy hitting witnesses, being the senior team in the office, and that meant very little time to actually see how the curious woman was doing.
That didn't mean he didn't hear about it the few days he was in office though.
3-yr veteran Mike Lambert was her first partner – a widely known WITSEC inspector most known for his endless patience and easy-going demeanor. Nothing seemed to ever faze him. Nothing.
Except one Mary Shannon.
Their partnership lasted one month before she went to Jeanne Thompson, a tough female very much like her and an inspector of great promise. They managed a week before the catfights broke out, and Stan repeatedly ignored the 'I told you so' looks Jo kept sending him every time the partner reassignment requests hit his desk.
She went through two more before Marshall decided to pay her a visit on one of his slow days, smiling widely at the scowl he was quite familiar with on her face.
"You're running through partners faster then kids do clothes," he mused lightly, sitting back in a chair opposite her, Mary's gaze fixed pointedly on her computer screen.
"Stan keeps handing me piss poor-quality clothes, so what do you expect?" Her scowl deepened, narrowing into a pointed expression. "What the hell is with this stupid machine?" She kicked it – a loud cracking sound that made Marshall wince – and eyed him suspiciously. "Why are you here? Don't you have some emergency pick up or fugitive apprehension to get to?" He refrained from smirking at the blatant envy in her tone. Adrenaline junkie.
"Thought I might just check up and see how my favorite newbie is doing." He chuckled and dodged the pen she threw at his head with a simple tilt of his head, amused. "Been at this about a year now, and I've seen lots of Marshals come and go." He dropped the bag of food he'd brought with him on her desk, her sharp-eyed gaze zeroing in on it automatically. "Never for lack of grit though." He pulled out the tuna and spinach on wheat, only mildly surprised that she wasn't automatically swiping the remaining one. "Are you going to eat the other one or just stare at it? Because if not then…" He moved to grab it, his own already half eaten in four large bites.
Glare. Saran-wrap ball chucked at his head – and dodged just as easily. "What's the catch? You bring me lunch…why?"
Marshall grabbed his heart, miming pain. "Can't a guy just be nice to the newest marshal in the office?"
Mary's derisive snort was automatic. "Guys are never 'just nice'. They either want help or want in your pants." Grinning then, she eyed him up in three quick jerks of her eye over her half-eaten sandwich. "So which are you?"
He gave her one slow and lingering cursory glance and smiled slowly. "Which would you like me to be?"
And she laughed, that loud and boisterous sound he still remembered, the entire floor peaking out from their offices at the sound with amazed expressions.
The Wicked Bitch of the Seventh Floor laughs!
No one knew what to make of the rare appearances of ABQ WITSEC's top inspector to Mary Shannon's office for lunch. They didn't know what to think when they closed all the blinds of her office after a while either, or the spastic giggling they were hard-put to place to their image of the usually scowling Mary who went through 7 partners in 18 months. The last had held promise (and a record of 7 months) if he hadn't been forced into early retirement by a bullet.
The constant laughter and strange banging sounds didn't help either.
Marshall did not let them know that they closed the blinds because Mary was more relaxed with it that way, or the fact that those grunts and bangs were from an arm wrestling contest that she refused to give up on because no way could she not win against him. He rather liked his lunch time routine whenever he was in office, though he could've done without the suggestive looks and winks he kept getting from all the male inspectors (save Stan, who just wanted to be left blissfully out of the loop for his sanity's sake).
Jo thought he was insane – as did most of the women down in the APD and the entire building, for that matter. He didn't understand why that was completely though he could guess but even God didn't understand women entirely, so that was a lost cause to begin with.
He invited her to museums and dinners and movies on their days off, got shot down every time, but still ended up talking with her on the phone over nothing in particular. He knew when she got a new fuck buddy, which rankled for reasons he refused to look deeper into yet because he hardly knew the woman, and knew when she hadn't gotten some because she became bolder in her flirtations with him. And yes, she flirted – and he was male, so he flirted right back, though he wasn't sure if she was actually serious or if it was just becoming habit for them.
Mutually abusive. Borderline violent. Blatantly flirtatious. Such were terms to describe the unlikely friendship that had blossomed between them…all because of an ill-placed bullet.
Marshall smiled as he recalled the memories.
Maya stared at him like he'd sprouted a third head.
"So what you're saying…is that you and mom became friends because she shot you?" She stared at the casing, appalled. "What the hell?"
"She certainly caught my attention with it," he chuckled, grinning fondly. "She didn't shoot any of her other partners, of course. Apparently she only reserved that honor for me from day one. The guys in the APD still razz me about it from time to time."
"Damn right it was only you." Mary Shannon-Mann shut the door behind her as she walked in, grinning from ear to ear and obviously having listened to the entire recollection through the door. "The others had the good sense to move away from me."
"Can I help it if you're the flame to my moth? The flower to my honey bee? The-"
"Shut up!" Mary laughed at the same time Maya groaned and muttered something about dinner and trotted at a fast clip because Mann's don't run into the kitchen. "God, do you not stop?"
"I'm an energizer bunny," he said cheekily, running a hand through his gray-speckled brown hair but still looking like the same doofus she'd met years ago with fewer gray hairs and less defined laugh lines. "I keep going and going and going and-"
"I can still shoot you," Mary snarled, waving her Glock threateningly, half serious.
Marshall's hands flew to his butt, a look of horror on his face. "Not the butt! Anything but the butt…!"
"Dad!"
Neither of them paid their exasperated daughter any mind at all in their riotous laughter.
A/N: OK, so this is Marshall-Muses idea that I will be writing alongside Fury and Flames just because the Humor/Romance stuff is my true genre of liking…and Marshall-muse whines. Loudly. This is likely to be updated as ideas come to me, so if anyone has ideas they'd like to throw out, by all means, throw them! Marshall-centric, Mary-centric, all are accepted and welcome! I have quite a few that will dabble into Child!Marshall's past…all fun, of course.
So what do you think? Come on, click the button and tell me…