use you as a warning sign

( @fortisfragilis​ ) 

This was a death wish. 

Sneaking around with fresh cookies in her bag was one thing. But keeping them from her mothers? Her sisters? Eddie, of all people? Only saving them for Shawn? Death wish. Ultimate death wish. 

Then again, there she was, praying the plastic bag would mask some of the smell and her work clothes masking the rest. 

“Okay, I need to make this quick, because if anyone else knows I have these, they’re going to descend on us like wolves.” is how she greets the man who’s essentially her second father. “And these are for no one else but you.” 

The call that had woken him up at one fifty-two in the morning had been answered with: “Somebody better be dead.”  Well, they had been.  Shawn had completely forgotten that he was supposed to be on call.  The morning had been long, and there never seemed to be enough coffee to make writing case notes and reports any easier. 

After writing and deleting the same sentence about five times, he closed his laptop and ran his hands over his face.  He was a few seconds away from standing up and walking around when he saw Cami walking toward him so he settled on leaning back in his seat and stretching his legs a little before sitting back up.

His face told her probably the latter.

Cami looked at her, offended. “Excuse you?! Do you know how many notes I need to take a day?! This is why they invited this shit!” She glanced down at her phone, chuckling as she saw a confirmation. “Nah. The twins are old enough they can watch themselves. If anything, Dakota goes and finds Nathan to get into trouble and Jordan hides at the library with Eddie. I’m just offering my driving services and use of my car while one of my moms’ cars is in the shop.” 

It seemed like a fairly normal day at the library; people coming in asking for different books, people using the computers for research.. Every once in a while there would be a kid that would throw a tantrum or just be a bit too loud and he’d hear their mom or dad try and hush them. This felt like heaven to Eddie, just being surrounded by the sound of pages flipping and the smell of old and new books floating around in the air. He was taken out of his little daydream when he heard the phone ring, which sounded ten times louder than what it should have due to the silence. “Hello, Chicago public library, Eddie Mainland speaking! …Oh! Okay, what books are you looking for? … Perks of being a Wallflower, The Grapes of Wrath, and…. Ruthless Gods… Okay, uhhhh, I think we have all of them in here! Would you mind holding really quick? Thank you!”

Ah, screw it. “Hi Dad.” she joked. “I’m apparently missing a sibling now that I’ve got my phone on after work. Gracie’s accounted for though ignoring my calls because college class.  Trouble’s accounted for...I think. Probably with Nathan? Yet I seem to be missing a little bookworm who was supposed to meet me at the hospital and never showed. Any ideas?.”