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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-04
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3,437
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1/1
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5
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1,136

Messin' With the Kid

Summary:

"Hey, hey / tell me what you did / you can call it what you want / but I call it messin' with the kid."

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

For Shirasade's "Inspiration" songfic challenge. The song is "Messin' With the Kid" from the Blues Brothers soundtrack.

(~(~)~)

Woody slumped against the wall, rubbing his hands across his face and willing his breath back to a normal rate. OK. That hadn't been completely out of left field. He knew Nigel was gay. Everyone knew Nigel was gay. Woody looked around the bustling ME's office and smiled ruefully. Hell, the corpses probably knew. And Woody didn't have a problem with that.

Really.

Still, wasn't Nigel also an artist of some sort? He was pretty sure Jordan had something about that once. And didn't artists have...aesthetics, or something? Even if Nigel wasn't attracted to Maguire, he should be able to appreciate that she was a good-looking woman. Some comment along those lines was what Woody had expected when he said Maguire was hot. He hadn't expected Nigel to put the moves on him.

Woody replayed the conversation in his mind: 'I don't need to know what makes your dough rise, Nigel.' 'Oh, but I do so love to tell you.'

Yup. That, right there? That had been a move.

Bug buzzed past in a flurry, but Bug had been working with Jordan lately, and Woody knew Jordan well enough to differentiate between a real emergency and an invented one. This one was looking pretty made-up. He fell into step with Bug. "Bug."

"Detective!" Bug had a flustered look that seemed to indicate he was up to something he didn't want Woody to know about. For once, he didn't care.

"Do you have a minute?"

"Ah..." Bug hedged. "Can it wait? I'm in a bit of a hurry--"

"It'll just take a second," Woody promised. "We can talk while you walk to...wherever you're walking to."

"Uh, Jordan's car, actually."

"Jordan's car. Great." He nodded as they walked on.

"So?"

Woody blinked. "So?"

Bug looked at him incredulously. "You had a question?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." Say it. Just say it. How hard could it be? "It's about Nigel."

"Nigel?" At the discovery that they weren't discussing him, Bug's face broke into a broad grin that made Woody promise himself to find out what he and Jordan were up to. "What about him?"

"I think he just hit on me." There. Easy. Like pulling off a Band-Aid. With about the same amount of pain from ripped-out hair.

Bug rolled his eyes. "Nigel hits on everyone."

"Yeah, I know. But this wasn't his usual constant, low-grade flirting. This was - I think he made an actual pass at me."

"He what?" Bug's squawk brought a couple of curious stares their way. He grimaced an apology and turned back to Woody, lowering his voice. "You must've misread his signals. Last I knew, Nigel was seeing somebody, and it looked pretty serious."

Well, that certainly put a different frame on the picture. "You sure?"

Bug looked away, checking the foot traffic in the hall as they turned the corner. When he looked back, a slight smile hovered at the corners of his lips. "Pretty sure."

A wave of calm rolled through Woody. Nigel was seeing someone. It looked pretty serious. He'd misread the signals. A feeling of general good-will toward all mankind bathed Woody's soul as they reached the front doors of the building. He beamed at Bug. "Thank you, Bug. Have fun with Jordan."

"Uh, sure. You have a good day."

"Oh, I will." Woody was whistling as he continued down the hall.

(~(~)~)

Still, Woody wasn't stupid. He maintained a healthy sense of self-preserving fear as he poked his head into Nigel's part of the lab later that day. "Nigel?"

Nigel grinned at him. "Good afternoon, Detective." He pushed his fingers through his dark hair to pull it away from his face. "What can I do for you?"

Well, this was going all right so far. "I need help analyzing the fabric sample we took from the O'Hanlon scene. If you're not too busy...?" Woody had learned a rough lesson about shoving working onto the ME staff when they already had other work piled up.

"I am unavailable right at this particular moment," Nigel said, bending over one of his microscopes to punctuate the assertion. Then he straightened again and looked at Woody. Woody gulped. The devil-light he'd seen in Nigel's eyes earlier this morning had returned full force. "However, if you could wait for about ten more minutes, I will be entirely at your disposal." His grin was so pointed that Woody expected a forked tongue to flicker out of it as Nigel took one step away from the microscope - towards Woody. "I promise I'll be worth the wait."

Woody began yet another dash toward the exit - faster this time. No way he was letting Nigel crowd him again. "I'm pretty sure Bug's back from his secret mission with Jordan. Why don't I see if he can help me?" Bug would help him. Bug was straight. At least, Woody assumed he was. And even if he wasn't, at least he wasn't a flirt motor stuck in overdrive, like Nigel was. Woody made a bee-line from one lab to the other, where Bug was working on some diabolical-looking project involving what appeared to be de-winged mosquitoes. "Uh, Bug?"

Bug finished an intricate maneuver with straight pins and super strength epoxy and then looked up. "Need something?" Too rattled to trust his voice, Woody simply held out the bag containing the fabric sample. Bug took it and hummed at it like a hen with a wayward chick. Then he smiled. "Nigel too busy?"

Woody couldn't bring himself to say, 'Nigel's hitting on me again,' so he just nodded.

Quickly and carefully, Bug went to work on the swatch. "It'll take about twenty minutes for those results to pop up," he said.

"Great, thanks," Woody said, turning toward the door. "I'll be back for them."

"You could stick around." Woody turned to see Bug point at one of the tall stools pulled up to his work station. "I can talk and do this at the same time."

Woody tried not to show his surprise. Bug wasn't known as the most extroverted of the ME staffers. Still, until he had answers from that fabric, there wasn't much else he could be working on. He took the seat. Then, because he knew how territorial the ME personnel could be about their space, he said, "Thanks."

Bug laughed and went back to his mosquitoes. "Actually, you're doing me a favor. I could use the company." There was the barest pause, and then, "So, did you see the dress on Dr. Maguire when she was leaving for her big date last night?"

At that, Woody relaxed so completely he didn't know why he'd been tense in the first place. Bug was straight. He was strange and solitary and obsessed with bugs, but he was straight. Grinning, Woody said, "I'm not sure it'd be legal where I'm from."

"That makes you appreciate it so much more when you see it here," Bug returned.

"I had good dreams last night," Woody said, "and if I could've dropped something on the floor when she was around to pick it up, I'd be having good dreams for the rest of the week."

Melodramatically, Bug demanded, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Woody chuckled. "I don't understand why Nigel doesn't see it," he said before he could do anything to prevent his mouth from producing the sounds.

Bug looked thoughtful for a minute. "Nigel has...strange standards of beauty. The people - and things - you catch him ogling sometimes..."

"You don't agree with him?" Woody could admit to himself that he was fascinated by the friendship between the ME's two castaways of the British Empire.

"Not always."

Leaning forward, Woody planted his elbows on the countertop. "So, what's your standard of beauty, Bug?"

Bug gave Woody a strangely appraising look before answering, carefully, "It's not a physical type, really. I like stability. Buildings that have been standing for hundreds of years. Insects that haven't shown a single genetic mutation in a thousand generations. People who know who they are and where they're going. That brings me a kind of comfort that I find really beautiful."

Woody stared in something like awe. That was the largest number of words he'd ever heard Bug string together.

Bug seemed to realize that, too, and it embarrassed him. He laughed sheepishly and made a big deal of closing the glass top of the mosquito case. "What about you? I assume Dr. Maguire is pretty much right along your lines? "

Woody wrapped his fingers around each other. "Most of the time." He paused, thinking about how best to explain this to Bug. "Sometimes, though, what terrifies me more than anything is how much the women I'm usually attracted to remind me of girls I grew up with."

Bug shot him a look over the top of the lab equipment. "Jordan reminds you of girls you grew up with?"

That drew a sharp laugh. "Definitely not. But see, I do that sometimes. I look at these women, and they're so sweet, and kind, and pretty, and I think - my God, Bug, the last thing I want is to marry one of these doe-eyed small-town girls and end up trapped in some pathetic excuse for a police force back in Wisconsin." He pronounced it 'Wis-CAN-sen,' purposely over-enunciating the flattened 'a' that a native would always put in the state's name. "So I go way overboard. Find the first woman who seems like everything Wisconsin isn't, so I can prove that that's not who I am anymore. Hell, Jordan was tame for one of those little fits of mine. Usually, the more exotic, the better." Looking up at Bug, he flushed slightly. "No offense."

Shrugging, Bug smiled and moseyed to Woody's end of the work station. He leaned a hip against the side of the counter and crossed his arms, considering the detective. "None taken. There was a time when Wisconsin girls seemed pretty exotic to me." They shared a guilty chuckle. Then something crept into Bug's smile. Something Woody had seen before. On Nigel. "Have you ever thought of going even further away from those Wisconsin girls? Something that really proves that's not who you are anymore?"

Woody barreled backwards off his stool so fast he only barely managed to right himself before his ass hit the floor.

Bug was hitting on him.

Oh, he was subtler than Nigel. The little sneak had used Maguire's slinky dress to lure him into a false sense of heterosexual security, but in the end, he was flirting as shamelessly as Nigel did.

And...oh, God. Had Woody initiated it?

He replayed yet another conversation in his head: 'So, what's your standard of beauty, Bug?'

Yup. He'd started it.

Woody scrambled to his feet. "I, uh. I have to go. I have a very important, um, thing, that I need to take care of."

"You sure?" Bug looked over his shoulder at his happily humming machines. "The results from that sample should be ready in a few minutes." He looked back at Woody and smiled sweetly. "It really would be nice if you could stay."

No, no, no. Bug was being cute and sweet and 19th-century-suitorlike. Woody backed rapidly towards the door. "I'll come back for it. Later. What time are you leaving? I'll come back after then. I mean - then. See you, Bug." He shoved out of the lab.

Nigel was outside the door. "Oh!" he said, taking a fast step back. "Sorry, Detective."

"Nigel!" Woody gasped, sidling sideways to avoid him. "I was...going. That's what I was doing." Still creeping sideways, he continued down the hall. "So I'll just...do that. Bye!" He sped to the end of the hallway. Before he turned the corner, he risked a worried backwards glance; Nigel and Bug stood outside the lab, watching him with curiously befuddled expressions.

Around another corner, Woody was in the hallway that held Dr. Macy's office. As he drew closer, he saw the chief ME in the doorway, deep in conversation with Peter Winslow. Their voices were pitched too low to be heard, but they were standing very close together, and Peter looked furious. A few steps from them, as Woody was about to call a greeting, Garret reached up and put his hand on Peter's shoulder. For the space of a heartbeat, and then another, Peter let it remain there, and then he jerked his arm savagely, shaking the hand loose. Garret stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled, while Peter crossed his arms defensively across his chest as if to ward against being touched again. Wholly unbidden, Woody's mind supplied a caption for the angry tableau: lovers' quarrel.

No. No way. Mind blurring, Woody spun on his heel and sped in the only direction left. He had to get out of this gay madhouse.

Racing up the hall with hardly a glance at anyone else, he plowed right into someone coming out of another office. "Oof! You okay, Detective Hoyt?"

He peered down dumbly for a minute. Then his vision cleared. Lily. "Lily," he said earnestly, "is anyone in this office straight?"

And then he kept on walking, because he was pretty sure he didn't want to know the answer to that.

(~(~)~)

"Don't forget that I prefer chocolate mint Pirouettes to chocolate hazlenut," Bug said. No response. He turned. "Nigel?" Nigel wasn't with him anymore. Frowning, he turned and spotted the man halfway up the aisle, scuffing along like a tetchy four-year-old. Bug huffed in frustration. "Nigel."

"What?" Nigel demanded sullenly.

"Don't be a sore loser, Nigel," Bug said.

"You cheated."

"How?" Bug walked around to the back of the shopping cart, but he refused to go any closer. Nigel would have to come to him.

"'Nigel's seeing someone, and it seems pretty serious.'" Nigel made a sound that could only be described as a scoff. "You were offering succor to the enemy."

"I was helping him shore up his strength. Like a manager giving water to a boxer between rounds."

Nigel's eyes narrowed. "You are a very strange little man."

"I have to be, don't I, to put up with you?" Bug muttered. "I won the bet fair and square, Nigel. Be honest - what upsets you more; that you lost, or that you lost to me?" He felt ridiculous, carrying on this conversation down the entire length of the aisle, but he knew Nigel wouldn't budge until he was damned well ready to.

"I simply fail to see how a man who spends his time with insects and dead bodies could be a more astute observer of human behavior than moi."

Bug lifted a shoulder. "I don't know. But what does that say about you, that you spend your time with dead bodies and me?"

"It says that I'm a damned fool over you." Nigel closed the distance to the cart, but he didn't look happy about it. "Why couldn't you take your winnings in dinner out?" He tossed the cookies - chocolate mint, Bug noted with satisfaction - into the cart with the rest of the groceries.

"Because," Bug said patiently, "we go out or order in almost every night. I don't feel I've won anything if I let you get away with what you do all the time anyway." Sidling closer, he murmured, "Plus, you're going to look really sexy in that apron."

Nigel growled and moved out of range. "I really thought he was going to crack."

Grinning proudly, Bug grabbed the handle of the shopping cart and gave it a lazy nudge forward. "Woody is made of sterner stuff than that," he said decisively.

"He's from Wisconsin," Nigel protested.

"That's the beginning of your problem. You think of it as some provincial backwater."

Stopping dead in the middle of the aisle, Nigel said, "Bug, it's Wisconsin."

Bug laughed. "But he left Wisconsin, and now he's a cop in the big, bad city, where I'm sure he's seen so much depravity that two unassuming lab geeks hitting on him rolls off him like water off a mac."

Nigel smirked at him over the baguette that poked out of their cart. "You and I, love, are hardly unassuming. Do we have everything on our list yet?"

"We have not yet begun to shop," Bug said as he eased the cart along. "This was a fun bet."

"I enjoyed it."

"I'll just bet you did. Something about Dr. Maguire, wasn't it?"

"He started it," Nigel insisted. "He can't run around saying things like 'I don't need to know what makes your dough rise' and not expect me to run with it." He and Bug laughed. "I wish I'd been there for your half of the abuse. He looked positively horrified when he came into the hall."

"I'll admit; we were pretty close to losing him after that."

"Very close," Nigel agreed, "and for a minute I was afraid he was going to take it out on Lily. What did you do to him?"

Shaking his head, Bug said, "I don't think it was me so much as him accidentally witnessing Peter and Garret's spat."

"Indeed." Nigel snickered. "It was a bad day for the queers of the ME's office."

Shrugging, Bug inched a package of water crackers off the shelf and watched it tumble into the cart. "For some of you." He grinned. "It was a very good day for me."

"Hmmph. Yes." Nigel threw him a half-hearted glare. "Still, I think we've done admirable work cracking open the closet of Detective Hoyt."

"Nigel." Bug's tone made it clear that this was a long-running argument. "As much fun as we have messing with Woody, he's straight."

Nigel shook his head. "Ah, Mahesh," he said sadly, "how narrow your vision is." Bug rolled his eyes; Nigel only pulled out the 'Mahesh' when trying to be philosophical, or poetic, or - as on that one truly dreadful night with all the margaritas - both. "You'll see. By the end of the year, he'll be hanging out in our trendiest leather bars and shacking up with a great brute named Chet."

"A great brute named Chet?" Bug raised an eyebrow. "I get the feeling you have a specific great brute in mind."

"He's really a dear, if you can get past the steel studs on the whip he carries. Specificity of detail is what makes our dreams reality, Bug."

"Whatever you say, dear," Bug said, patting Nigel's hand.

Affronted, Nigel planted himself in the middle of the aisle again. "Bet."

Bug dragged the cart to a halt and groaned. "Not again."

"Bet me," Nigel said, more insistently, hands on his hips. "Bet me that Detective Woodrow Hoyt comes out as a raging homo by the end of the year."

Bug abandoned the cart and walked up to Nigel. He looked him up and down as though measuring his monetary value. Then he shook his head and smiled amiably. "I'm an enabler," he said. There was neither judgment nor rancor in the statement.

"Ah-hah!" Nigel crowed. Not caring if anyone was around, he wrapped his arms around Bug's waist, slipping his hands into his back pockets. "And what, pray tell, are we staking as the spoils of this wager?"

Bug looked thoughtfully into Nigel's eyes. "I don't know. We'll talk about it when we get home," he said finally. "While you cook."

Nigel laughed. "And with that subtle reminder..." He tried to extricate himself from around Bug, but the other man caught at his arms, holding him in place.

"Nigel, does it ever occur to you that you hardly ever win these bets?"

"Bug," Nigel returned, sighing good-naturedly, "it always occurs to me. Why do you think I make bets with you all the time?" He leaned down and kissed Bug, a slow kiss that sped up fast until they were both panting, foreheads pressed together, gasping for air in the middle of the cracker aisle.

"It looks you're a gracious loser after all," Bug said as he slipped out of Nigel's arms and went back to the cart. Except that Nigel's left hand had managed to maintain its position in his back pocket and was stroking his ass through the thin cotton. Bug swallowed and started shoving the cart forward at break-neck speeds. They couldn't get out of this co-op and back home fast enough.

But maybe they'd stop in floral first. Buy Woody some carnations. To apologize.

It wouldn't be their fault if he took them the wrong way. And just because the bet was over didn't mean the entertainment had to be.

FIN

Notes:

This orphaned work was originally on Pejas WWOMB posted by author Julian Lee.
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