Chapter 6

Felicia worked late that night, mainly to try and keep her mind off of things. She didn't even realize how late it had gotten until the nighttime cleaners made their presence known to her.

"Sorry, I'll get out of your way, just gimme a sec." Felicia began to quickly pack up her things.

"Take your time." One of the men said. "We've got all night."

Felicia wasn't sure why, but there was something about the guy that gave her the creeps. He was short and stocky, with a balding head and a beer belly. He watched her as she gathered all of her things, and she could still feel his gaze on her as she walked out of the lab.

She reached into her purse, rummaging around until her fingers wrapped around the small can of pepper spray that her mother had forced her to buy. For once, Felicia was glad that she had decided to listen.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, and Felicia whipped around, spraying the contents of the can.

"What the hell?!"

It hadn't been an assailant that she had gotten, but Kirk.

"Kirk!"

The man was doubled over, his hands covering his eyes.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry!"

"What did I ever do to you?!"

"I'm sorry, I thought that you were someone else!"

"Who do you hate enough to pepper spray them?!"

"There was this creepy guy on the cleaning crew, okay?! He was looking at me weird, and I swear that he was watching me the whole time I was walking out of there."

"You must be talking about Lenny." Kirk removed his hands from his eyes, which were incredibly red and watery.

"Come on, let me drive you home, you're in no condition to do so." She was not looking forward to the conversation that she would be having with Eddie. Eddie was very protective over Kirk, he had even spent a weekend in jail once because he had gotten into a fistfight with a guy that had been shouting homophobic slurs at Kirk.

"Let's get you home." Surely Eddie wouldn't be that mad at her, right?

~

Turns out that Felicia was dead wrong.

"You did what?!"

Eddie was fuming at Felicia, who remained quiet while he tended to Kirk, using small dabs of baby shampoo to neutralize the effects of the pepper spray, and then he rinsed Kirk's eyes out. "I never took you to be trigger-happy."

"Eddie, it was an accident-" Kirk started to say, but Eddie cut him off. "Accident or not, you don't just go around pepper-spraying everyone like some kind of maniac."

"I've already apologized!" Felicia exclaimed. "I don't know what else you expect me to do!"

"Not carry an aerosol weapon would be a good start."

"Look, you're mad at me, I get it."

"I'm more than just mad at you, I'm fuming. I thought that you were smarter than this."

"You're acting like I did it on purpose! At least I drove him home instead of risking having him drive home in his state!"

"So I'm supposed to be thanking you for being a decent human being with morals?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but there's not a lot of people in the world these days that have a lot of morals, or common decency."

"Guys, just stop!" Kirk shouted, causing both of them to look at him. "Look, no one is at fault here, okay? Felicia was scared and she was acting out of instinct, her fight or flight response kicked in. Eddie, you're letting your overprotectiveness get the better of you, and you need to stop. I'm gonna be fine, quit acting like I've been permanently blinded. You wanna fight with somebody, then fight with the guy that made Felicia feel like she had to take out that pepper spray. She'd had a run-in with Lenny."

At the mention of Lenny, Eddie's face darkened a bit. The look on his face softened as he looked at Felicia. "He was messing with you huh? He tried to mess with Kirk a while back, he doesn't care who he gets it from just so long as he's getting it. Look, I'm sorry. Kirk is right, I overreacted."

Felicia sighed softly, giving Eddie a smile of forgiveness. "If it had been my boyfriend that had gotten hurt, I can't say that I wouldn't have reacted in the same way."

"Maybe we should test out that theory if you ever get a significant other." Kirk teased, and Felicia stuck her tongue out at him. "It's not my fault that my relationships never worked out, you can blame my mother for that. She couldn't see a red flag if it was right in front of her face. Or any flags, for that matter. When she first met you, she didn't know that you were gay, and she had every intention of setting us up."

"So that's why she was always telling me restaurants that would make for great dates." Kirk chuckled. "Maybe don't take her word on any of them, I have a feeling that she was basing her suggestions off of Yelp reviews. Took Eddie to two of them, and they both turned out to be total trash."

"Maybe you could ask Hank out on a date," Eddie said, waggling his eyebrows.

"Oh, please." Felicia scoffed. "He's my coworker, and I don't see him in anything other than a platonic way. Besides, he's married."

"Those gift baskets that he brings you all of the time says otherwise."

"I'm going to tell you the same thing that I told Sabine. He brings those in when it's my time of the month to make sure that I don't bite his head off."

"Mmhmm, normal coworkers don't usually remember that kind of thing, you know."

Felicia rolled her eyes. "Think what you will, but nothing is going on with Hank and I, and nothing ever will. How do you know about the gift baskets, anyway?"

"I'm the all-knowing Eddie Thatcher, I see all, I know all."

"It's because Kirk told you, isn't it?"

"I cannot reveal my sources, that would be an invasion of privacy."

"Okay then, on that note, I think that I'm going to head home now. Thanks for, you know, not killing me."

"Anytime."

"Get better Kirk, text me if you need anything." She pressed a friendly kiss to Kirk's head before hugging Eddie.

"Give your mom our love," Eddie said. "And maybe tell her to leave the romantics to someone else."

"I've told her that a million times, and she hasn't listened to me yet, so maybe you could give it a try."

"Send her some cockroach-infested food, she'll get the picture."

"You're disgusting, you know that?" Felicia wrinkled her nose, squealing with laughter as Eddie grabbed her and ruffled her hair. "Eddie! Do you have any idea how hard I worked on my hair this morning?"

"A whopping five minutes?"

Felicia slugged him in the chest, causing him to yelp in mock pain. "You know, sometimes you can be a real bi-"

"Finish that sentence, I dare you."

Eddie shut his mouth, causing Felicia to smirk. "That's a good boy. Now be a gentleman and walk me to my car."