Got A Smile • •

[andrea spencer harding]

It wasn’t all that often that everyone at the New Yorker donned their glad rags and painted the city red. Andy went out with people she knew well from the office for drinks once a week usually, but it was never anything fancy. Tonight though, one of their long time journalists was retiring and they were seeing him off in style. Well, they had been, until the group had reached drunk and gone beyond that to wasted. That was when The Marquee seemed like the best idea ever, and a large portion of them hailed several cabs and reconvened at the nightclub. Andy thought it was hilarious to see some of the editors and her bosses so trashed. She had seen them like this only once before and that was at an awards presentation evening, where there was a free bar and a lot of expensive bottles to choose from. Tonight though, she was seeing them flirt, compete with some of their colleagues on the dance floor, and make fools of themselves on camera. It was perfect, and enough to keep the gossip flowing for a good few weeks, if she was the sort to partake in such office rituals.

Andy never had the time for that. She had deadlines to keep to, and with stories needing to be checked before they went to press and the facts needing to be spot on before they were sued for slander or false information, she didn’t have time to idle. Five minutes could make the difference between her finishing work on time or having to stay behind for an extra hour to try to chase someone up. She loved her job, but it made her need nights out like this just to unwind. She would dance until her feet hurt and flirt her way to several free drinks before seeing where the night took her. If she was in her own bed before sunrise it was usually a bit of a disappointment. Andy was young, she wanted to live her life and someday have stories too wild to tell to the children in her life; children she suspected would belong to Nell, since she didn’t see herself being the type to settle down anytime in the near or distant future. She was too afraid of thinking like that.

Finishing off her drink, Andy made her way outside to see one of her friends from the paper safely into a taxi. The redhead had held her own in a shot competition earlier in the evening, winning them a round of drinks, but now it was taking its toll and she needed her bed more than anything. She waved the taxi off, and decided to head back inside. The night was still young and so was she. Turning around in the direction of the door, the night air whipped Andy’s blonde hair into her face, and she stumbled slightly, not expecting the wind to have picked up. Her heel slipped on the edge of the sidewalk and she fell, her ankle twisting with a horrible crack to accompany it. Andy cried out once in pain and shock and then again with a string of colourful phrases. On the filthy concrete she grabbed at her foot, the pain shooting up her leg and making her feel incredibly sick all of a suddenly. “Holy fuck fucking fuck.”

• • •

TAGGED! Colby Martin Grimm
WORDS! 563!
OUTFIT! Clumsy Cutie!
LYRICS! Dirty Little Thing - - - We Are Harlot
NOTES! <3

[Colby Martin Grimm]

Colby had always planned on returning to New York. It was as simple as that. He was from the city and though he loved growing up on the farm and felt comfortable there, the city was where he had needed to be. His grandparents hadn't begrudged him that, they understood what he had needed to do. Leaving the way they had, when they had was part of it of course, but it hadn't been the only reason he'd decided he needed to be back. There was so much more than just seeing for himself how his city fared in the aftermath of that tragedy. Plus they'd been paying massive amounts of property taxes on a house that hadn't had occupants since Colby and his sister left. They were paying to have people take care of it but it wasn't really necessary when Colby was quite capable of doing it himself. And he liked working with his hands. If he hadn't wanted to be an EMT, he probably would have gone into small time construction or carpentry.

But he had wanted to help people and follow in some of the greatest footsteps on the planet. Being a first responder meant too much to Colby and it was difficult to explain to people. They either thought he had some sort of hero complex or had some sort of secret death wish. Telling people about his family might have helped but he'd seen first hand what people did when you were introduced to New people with the tagline "he's coming to us from New York City. " around the same time as 9/11. It wasn't a good feeling. And the looks of pity was too much to bear. Yeah, he's lost his parents and it had sucked royally and yeah, he's hated the world for a while but that was acceptable to an extent. He'd been allowed to feel those things but he didn't need the pity because at least he and his sister had been able to live with family. Some kids hadn't been so lucky. So it was those kids that Colby at least felt bad for. They were stuck in the system until they were older. And okay yeah, life got better and the city grew stronger than ever but it was always there, missing in the skyline that he had always remembered.

So he had become a paramedic and took any shift they threw at him with a smile because he was doing something good. Even on shifts as boring as that night. For a city as huge as New York, the calls were coming in pretty slowly and in the short time they'd been on shift, they'd only got called to four scenes, and only one of which needed serious medical attention. They were back on the road and able to do any paperwork out there. They were going to stop for a coffee when the next call came in and the rushed to the sidewalk outside the Marquee. Colby heard the woman before he saw her with the crowd that had gathered but he worked his way through while his partner grabbed the rest of their equipment. "Hey there, I'm Colby. What have we got here, hmm?" He asked with a smile. It was obvious just from looking at it that the ankle was broken.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tag || andrea spencer harding
Words || 558
Clothes || Pretty Paramedic
Music || Homegrown Honey --Darius Rucker
Notes || <3

[andrea spencer harding]

Andy saw New York as her home, despite all of the years she had been raised in California. Her situation with her family was still a strained one, and she felt like she belonged with the misfits and transplants of the big apple better than she did with anyone in San Diego. The only thing she missed was the ocean. Surfing wasn’t so easy here, and she missed living five minutes away from the beach sometimes. She could still swim though, be in the pool or the open waters, but that was not quite the same. Andy needed the water to keep her sane. It was her lifeline in an overly hectic world. She had bikinis and swimsuits hanging just about everywhere she could, drying them out after they had been washed or worn. She was certain she drove Nell mad sometimes with them, but her friend had yet to mention anything to her and they had lived together long enough already.

This, however, was one time Andy wished her friend had been coerced into a night out. She could have done with having a nurse at her side instead of a bunch of drunken strangers as she rolled about the sidewalk. She knew she was going to be sick, and she knew she was going to scream at the next idiot who tried to offer her advice based on some time their bud slipped at a football game after too many beers. Andy already wanted to shout that she wasn’t wasted out of her skull, that she had just stumbled off the edge of the sidewalk in shoes that looked incredible but were so impractical. She just didn’t trust herself to open her mouth in case the nauseating pain did in fact turn into something more. Instead she had to keep the screaming in her head. The screaming at the people around her, the screams of pain, and the screaming at herself for being so uncharacteristically clumsy.

She almost screamed when the new person appeared before her. That was, until she realised he was the paramedic one of the bouncers had called. She also noticed that he was drop dead gorgeous. If they were in the club then she would have flirted with him in a heartbeat, but right now she was pissed at the universe for sending her a handsome guy when she was likely to embarrass the hell out of herself. Swallowing hard and steading herself, Andy looked up at him with a pale face and blinked slowly. “Andy. And I’m probably going to throw up on you.” She warmed, not even daring to move in case it made it a reality. Why, oh, why did she have to land with the gorgeous man when she was most definitely going to horrify him within the next ten minutes. “Also, the faster I get away from these gawkers, the better I’ll feel.” She said quietly and swallowed hard again, and winced as the pain shot through her leg again. “They’re pissing me off more than my ankle is at this point.”

• • •

TAGGED! Colby Martin Grimm
WORDS! 519!
OUTFIT! Clumsy Cutie!
LYRICS! Dirty Little Thing - - - We Are Harlot
NOTES! <3

[Colby Martin Grimm]

Colby didn't mind these night shifts as much as most did. He enjoyed the city and it's nightlife, liked it more when he was outside it looking in. It was, to him, like one of those interactive museum installations. Mix and mingle, be completely submerged in the story but you could just as easily take a step back and not be part of the show. There were nights when he was quite happy to be part of the installation. New York had been where he should have grown up. And for the first ten years, it had been the only place Colby had ever known, with only summer trips to Alabama. That eleventh year spent in the city hadn't been so good for the Grimm family but that was a year Colby blocked out and still couldn't remember most of to this day. He didn't like to think about it because the entire world mourned and it just seemed so overwhelming. It had definitely come as a surprise to everyone, including Colby when he settled on becoming a paramedic, a first responder like his father.

To be fair, Colby had been scared as hell that first night on the job. He wanted to jump out of his skin every single time a call came through, expecting the actual worse. It got better and better over him, he certainly let out a long, harsh breathe at the end of that very first shift. His boss knew, of course. His was not a name you heard every day and as his father lost his life September eleventh, it was one that caught attention in the city among the older first responders. It became easier to breathe and now, it was just a job for Colby. He didn't have panic attacks whenever he started a shift anymore, he didn't find himself zoning out, wondering if this was how his father felt, wondering if this would be the time something happened. Now, he thought about what they would find at the scene since people didn't always get everything out when they were talking to dispatch. Like the call they were on, they were only told someone fell and hurt themselves and the foot looked funky. It was not at all helpful, that could mean just about anything like the foot was mostly off by some bizarre event. Colby had seen a lot in the few years he'd been a paramedic, hardly anything surprised him anymore.

He grinned, nodding his head. "Pleasure to meet you, Andy. Take this, just in case." He said holding out a bag should her nausea become too much and they weren't in the rig yet. He signaled his partner to clear some space, shoo away the curious drunks. With the number of nosy people milling about, they weren't going to get the bed over. It had happened before and Colby figured it would happen again, probably sooner than they'd like. "I bet. Let's see what we've got here." He said agreeing the audience wasn't the least bit helpful. He did a quick assessment, realised before he'd even started poking around that she couldn't walk on it and decided their best course of action."Alright, Andy. I'm not going to lie, it looks pretty bad. So what we're going to do is get you in the back of the rig and I'll wrap it up. Sound like a plan?" He asked with a smile. Being friendly and keeping a smile on his face, Colby learned, meant that his patients and those around them, stayed a little bit calmer. "When you're ready, wrap your arms around my shoulders. It'll be the fastest way." And it wouldn't lead to someone stepping under the bed and claiming they'd been hit by them. People tried all sorts of stunts and Colby wasn't about to give them the chance.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tag || andrea spencer harding
Words || 643
Clothes || Pretty Paramedic
Music || Homegrown Honey --Darius Rucker
Notes || <3

[andrea spencer harding]

Andy wasn’t the party animal she knew she was currently dressed as. She was shorts and baggy tops, sneakers and messy hair as much as she could get away with. Often, she had a swim suit on under her clothes just so she could go to the pool whenever the need hit her. She enjoyed dressing up every now and then, sure, but right now she could have easily sold the souls of everyone around her for her favourite surf hoodie and fluffy socks – not that she’d enjoy putting the latter on right now. It would probably be the actually trigger to make her throw up all those delicious cocktails she had ingested over the course of the night between dancing and posing for stupid photos with her friends. Now she was regretting all of it and wishing she had just stayed on the couch watching bad TV and complaining to Nell about it all. It was incredible how one wrong step could ruin an entire night. Andy wished she could think about how she might look back and laugh about this one day, but the pain was too much right now, and the gathering crowd was pushing on her very last nerve. How she had held back the tears and the vomit was beyond her ken, but she wasn’t going to question it. Right now her dignity might be all she had left beside the tiny silver clutch hanging uselessly from her wrist.

She gripped the bag she was given so tightly that it crumpled in her hand. Andy was a little too proud to hang her head over it just in case the worst case scenario did come to pass. She had visions of projectile vomiting like the kid out of The Exorcist, but for some bizarre moment that seemed better than hanging over a sick bag like some travel sick flight passenger. She wanted to think the pain made her believe in that, but honestly, it was probably her own weird brain conjuring thoughts like that. There was, after all, many a reason why Andy had spent her life on the edge of family groups and friendship circles. She was always that little bit of an outsider.

She let out a breathy scoff at Colby’s words. “’Pretty bad’? It feels like it’d be better to just hack it off with a blunt and rusty handsaw.” She grunted out the last few words, feeling that sharp spike of pain shoot through her leg again. It switched between throbbing constantly and feeling as though there was a blade penetrating deep through the bone of her ankle and being dragged right the way up the rest of her skeleton. Andy thought the surf accident where she’d hurt her spine had been bad, but this made it feel like nothing more than a toothache. Though back then she had been a reckless teenager, convinced it was just some bad bruising, maybe a pulled muscle. It was only after being sick and dragged to the hospital by her parents did she discover how wrong she was. Andy raised her eyebrows at Colby, choosing to try and distract herself from the agony she was in. If she didn’t, then she didn’t want to think of the mess she might turn into. “Normally you’d have to get me a few drinks before I’d do anything like that.” Still, it wasn’t like she could prove her independence right now. Her shoes were not designed to hop in. So, as she spoke, she slipped her arms around his shoulders, briefly taking a moment to enjoy the warmth of his body since she was sitting on the sidewalk in nothing but the thin dress she has chosen for this night out; even the homeless dressed in warmer things.

• • •

TAGGED! Colby Martin Grimm
WORDS! 635!
OUTFIT! Clumsy Cutie!
LYRICS! Dirty Little Thing - - - We Are Harlot
NOTES! <3