Real Thing
By Missy

SERIES: Real Thing
PART: One of one
RATING: PG
PAIRING(s): No Pairing, mentions past L/C.
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Drama
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: Post HTNYT
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: The birth of Shirley's first child brings a sense of isolation to Laverne.
NOTES: Another strange fic of mine that popped without prompting into the world.

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Her heart was tired.

Tired...More like exhausted. No one would blame her for that. It had been a long night.

She leaned against the beam and watched each wave come in, slapping the beach. A slight weakness in her knees indicated the length of the night. But it had been worth it; Shirley was fine, and her baby was better...it didn't look like Walter at all.

Of all the places to go into labor, though...a funeral?

She laughed to herself. There were some days Shirley didn't want to be the center of attention at all, and then fate stepped in and made her the center of the universe.

The kid was cute, though.

He made her wonder if she'd ever have one of her own.

Carmine was a nice guy, a good lover....and they had fought through the initial awkwardness between them and through Shirley to make a nice relationship.

But it didn't feel special. Not special enough to keep him in LA.

He called her; sent postcards. She had sent him the money that had kept him there. But nothing seemed permanent between them, and in the end it was just another sexual odyssey built on the shifting sands of the late 60's.

Still, Neither of them had the time or the guts to kill the relationship. She supposed in some time he would come back to LA, and they would crawl into bed together.

The prospect didn't excite her as much as it should have.

The ocean turned green as her eyes as when she remembered her age. Thirty-Five. Just months older than Shirley, but somehow she felt like her dour aunt, unnoticed, with a womb of concrete.

Sometimes, she feared that she would get what she wanted; become a married woman. Her fear, the one that coiled insistently about the pit of her stomach: that she would sacrifice this job for 'everything' and discover that it meant nothing. That her kids would, worse yet, hate her.

She didn't see Lenny until his hand was on her shoulder. Didn't know she was crying until he gently wiped her tears away.

"Vernie?" He said, using a tone she's only ever heard him use with Amy Babbish. "I'm goin' in to see the baby." He held out his hand. "Wanna come with me?"

She looked at his hand...and then into the face of its owner. He was growing out his hair, and wearing this blindingly bright paisly shirt. His eyes were filled with such sympathy, sympathy that threatened to become love.

She remembered, suddenly, that she should be happy. She had money, a nice job. And Happy people didn't cry.

Smiling through her tears, she took his hand.




The End!