Lauren's Season Nine Continued!
GunShy
By Missy

SERIES: Lauren's Season Nine, Continued!
CHAPTER TITLE: GunShy
PART: 11 and 12 of 12, Episode 11 +12, Pt.1 of 1
RATING: PG-13 (Adult thematic material, violence)
PAIRING(s): L/L; S/C; S/R (Possible)
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-Cali
CONTINUATION: Of Lauren's Season Nine
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Lenny asks Carmine for help getting himself out of trouble, causing the girls to realize that .
NOTES: Thank you to Lauren for letting me continue her established continuity.

This one is ending early, due less to a lack of inspiration than my figuring this is just about the right place.

****

Lenny trembled as he palmed at the barrel of the revolver. The chill of its metal surface seemed to radiate through him, making what he knew he must do painful.

"You wanna be one of us, don't ya, Kosnoski?"

Lenny swallowed bravely, "yeah, yeah...anything for Laverne..."

"Then you put this hood over your head..." Lenny noticed how warm it was, "And you go in there, and you shoot those people for not giving us protection money."

He hated that they were treating him like a kid; it was bad enough that he could barely see through the heavy wool hood. But he burst through the door, shouted something, fired his gun...he knew that Laverne would be proud of him.

And he lifted the mask for a breath of fresh air, wondering who would praise him.

Then he saw her, beautiful, a crumbled flower.

Laying at his feet, bleeding to death.
***

Lenny screamed himself awake, kicking against the horror of what he perceived to be true. Waves of relief filled him at the sound of the baby's cry, and the annoyed voice of Fonzie at the other end of the phone.

"...Geez, whattya trying to do? Make me deaf?"

"Nah, I'm sorry, Fonz," Lenny wanted to explain himself, but it seemed stupid.

"So, you want these numbers, or what?"

"NO!" Lenny blurted. "Uh, I mean, I changed my mind, Fonz."

"Good. You don't wanna get hooked up with the Purple Fiends. Yanno, you make think Laverne ain't proud of you, but she's real proud. You gotta be blind not to see it."

"Yeah...guess I got my sight back," Lenny mumbled to himself, pulling the baby onto his lap. He hadn't even been thinking of his son in his foolish request to make everything perfect.

But nothing ever could be.

And he didn't mind it anymore.


***

"Pizza's up!"

Carmine clapped his hands together in greedy delight, spreading a smile across his wife's face. Their ridiculous disagreement had been locked into the past simply and effectively, and the divorce papers had been ripped up. They sat together with Davy as though nothing had happened.

Shirley watched her son with enthusiasm; he was fine and strong, and surely he could survive a few nights alone on the couch. He had stopped wincing at her every touch, stopped crying at the very sight of her. He had accepted her.

And Carmine had accepted her son.

Lenny came, carrying Tommy into the room. The infant waved his chubby fists; so large that he was nearly the size of her own child. Laverne squeezed into the booth beside him, and their close proximity mirroring Carmine's and Shirley's.

Loudly, brashly came Squiggy, carrying pizza and beer. He sat beside the children and made a third of them, playing with their pizza with impunity. His girlfriend found him and made a fourth.

And together, in their settled-unsettled mess, Shirley understood that life had become a game of having and loss, realizations fulfilled and denied. It was a balance beam, but falling off didn't bring death or destruction, just the possibility that the world wasn't perfect.

It was a chance that Shirley would have to take. And if it wasn't of her dreams, then it was their robust shadow calling her on into the oblivion of peace.

But she would never be as alone as she was when she had arrived on Laverne's doorstep two years before again.

The End!


Go Back