Perfect Angel

So in honor of it being Sunday, I thought I'd post a little snippet of what's written of Chapter 9 of That Which is Greater.  I wrote some of the chapter and passed it off to the magnificent Course Jester, and this is just a short snippet because the blog's been dead, and I'm hoping to distract everybody with the fact that Fates 49 is still only 20%*...

A distraction that works better if I don't point out that fact first.  Smart, Frea.

But either way, enjoy the scenelet!

- Frea

*At the time this blog post was written!!

Daddy's Little Angel

Chuck Bartowski was having a bad day.

He had bad days a lot, he knew. It wasn’t easy running your own business in Los Angeles as a one-man operation and paying for the mortgage and care of a four-year-old, even when you had help from two doctors. Sometimes his work ate his life. Sometimes things seemed just too overwhelming. And sometimes, the universe just aligned into a perfect delineation of suck. He was sure it wasn’t personal.

Though, to be honest, he’d noticed, his own bad days happened most often because his four-year-old was having a bad day. Or, in other words, she was being a brat.

Just like today. And it wasn’t even time for breakfast yet.

“What’s wrong with the purple one, again?” he asked, fighting back the desire to pinch the bridge of his nose.

His sweet little angel’s eyes practically turned red. “It’s too purple!”

“There’s no such thing as too purple.”

“Nuh-uh. It is. Wanna wear the white one.”

“We’ve been over this one. The white one’s dirty—you wore it yesterday.”

“So? Wanna wear it again.”

She’d been getting clothing advice from Uncle Morgan again. Chuck had to bite back a noise somewhere between a groan of frustration and a sigh. “Well, you can’t, so pick another shirt. How about the blue one with the flowers Aunt Ellie brought back from Hawaii? What about that one?”

“I hate blue!”

Chuck had to actually bite his tongue before he could mention that just the day before, Violet’s favorite color had been blue, and she had used it to draw an entire blue cow—a picture she had made for “Major Casey Sir.”

Some battles were better left not fought, he’d learned. “Okay,” he said, turning back to Violet’s dresser while the four-old-continued to sit on the edge of her bed, arms crossed over her chest and a sulk in place. They’d mutually agreed on jeans for the day, but she was still wearing his old Batman T-shirt, a favorite pajama shirt. And it honestly looked like she might be wearing it all day, at the rate they were going. He’d been hoping to get in a quick trip to the park, really wear her out so that he could get in some work this afternoon, but if the whole day was going to go like this, maybe he was better off locking her in the basement they didn’t have.

And that was a horrible thought. He bit back a sigh. He hadn’t been sleeping well.

“Well, how about red?” he asked, continuing to sift through the drawer of Violet’s shirts. When the hell had she acquired so many? It wasn’t like she had grandparents to dote on her.

“Want the white one!”

“I’ve already said you can’t wear that one because I am not doing a load of laundry for just one shirt. Now, it looks like we’re going to have to compromise.”

“What’s compromise?” Violet asked.

“It means you and I come up with a second choice together.”

“I don’t wanna do that.”

“Hence the nature of compromising. But, look, here, this one’s white.”