"You've reached Dr Riley Browne. I'm busy and can't pick up. Leave a message."


|Muse or mun can be contacted via this post|

It's too nice to pull apart.

LINK: Yeah, unfortunately.

LINK: They give me a reason not to give up this time, no matter how hard it feels.

LINK: Why does tequila or absinthe always seem like a good idea at the time?

6.12. "How to deal with death is at least as important as how to deal with life."
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Co-written with asinthecity
[Follows THIS and THIS]

At the bar of a quiet little, cosy pub in a back street of Princeton, Riley had somewhat of a production line going in front of him. First there was his cell phone in case Harri called him back, then there was his stethoscope which he had absentmindedly left hanging around his throat when he left the hospital, then there was the peanut bowl which he had no appetite for touching, then there was a pint of beer followed by four shots containing different spirits ending in Absinthe for a heavy and hard hit that he decided he needed. At the end of it, his hand rested on the bar beside his twin sister's. He had been mostly silent since she picked him up from PPTH. Outwardly, the events of the night had well caught up with him. His face was pale and he had heavy dark smudges under his eyes that emphasised the way he was blinking slowly as he contemplated the yet untouched booze in front of him. He hadn't eaten since the evening before, so he could be about to enter interesting territory, but he couldn't find it in him to care. His lips were dry and his shoulders slumped, his curly hair unruly from the amount of times he had threaded his fingers through it over the night.

( With a small exhalation, he cleared his throat and moved his hand to wrap his fingers around Tab's hand, giving it a small squeeze, reminding himself that he wasn't alone and he didn't need to be... )


Word Count | 5,920

LINK: Just when things were going good for once...

28.5.3. A moment of heightened emotions

[Follows THIS, THIS and THIS]

The last place Riley expected to end the horrible night was the morgue.

Something had told him earlier in the afternoon when his boss called him that he shouldn't take the nightshift. He just had this niggle in his gut that he should stay home, stay with Evie and the kids. Thinking of them as 'Evie and the kids' even still had him breaking into a goofy grin whenever he said it. He didn't feel ready to go back to work after their birth yet. He had been on paternity leave since then, and at the time, he had made the stupid, yet chivalrous, error of telling his boss to she could call him in for a shift if found herself really hard-up and short-staffed while he was off. Up to yesterday, he hadn't had a single call of that sort and he had gotten used to it. But she was short-staffed, and he agreed to go in for a single nightshift, even though he wasn't due back at work until the second week in April.

Now he wished he had never answered the phone.

( The morgue was expectedly cold, and Riley stood there beside the stainless steel table looking down at the body lying there... )

All muses referenced here with permission


Word Count | 1,436

LINK: We all have regrets, it's just harder to swallow when they're things that were completely out of your control. People still look at me stupid when I say I feel guilty about it, too. But no one ever said the human psych was a rational thing. In fact, it just downright bloody sucks some days.

LINK: Easy to remember to always take the pills when you know it will kill you if you don't.