#team folly

[the-greatest-tumbleweed]

Low res team Folly pyjama party anyone?

[sixth-light]

Post-LS prompt number whatever

Prompt: Team Folly minus Peter meeting and holding a very critical and major session on how they are able to cheer Peter up, @utrinque-paratus

“One last thing,” Alex said, as people started to stand and pack up their tablets – everybody except Thomas, of course, because it’d really be the end of the world if he started taking notes on an electronic device. “Who’s on the Grant rota this week?”

“I’ve invited him and the missus round for dinner on Saturday,” said Miriam.

“Good one,” said Sahra. “He’s really curious about whether you actually do have chickens.”

“Why would we not have chickens?” Miriam looked baffled.

“And I’ve got to drop off a few of his things tomorrow,” Thomas said. “I expect he’ll be rather more excited by the video game controller than the Iliad.”

“Everybody has their quirks,” said Alex. “Just as long as he doesn’t think we’re leaving him out to dry.”

“He’s not anything like…” Miriam trailed off. “Worst thing that’s going to happen with him is boredom.”

“Yes.” Thomas pushed his chair in emphatically, something like a smile tugging at his mouth. “But you say that like it has no consequences.”

[sixth-light]

Post-LS prompt number hey guys, it’s Friday!: “Team Folly going out drinking together with all their respective mates/spouses and maybe other additional people. Hilarity and Fluff ensues” (@utrinque-paratus)

I can’t say that they welcome us with open arms at The Chestnut Tree, even with Lady Ty owning the place, but you have to show your face around if you want to keep any respect. It had occurred to me that it wouldn’t hurt if some other faces were seen around too, which is why I’d dragged Dom Croft here, since he was in town for a conference. Victor was ‘in town for the shopping’, a direct quote, Sahra and Stephanopoulos had been there when I’d asked Dom, Michael and Pam had materialised at their better halves’ summons, and I had totally been just about to text Bev when we’d walked in the door and found her already presiding over a table, shandy in hand – apparently that was okay if you were as far along as she was.

“Sahra said you were too busy gossiping to text me,” she said in greeting. “Dom! Vic! It’s been way too long.”

There was a round of greetings before Dominic and Victor went off to sort out the first round.

“You’ll have to grab your own,” Dominic said ten minutes later – it was a Friday night after all -, putting half the drinks down on the table in front of us; Victor was behind him with the rest. “I remembered the list, but bugger me if I can remember who was drinking what.”

“Shame,” said Victor, putting the rest down. “There goes one career if the coppers decide they don’t want you any more.”

“I’ll just have to be a kept man,” Dom sighed, picking up his own pint.

“The closest I’ve ever got to a farm is the hens,” said Stephanopoulos, “but even that gives me the impression there aren’t a lot of kept people in farming, period.”

“Ssh,” said Victor. “I’m saving that for when they catch him talking to foxes.”

“They don’t fire you for that,” said Sahra. “Not unless you’re doing it in daylight.”

“Does that mean you can tell the buggers to stay away from the henhouse?” Pam narrowed her eyes.

“Of course not,” said Bev. “They’re foxes.”

“Worth asking,” said Pam, amiably.

“Cheers, everybody,” said Sahra, holding up her umbrella-laden drink. The Chestnut Tree did an impressive range of mocktails now – I suspected that had something to do with something that had happened when I’d been on leave, but Sahra hadn’t filled me in on the details.

“Cheers,” we said, and glasses clinked.

[sixth-light]

Post-LS prompt #2

Note: I’m doing these in the order I am inspired, length is going to vary based on inspiration. Similar prompts will be combined. This is not the one I mentioned last night, sorry - that’s getting, er, longer. 

Post-Lies Sleeping, Team Folly, gen, for @empressfortuna [prompt is entirely spoilery]

Prompt: Foxglove discovers Bob Ross videos on Youtube.

I was welcomed back to the Folly post-suspension with riotous applause (only from Toby, really, but even Molly did seem well pleased) to discover that in my absence, someone had introduced Foxglove to modern technology . She’d even found YouTube.

This had me concerned at first because these days you can’t watch two movie trailers on that site without an algorithm asking you if you want to hear some wanker ranting about how women and everybody who doesn’t burn the minute they set foot outside are ruining everything. Setting Foxglove loose on the internet seemed a bit like setting a toddler loose unsupervised. Not because I thought of Foxglove as a child, seeing as how she was old enough to be my great-grandmother, but because I wanted her to have a chance to experience some of the better things about the outside world before she had to learn about neo-Nazis.

As it turned out, she was mostly using it to watch art videos, so I needn’t have worried. She was particularly fascinated by Bob Ross, to the extent that, one Sunday afternoon, she somehow talked – gestured? – me and Molly and Abigail and Nightingale into painting along with her and Bob.

Molly took it in with a tiny frown of concentration. Her brushstrokes were an exact mirror of the ones on the screen – like, terrifyingly so. Foxglove knew what she was about and so her painting was more an interpretation, but a really really good one. Nightingale took some time to relax into it, but seemed to be enjoying himself. My painting was – well, there were recognisable shapes in it, but that was mostly thanks to my instructors. As I once told Foxglove, I’m life-changingly terrible at art.

As it turns out, though, I’m not nearly as terrible as Abigail, who started making loud noises about how this didn’t seem very useful about fifteen minutes in. Her canvas told me why. This was not nearly as effective as she would have liked. As her teachers, we held firm, and I think she started to like it by the end.

Beverley showed up to pick me up just as we were finishing; she’d been visiting with her Mum so she’d dropped me off.

“Why do you smell like paint?” she asked, lifting up my hand to sniff at it dubiously. So I explained.

“Do it in the tech cave next time and I’ll come along,” she suggested. I said I didn’t think we’d be doing it again. I was absolutely wrong.

“It’s good for us all to do something relaxing together,” Nightingale said. “And Foxglove clearly enjoys it so much.”

“Can’t we get her teaching night classes instead?” I complained, more fool me, but that took another couple of years to happen.

So Beverley got to have fun with paints along with the rest of us, and Abigail learned to enjoy something she didn’t find it easy to be good at, and Nightingale added another skill to his Renaissance Man arsenal, and after a while it turned out that maybe I wasn’t quite as art-impaired as I’d thought. Which I was glad to learn now and not, say, age twenty, when it would have made me brood about roads not taken.

The only real complaint came from Seawoll, who found us all in the atrium (for the light, Foxglove had explained) one Sunday afternoon.

“What the fuck is this?” he wanted to know.

“I’m sure Foxglove can find you a spare canvas,” Nightingale said, with a gleam in his eye. Seawoll made a lot of loud noises about how ridiculous this place was, and how he’d only come in to pick up a file, and what was this anyway, an art school?

He still took his painting home with him in the end. Foxglove was so pleased.

[sixth-light]

Post-LS prompt #3

For @utrinque-paratus: gen, Stephanopoulos + Team Folly, immediately post-book, prompt behind the cut because spoilers. (Also, if you want to write this, you should also write it! More fic is always good!) 

ALRIGHT. 1) Nightingale (and also whole Team Folly) visiting Stephanopoulos in hospital. Nightingale & her bonding over both having been shot once in a really warm way 

The worst thing about being in hospital, Miriam decided on the fifth day, was the boredom. Pamela could only take so much time off, and everybody she worked with was running around with their trousers on fire trying to deal with the aftermath of Lesley taking her newfound love of firearms to its fatal and gruesome conclusion. A couple of her non-work friends had dropped in when they could, and Pamela had stocked her up with audiobooks, but mostly she was just a bit sore despite the painkillers, and periodically itchy, and bored to tears with inactivity. Sahra came, of course, but there were circles under her eyes and Miriam packed her off as soon as they’d been over the usual pleasantries of this sort of stay – what was the prognosis, when would they let her go home, how was the food.

“I’m buggered, to tell you the truth,” Sahra admitted. “I feel like I haven’t slept since before Peter went missing.”

“That’s how I was feeling, before they gave me the good drugs,” Miriam said. “Go home.”

Sahra gave her a tired smile, and squeezed her hand. “Get yourself out of here, alright, boss? We need you up and about.”

Peter showed up the second day after Alex told her everything had gone down at Covent Garden. He made a passing comment about having been in for observation and brushed off all her questions about what he was being observed for (“He jumped off a sodding church,” Alex had said, “the best thing about that wanker Chorley being dead is that Peter might stop jumping off buildings after him.”) Then he told her some tarradiddle about his girlfriend’s ghost, except Beverley was alive, and just fine, he reassured her, and Isis, except not the actual Egyptian goddess Isis, except sort of a goddess Isis. Miriam didn’t really follow, and eventually told him to bugger off and find someone else to bother. He carried the whole thing off so successfully that she didn’t find out he’d been suspended – the most obvious question to ask – until the next day, when his governor finally showed his face.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come by earlier,” Thomas said. He came armed with grapes and a copy of the Guardian, which Miriam knew for a fact he didn’t read, so she could say she was pleased to see him. “It’s been Bedlam, especially since they suspended Peter -” he broke off. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Of course not,” Miriam snorted.

“The Commissioner felt it was necessary, under the circumstances.” There were entire conversations hiding in that statement, Miriam felt sure. “I wish I had other news for you, but we’re at the same standstill we were when Alexander visited you.”

“No surprises there,” Miriam said. “Don’t look like that – it’s not like you’d be doing any better if I was up and about. Lesley’s had a lot of time to think about how she’d hide, and she can shapeshift, for fuck’s sake.”

“Only the broad structure of the lower face, as I understand it.” Thomas smiled wryly. “But yes. And we have even less idea of how to draw her out than we had Chorley.” He waved a hand. “But that’s a problem for another day. I understand you’ll be home at the end of the week?”

“Fingers crossed.”

“I was in hospital for three months, the first time I was shot. The boredom was worse than anything else.”

“No internet, was there?”

“Not in nineteen forty-five, no,” he said, like it was normal. Jesus Christ. Miriam had heard stories, but she hadn’t been sure they were true. Not really.

“No antibiotics, either,” Miriam observed. “Think I prefer being shot in the twenty-first century.”

“So did I.”

Miriam laughed, despite herself. “Alright, you win that one.” She reached for the newspaper. She could read on her phone, sure, but she hated it; printed everything for work out, when she could. Once upon a time it had been one of the only things she and Thomas had agreed on. “Don’t feel you have to keep me entertained.”

One other thing she could say for him; he knew when to make a graceful exit. He stood. “I shan’t. Best of luck with the assessment on Friday.” 

“Luck doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Miriam told him, but she was surprised to realise, after he left, that for once Thomas Nightingale showing up somewhere had actually made her feel better.  

[sixth-light]

Post-LS prompt #10

For @themardia: Gen, Molly, Seawoll, Team Folly/Team Belgravia, prompt behind the cut. 

Lies Sleeping prompt! If you can/are up for it, a snippet from the first time Seawoll came to the Folly and met Molly for the first time. Bonus points if Peter is there.

Nightingale had told her that they were having visitors later in the week, fellow police officers who normally worked with Sahra Guleed at Belgravia, so Molly made sure that the silver and china they used for visitors was all especially clean. Not that she didn’t keep it that way, but since they didn’t use it that often, it did acquire a fine layer of dust between her once-a-month polishings. The next of those wasn’t for another two weeks. 

This wasn’t at all because she’d heard Nightingale and Peter talking about the meeting in the kitchen, while they read their newspapers and she oiled the cast-iron kitchenware. She wasn’t sure why they had to have a different newspaper each, but it seemed to matter very much to both of them. The weather forecasts and television schedules were the same in both; that was all she really cared about. 

“Has Seawoll ever even darkened our doors?” Peter said. “Because if he has it hasn’t been in the last three years.”

“I don’t believe so,” Nightingale said. “I’m sure he’ll behave himself.”

From Nightingale that could mean a lot of things, but when the visitors appeared, none of them were wizards, so it couldn’t be that which was worrying him. Molly wasn’t sure which one this ‘Seawoll’ was; she’d heard the name before on the phone, but voices didn’t always match faces. Then they spoke, and she recognised the voices of the tall man and the woman with short hair; they had both called and asked for Peter, or sometimes Nightingale, more than once. Seawoll was the man and Stephanopoulos was the woman. Of course they didn’t know her. 

Sahra was frequent enough a guest that Molly didn’t get out the fine china just because she was here, and the other man – David Carey – had been by once or twice, although he slunk in at the back of the group, as if he didn’t want to be there. The tall man didn’t want to be here either, but he showed it by scowling and standing very tall. Sahra, behind them, gave her a little wave; Molly nodded to her.  

“Molly,” Peter said. “This is DCI Alexander Seawoll, and DI Miriam Stephanopoulos, and you’ve met David, right?”

Molly nodded. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Molly,” said DI Stephanopoulos. Molly nodded to her as well. 

DCI Seawoll looked her up and down. “Nobody told me it was fancy dress.”

Peter winced. Molly gave DCI Seawoll her coldest look, which had cowed older and more powerful and more self-confident men than he was ever likely to be. She’d learned it from Mrs Arminger, who had ruled the kitchens when Molly had first entered the Folly.  

“I see you’ve met our station manager, Alexander,” Nightingale said, coming into the atrium. He and Seawoll regarded each other with the expressions of men who would rather be anywhere else, but knew they weren’t supposed to admit that. Peter was looking at Sahra in shared despair. 

“Is that what – yes,” said Seawoll. “Can we get on with it, then?” 

Molly paced silently a foot behind him, on the way to the visitors’ lounge, and smiled when she saw the hair standing up on the back of his neck. She made sure to place the teapot and the biscuits and small sandwiches she’d made at the other end of the table from where he at – it had the additional effect of making Peter sit up a little, as they were right in front of him. She saw Seawoll notice it, and saw Nightingale notice it and carefully not smile. Sahra caught her attention. “You made these, Molly? All okay for me?”

Molly nodded; as if she would serve Sahra food she couldn’t eat. Sahra caught that, and laughed. “Yeah, I know, habit.” 

She caught Seawoll looking at them, and swept away. They were sure to need an extra pot of tea, with that many people. 

The meeting lasted almost until dinnertime and everybody came out of it with unhappy lines around their mouths, though there hadn’t been any shouting. It reminded Molly of meetings during the later part of the War. There had been a lot more shouting during the early years, and grim silences as it went on. 

Peter and the other two junior officers came out first, before Nightingale and the others, and stood in the atrium complaining about paperwork, which seemed to be something wizards and police officers and people who were both had in common. Molly went back down to the kitchen to check on dinner, and when she came up to see if the tea things could be cleared, the others had emerged. Peter was saying something to Nightingale about going to Beverley’s, but then Toby came up with the lead in his mouth and Peter sighed and said “Oh, fine,” and took him out.

Stephanopoulos thanked Molly for the food and drink, and Sahra said she’d see her tomorrow, and David Carey gave her a wary smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Seawoll coughed and asked if he could have a word. Molly’s gaze flickered to Nightingale, but he gave a quick, brief shake of his head that said he didn’t know, before he turned to saw goodbye to Stephanopoulos. 

Molly gestured Seawoll to follow her a little way into the atrium. Then she folded her arms and looked at him. In her experience it was remarkable what people started saying when you folded your arms and looked at them and had no intention of speaking in a language they understood, and they knew that too. 

“Wanted to apologize,” Seawoll said, bluntly, and that was a surprise. “That was rude, what I said earlier. Fact of the matter is, DCI Nightingale and I don’t get on too well, and we’re going to have to for this case, and I let that get the better of me. Thank you for the refreshments, and for knowing what’s alright for Sahra. You’d be surprised how often people don’t bother to ask.” He trailed to a stop. “So…will we be alright, er, Ms Molly?”

Molly let the silence draw out for another second or two, and then she nodded. 

He coughed again. “Well. That’s good then. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you.”

Molly nodded to say that they would certainly be seeing each other, and walked him back towards the back door. He took the hint. 

Good for him, she thought as he left. If he hadn’t found the nerve for that apology, it would have been cold coffee until he had. If he was going to be visiting the Folly, he needed to learn its rules.

[mizstorge]

A VIOLET NIGHT (or Christmas, if you must) Moment from Ben!