For Reasons Wretched and Divine

You seem like Prize and Couldn't Save me if you Try

The phone buzzed in Happy's pocket, and he took the distraction gladly. He could appreciate a good argument as well as the next guy, but listening to Tig and Kozik bicker was something that even he couldn't enjoy.

Venus Van Dam: 1 image attached

Happy frowned. She only ever sent him pictures of the puppies, and now they had all gone to new homes. The Harley Davidson clock on the wall told him that the girls had only been shopping for two hours, and though that seemed like more than a rational time to call the quits on the excursion to him, he knew that in the back of his mind, they weren't done yet. Gemma shopped for hours at a stretch, and if Happy were the kind to beg, he'd plead for mercy when he had to follow her on protective detail.

Happy sat heavily on the couch in the corner, away from the nagging at the bar. Half-Sack stood off to the side of the argument like a kid listening to his fighting parents on the verge of a divorce, nervously playing with his fingers.

Happy clicked on the file and waited as it loaded. It had taken a lot of persuading on behalf of his friends for him to get a touchscreen phone, so his device was practically first-generation, ergo, slow loading.

Happy felt like his entire body shut down like there was a power outage. One second, he was on; the next second, he was at the 'main menu' option in a video game, waiting for direction.

The picture wasn't what Venus had insinuated earlier in the day, and it killed Happy a little to think that he was thankful that it wasn't. He couldn't have a full-blown stroke in the clubhouse.

It was just Sunshine in a simple dress, canary yellow and hanging to her knees; the high waist sat just under her chest.

Heart palpitations, Happy thought to himself, labeling the feeling in his chest. His skin felt like it was buzzing, the blood in his veins rushing too hard, too fast, like it was trying to get away from him.

The dress wasn't lewd. It had frilly shoulder coverings and minimal cleavage showing and covered more than half of her legs. It wasn't the dress that made him feel floaty, and he supposed that it wasn't her body (even though it was a s t r o n g contender). He concluded that it was just Sunshine. Venus could have sent a picture of her wearing a parka, and Happy felt confident that his insides would have liquified all the same because it was just Sunshine.

God, he wanted to know if she tasted as sweet as she looked.

"You all right, Hap?" Tig asked, snapping Happy's attention to the man. He hadn't heard the conversation drop off, and he assumed it wasn't all the settling to see him staring down unblinkingly at his phone.

"Your wife is trying to kill me," he deadpanned.

"Eh, good for her," he said, taking a sip of his beer.

"Did she send you something?" Half-Sack asked, taking a step closer and craning his neck to look at the phone.

"Take one step closer, and I'll feed you your other ball," Happy glared, turning his phone screen away protectively.

He all but scurried away, knowing better than to test the bluff of Happy.

I think yellow is her color; what do you think? Was the caption that he hadn't even noticed, which wasn't all that good considering it was his job to see things.

Fingers hovered over the keypad of the phone, his mind was a garbled mess of incoherent sounds and emotions, not even words because they required higher processing functions, and that wasn't something that he had right now.

Agreed, he typed back; each letter carefully punched in as if that would better convey how emphatically he was agreeing.

Notes:

Venus is such a good wing woman for both of them. She's like a fairy godmother.