Title: Cinderella Hated Those Glass Slippers
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: In Plain Sight
Pairing: Mary/Marshall
Rating: Adult.
Timeframe/Spoilers: Set between No Clemency for Old Men and Love’s Faber Lost. (What can I say, sometimes fic fixes things.) It is set in the same fanon as The Evidence of Damage but these little one-shots with Mary and Marshall won’t leave me alone!
A/N: This continues a series of one-shots that explores the developing romantic relationship between Mary and Marshall. This isn’t a work-in-progress but a collection of stories that gives some insight into these two wonderful characters. In order, the stories are as follows:
Patience
A Conversation. Of Sorts.
Disclaimer: Not mine. In fact, they kind of own me!

Summary: Her head told her she wasn’t seven years old anymore. Jinx was sober and trying to get her life together. Brandi was a mess, but Mary wasn’t responsible. (Was she?) She’d been married, loved her share of men, had even tried to love a woman (that experiment failed miserably), had been engaged to one of the most amazing prince charmings on the planet, and now she was in bed with her best friend and the man she’d always planned to spend her life with – even if it hadn’t been in this capacity.



It wasn’t that Mary Shannon wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t even hate sentimentality. It was that she had grown up without tradition. At age seven she learned that Prince Charming had a gambling habit that made him leave his princesses behind. On the playground she watched the Snow Whites and Rose Reds from playground corners; the girls showed off their dresses and Mary Jane’s while the boys watched them fly around the bars – not hiding that they were really looking up the girls’ skirts.

The girls ignored her while she played soccer and basketball with the older kids. While her classmates giggled over Valentines and “check yes or no” boxes, she just made sure her little sister was safe at the babysitters and when fifth grader Jack Landers did more than look up her skirt, she kicked him in the shins and got sent to the principal’s office for her defense of her modesty.

Her mother didn’t come to get her and eventually the principal let her go home if she promised to never do it again. Mary picked Brandi up from the sitter who smelled like tobacco and stale urine and made dinner with the saltine crackers and cheese whiz that was in the cupboard. Jinx didn’t even come home. Mary put Brandi to bed and sat alone in the dark duplex with no TV because the cable had been turned off. She occupied herself with the fairytale book her father had given her for her sixth birthday and she cried when Prince Charming saved Cinderella from her evil step-mother. It wasn’t out of relief for Cinderella’s sake, but instead because she just didn’t understand what was so special about the damned shoes.

Wouldn’t glass slippers cut her feet?

Her lack of understanding of fairy tale ideals didn’t stop her dreams and desires for the success of certain traditions. Marriage mattered. Commitment mattered. They mattered more to her than anyone understood. She just needed it her way. Letting someone else set the pace frightened her.
After all, what if Jinx didn’t show up all night long? Someone had to watch the house.

“What are you thinking about?”

Marshall’s voice was soft in the dark, startling her. His hand trailed up her bare leg before sliding down her stomach and gently prompting her to roll onto her back so he could look into her eyes. The proximity frightened her, but he didn’t let her roll away.

Her head told her she wasn’t seven years old anymore. Jinx was sober and trying to get her life together. Brandi was a mess, but Mary wasn’t responsible. (Was she?) She’d been married, loved her share of men, had even tried to love a woman (that experiment failed miserably), had been engaged to one of the most amazing prince charmings on the planet, and now she was in bed with her best friend and the man she’d always planned to spend her life with – even if it hadn’t been in this capacity.

But her heart still kicked and screamed. There was a Marshall-sized hole in the wall she kept around her soul and just like Humpty Dumpty, there was no fixing the shattered mess. The difference between herself and the nursery rhyme was that it was the wall that couldn’t be put back together. Surprisingly, she was just fine.

Gently, Mary brushed a stray lock of Marshall’s hair off his forehead. “Why me, Marshall?”

“What do you mean?”

“Girls throw themselves at you and your brains. Why did you choose me?”

“I didn’t.” He planted a kiss on her cheek and then pulled back again. In the early morning shadows of the room, his eyes were pools of black ink but she could still see the expression in them. “I never meant to fall for you, Mary. I woke up one morning and realized I had.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was going to.”

“When? After I married Raphael?”

“After I took the job you wouldn’t let me take.”

Realization hit her, hard, and Mary chuckled. “You stupid man.”

“I know.” Again, his lips brushed her forehead. “Why did you kiss me the other night?”

Sucking in a breath, Mary searched for an answer she really didn’t have. “I don’t know,” she whispered into the darkness. “It just … it felt right. I’ve wanted to do it before and never understood why. But the other night, I just did.”

His hand was trailing absently over her body. “I’m glad.”

“Me too.” The words caught in her throat, but not for her usual fears of emotion or sentiment. It was because she meant them. “Marshall, can we do this?”

He smirked. “We already have.” She swatted him and he nuzzled her neck gently. “Okay, what do you mean?”

“This. Us. Sleeping together at night and working together during the day. What if you get shot again? What if I do?”

“Mary.” His voice was soft, but firm. “We aren’t dumb kids recently partnered together who gave into a mutual attraction. We’re seasoned professionals who have lived through the worst our jobs have to offer. You don’t think that my hunt for the man who shot you was driven as much by my feelings for you as it was a professional need to get the person who hurt my partner?” His hand stilled on her stomach, just resting, but Mary had a sudden vision of him doing that someday for a different reason. Quickly, she slammed the door shut on the fairy tale dreamer who still lived in her head. “I expect us to falter. I expect us to stumble. I expect there will be weeks at a time when you send me home because you need your space and I expect there will be weekends I go off by myself. So we’ll take it one day at a time. We have to.”

“Why?”

“Because if we don’t, we’ll implode and take everyone down with us.”

This earned him another chuckle. “When did you get so smart?”

“I study a lot. It’s all my sexual frustration allowed.” He bent again, this time nipping at her earlobe. Willingly, she tilted her head, giving him access. His teeth made their way down her neck until positioning demanded his movement and Mary let go of him so he could focus his attention on her breasts. Mary kept her hands on his shoulders, needing the contact.

Unlike earlier, when they’d ravaged each other and passed out in each other’s arms, this time Marshall was slow, exploring her body with the same care he took with everything else in his life. Mary held her breath, hoping the shadows of early morning would hide the bullet scar, but his travels took him right to the puckered skin of the injury that had almost separated them permanently. He pressed his lips to the spot and Mary felt him shake slightly.

“Hey …” she tugged on his hair, forcing him to look at her. “I’m here. I’m fine. You didn’t lose me.”

“I kissed you goodbye that night. In the hospital. They wheeled you away and I kissed you goodbye. Just in case.”

The confession brought tears to her eyes. She’d spent her entire life arguing the point that the princess could be saved with the prince’s kiss. Apparently, some fairy tales did come true. “Well, it worked, Marshall.” He grinned and again, his lips touched hers. The kiss was slow and sweet and she let him take control of the moment. When he broke for air, she kept her arms looped around his neck. “One day at a time then?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it’s the best way to go.” Her fingers toyed uncertainly with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You can’t plan for every inevitability, Mary.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you do,” he kissed her again, “you’ll push me away before I can break your heart. I don’t want to let that happen.” This time when he kissed her, there were no interruptions.

***

Marshall was late to work. Lingering in Mary’s bed, between her legs, had been far too tempting and he’d been all too willing to ignore the alarm clock. Her gasping his name while the offensive device blared from her bedside table had helped. The flight across town to change into appropriate work attire had been slowed by construction, an accident, and taking time to respond to Mary’s four text messages, all of which taunted him with threats of telling Stan he’d had a hot date the night before. It was close to nine before he swiped his card and made his way through the doors and to his desk. Mary was in the conference room with the princess-like Alexandra Cabot. Stan was talking to Theresa. All was as it should be on a Monday morning.

But despite what he’d told Mary in their predawn conversation, he still wasn’t sure how he’d get through the day without touching her or kissing her. One day at a time was easy in theory, but he wanted to run outside and stand on the ledge and shout to all of New Mexico that Mary Shannon was now his lover and he was the luckiest man on Earth.

Instead, he settled at his computer and logged into the system.

In his deepest fantasies, he’d never expected the physical reaction from her that he’d received the night before. Her passion in life was, naturally, mirrored in the bedroom, but the give and take had been surprising. As selfish as she could be at the office, in bed she was selfless and tender. Now that his every fantasy had come true he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He’d always built castles in the sky, but he’d never expected his princess to join him.

Maybe fairy tales were really about the prince and not the princess. Maybe it really was all about the search and the determination. He’d fought through gardens of thorns and slain dragons for Mary and he was quite content to spend the rest of his life doing it.

The system scanned, looking for issues with his witnesses. Finding none, the program minimized to the task bar and synced to his phone; Marshall took a moment to check his email and scroll through his checklist of things to do. Four witnesses with whom to touch base, three meetings – one with Allison about an upcoming trial prep and another with the other regional Witsec department leads, his 2-10’s were due, and of course his daily phone call to his mother. Would she be able to tell something was different? Did he dare tell her?

No. He and Mary needed to get used to each other before they broke any kind of silence. Promises made in pre-dawn light were much harder to keep than anyone realized. Quietly he slipped into work mode, arranging the order of check-ins. He could get two in this morning, before Allison, but he wanted to talk to Mary.

No. If it were any other morning and Mary was busy, he’d just go himself. They had to keep things normal. So he waited until she looked up from her conversation with Alex. Their eyes locked and when she smiled, he tilted his head to the door. She nodded, just slightly, giving him leave to do his job, and Marshall escaped to the safer confines of his USMS issued SUV.

***
His mother knew.

God love the woman, she knew.

“It’s in your voice, Marshall honey,” her voice came across the line. “What’s her name?”

“What,” he chuckled nervously, “and have you ruin everything by tracking her down and calling to talk? No.”

“You do realize that I have connections you only dream of.”

Marshall chuckled. His mother’s tracking skills had helped her break every glass ceiling possible in the US Marshal’s department. Unlike his grandfather or great grandfather, she’d climbed to the top of the job on her own. His own father strutted like a peacock over his wife’s success and liked to point out how he’d met her on the job and she had kicked his ass the first time they played poker. They’d never been partnered together, but Marshall had always wondered what kind of hell on wheels that pairing would have been in the department.

“I do know, Mom. I also know that you wouldn’t dream of trying to spy on me. It might be a violation of security.”

“Don’t you be talking work over the phone, Inspector. Now, are you calling from her place?”

In his mind, he could see Amanda Mann leaning back in her chair in the computer room in the house. Her slender feet would be bare, her nails painted bright red, and her long gray hair would be slowly working out of the tight braid it was wound in every morning. “How’s Dad?”

“He’s flying across the country, making sure terrorists don’t blow up planes. You know that. So are you calling from her place?”

“Yes. She’s asleep.”

It was true. He’d arrived at Mary’s, dinner in hand, only to find her passed out in her room. The Chinese takeout went into the fridge and he’d settled in to do the one thing he hadn’t been able to do today – call his mother. Part of him regretted it.

“You’ve worn her out!”

“Mom …” with any other woman, he wouldn’t mind her teasing. With Mary, he didn’t want to embarrass her.

“What is her name?”

“Mom, we just got together. Let me have a week of freedom, please.” He rubbed his eyes and reminded himself he loved this woman dearly.

“All right, all right. Ignore your nosy mother.” She was laughing and Marshall felt better. “How is your partner recovering from that gunshot?”

“She’s back at full steam. I’ll tell her you asked.” A movement caught his eye and he turned, seeing Mary in the doorway. Her pajama pants hung low on her hips, her tank top clung to her curves, and Marshall reacted instantly. “Mom, I gotta go.”

The raucous laugh echoed through the phone. “Have a good night, Marshall. I love you.”

“Love you too.” He hung up the phone and in two strides, had Mary in his arms. She chuckled and pushed at his chest.

“Talking to your mom inspires you like this?”

“You do, Woman.” He grinning, expecting the pinch he got for the term. But Mary’s neck was tilted, granting his lips access, and he took full advantage. He slipped his hand up her tank top and stroked her breast gently. “You hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Good.” Marshall kissed her and backed her against the wall.

***

Did princes and princesses have mind-blowing, universe-tilting sex, Mary wondered as she collapsed into Marshall’s lap, her legs trembling so badly that only his arms kept her from falling backward. Because if happily ever after meant anything, it had to mean that sex was somehow involved.

Cinderella’s prince, she decided, would probably have a kitchen fetish.

“Holy God,” she whispered, leaning back and sliding off Marshall’s lap, onto the comfort of the bed. Marshall stayed where he was, his hands supporting her until she was completely horizontal, her legs still around his hips, and then his fingers slid into her without warning. She tensed instantly before the aftershocks of her orgasm took her right over the edge all over again. Her over stimulated body trembled and she had to very gently pull his hand away. Marshall readjusted himself, lying down next to her, and she took the hand that was coated in her fluids and slowly slipped the middle digit into her mouth. Instantly he grew hard against her. “Wow,” she teased, dropping her fingers to the erection she was already quite fond of. “That was quick.”

“Something tells me you’re going to spend the summer tormenting me with popsicles and other phallic symbols.”

“Hey, popsicles are the way to go. So we have established that you are, in fact, as male as the next geek.” Despite her shaky legs, she straddled him and started to kiss her way down his body.

“Meaning?”

“That even the barest hint of oral sex gets you going.”

Marshall chuckled and opened his legs so she could settle between them. He smelled like her and the territorial bulldog that resided within her psyche growled at the thought that he had ever or might ever in the future smell like another woman. It baffled her how one kiss that led to one night together had established a territory she wasn’t sure if she was comfortable living within.

What if Marshall didn’t want to be completely bound to her. What if –

“Hey.”

She looked at him.

“Where’d you go?”

She kissed his hips and let her hair trail across his groin. “Nowhere.”

“Mary?”

“Just …” she closed her eyes. “Never mind.” Mary closed her lips over Marshall’s cock, very glad that he, like all men, could be completely distracted by sex. He didn’t need to know of her sudden hatred for any and all women who had ever done this before her or how her insecurities had completely flared up. He’d probably ask later, but right now she didn’t need to lead him deep into the recesses of her mind.

***
Egg rolls were best cold. Mary had decided this a long time ago. She tucked her feet up under her on the couch, munching on the fried roll and thinking.

Two nights of mind blowing sex. Two nights of feeling more whole than she’d ever felt in her life. And she was already ready to run. To take off across the desert and leave him snoring in her bed and try to forget it ever happened.

For the first time in her life, she understood what the storybooks talked about. She understood why Cinderella danced for the prince and why Rose Red demanded they take the bear inside to cure him and why the Daughter of the King of the Golden Roof fell for the newly minted king who kidnapped her.

It terrified her.

Wiping her greasy hands on her pajama pants, Mary sighed and tucked her legs closer and rested her head on her knees. It wasn’t too hard. She could just tell Marshall they made a mistake. But the problem was, she didn’t want to. She was terrified and ready to bolt and …

“What the hell am I doing?”

Mary sighed and stood up. Slow steps took her back to the bedroom and leaned in the doorway, watching Marshall sleep. She’d never watched Raphael sleep and had always been annoyed when she woke and he was staring at her. All she wanted to do was watch Marshall sleep, to see the stress of their jobs left behind as he entered the crazy dreamland his mind was sure to explore. This man, this brilliant, crazy, geeky, beautiful, perfect man wanted her. Her with her confusion about all societal norms and her lack of understanding of most popular culture. He wanted her.

It terrified her.

She wasn’t a princess. She didn’t need to be saved from big mean monsters or nasty stepmothers. No, she needed to be saved from herself. From her stupid choices and her inability to commit to anything and her fears not of other people but of what she was capable of.

But this man, this man who could run like the wind in cowboy boots and charm the evil right out of mobsters wanted her. He didn’t want to save her, he just wanted her. It confused her. It didn’t make any sense.

Maybe that was what the fairy tales were really about.

But was she ready? There were still moments when she’d come across something Raphael had bought for her or she’d step into a room and his scent would still linger and she’d break down and cry tears that she really didn’t understand. Was it fair to put Marshall through that?

But really, Marshall was already going through it. He’d been there in the car with her when she broke down and he’d helped her pack the last of Raphael’s stuff into boxes.

He knew her better than she knew herself.

What if she woke up and decided this was rebound and it was crazy and she pushed him away and broke his heart? What if he decided he couldn’t handle her moods now that they were lovers?

“Come to bed, Mare.”

She sighed and crossed the room, even though every last part of her wanted to run. Instinct itself put her into bed and snuggled into his arms when he wrapped himself around her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You ate the egg rolls,” was his all-knowing response.

The comment made her smile. “Yeah, I did.”

“Those are the best part.”

“I know.”

He kissed her neck and she sighed. “I’m not letting go of you, Mary. I’ve finally caught you. I know that terrifies you, but I’m not going anywhere.” As usual, he read her mind.

“It does terrify me.”

“It’s okay.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m used to it.” He kissed her neck again and slid a hand inside her tank top. “We’re partners. Trust me. Have I ever led you wrong?”

His confidence made her giggle. She turned in his arms and kissed him softly. “Hey,” she whispered, “I gotta tell you something.”

“What’s that, hmm?”

“I’m supposed to keep it a secret, but I’m an inspector for the witness protection program. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

Marshall laughed and moved, sliding easily between her legs. “That’s a big secret to carry around. But I think I can handle it.” He tugged her tank top up and over her head and leaned in to kissed in between her breasts.

“Can you handle me?” Mary asked, arching into his hands.

“I have been for seven years,” he gently reminded her.

“Oh shut up.” His laughter joined hers as she let him tug the pants from her body.

She was terrified, but maybe, just maybe, they’d be okay.

Maybe.

She gasped as he slid into her, his hands holding hers above her head.

Trusting Marshall. Yes. She could do that. She had to. She did.

It was all she had because she knew she didn’t trust herself right now.

TBC …