Work Text:
Lynda (answering the phone): "Kenny, I'm not listening!"
Kenny: "How did you know it was me?"
Lynda: "How did you know where I was?" (S2, Breakfast At Czar's)
*
One
"I don't care," said Lynda. "I've told you, we're running the story, and I need you here."
Kenny shifted his hold on the receiver at the other end. "Lynda -."
"Anyway, I refuse to take advice from someone wearing a jumper featuring a cartoon mouse!"
He looked down at himself, and then frowned. "How did you know what I was wearing?"
"Say hi to your Gran for me," she continued, and he could hear the smirk in her voice. "By the way, while you're at it, ask your Mum to hint that she might want to try a more tasteful pattern next time."
He scowled. Sunday tea with his Gran round was bad enough without Lynda phoning to tell him she was ignoring him again. "That's rich coming from you. It's like the pot calling the kettle black when you think about your fashion sense."
"What's wrong with my fashion sense?"
She had got him out of tea with Gran, on the other hand. "Lynda, you don't have any." At the same, he heard a third voice, distant but clear on the other end: Sam.
"Lynda! I've been dying for you to ask. Wait, I've got a list here somewhere-."
Kenny winced. She was going to kill him.
"Kenny," said Lynda, a sharper note in her voice. "First, I want you to change, then I want you to get down here for ten minutes ago, then you can tell me why we can't run the story, I'll tell you why it's absolutely vital we do, and then you're going to help me write it. After that I'll kill you."
He grinned at the wall. "I'll look forward to it, boss."
*
Two
"And I'll do the same to the rest of you if you don't all shut up and get on with your work," said Lynda, folding her arms and glaring round the newsroom, as the quivering Mr Arnold let the door swing closed behind him. "Don't think I won't!"
There was a sudden flurry of activity; sheets of paper flying and typewriters clacking.
Kenny, however, looked at Lynda. "Okay, how much d'you pay him?"
"Are you suggesting I can't make a grown man cry?"
He smiled. "I wouldn't want to stake my life on it, no. What did you give him?"
"Well," she said, a wicked glint in her eye, as she leant towards him, "I may have promised him he'll get that letter of his printed in the next edition. An edited version, of course, but I didn't see why I should tell him that. I thought someone who makes a habit of being that insincere must be a reasonable actor."
Kenny grinned. "You're evil."
"What else are editors for?"
He laughed. "And the look on Ellie's face – she'll be out of here in -. Yep, there she goes now."
They both watched the girl with blonde cropped curls vanish out of the newsroom, one scowling American member of staff hesitating at the door behind her. Then he seemed to give up on the idea of following and slouched back to his chair.
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Lynda, crossing back to her desk. "I have no interest whatsoever in girls Spike Thompson may or may not ask out. I certainly don't let it affect my opinion of their work here on the Gazette."
Kenny nodded earnestly, as he took the seat opposite. "Of course not, Lynda."
*
Three
"I know what you're going to say, so you needn't bother."
"No, you don't."
Lynda slid into the seat at the table at Czar's. "Yes, I do. It's what you always say."
"I wasn't," said Kenny, playing with the straw in his coke. "So there."
She raised her eyebrows in challenge.
"I was going to say: you're right – he's a miserable old so-and-so who deserves everything he gets."
She propped her chin on her hands and watched him, and smiled.
"Oh, all right," he said, caving swiftly. "If you'd only try being nice, you might find he isn't so bad, not once you get to know him."
She drew back. "He is so that bad. He's a contemptible, geriatric snake who ought to have been put out of his misery years ago – for everyone else's sake, if not his! Did you hear what he said to me back there?"
"Yeah, well, if you hadn't been trying to kick him at the time -."
Lynda glared. "I don't know why you had to interfere. You're supposed to be on my side!"
"Exactly," agreed Kenny. "Which is why I don't want you dragged off down the police station on a charge of assaulting an OAP."
She subsided, but sulked as she stirred her coffee. "How did I end up with you?"
"No one else would have me."
"So that explains it." Lynda looked at him. "How did you know I was going to go for him, anyway?"
"You had that look on your face," he told her, surprised she should bother to ask. "The one you always get when someone's going to get hurt. Like when you pushed Suzie Aiken in the school pond when we were six -."
"She said I'd have to be a dwarf in her stupid game! I still don't see why you had to go and pull her out, either. It wasn't as if she could have drowned in three inches of muddy water, anyway. You never stick up for me."
Kenny merely smiled back at her and drank his coke. Some things never changed.