I Guess You Could Say I've Got A Call

“starling and starbuck sounds silly, dana thinks. it’s too much like a romantic movie or a sitcom or a comedy duo and it’s really not at all professional, it’s not at all how future fbi agents should sound. but clarice likes it, and she has a soft spot, maybe a big one - bigger than she’d care to admit - for her tiny study partner whose pace matches hers on quantico’s wooded trails and who can just barely outmark her at the shooting range; so she lets it stick. it’s good, anyways, for them to have a moniker, a calling card, because sometime she watches clarice’s mouth too closely when she talks and sometimes they find themselves quietly holding hands, neither of them looking down, like their fingers are acting clandestinely and out of turn. starling and starbuck sounds silly, dana knows, but there’s a tree two miles south of the trail behind quantico’s main building and it’s scarred and scuffed with a thousand promises and rough-edged hearts, and if she were that kind of person, if she were that sentimental and sweet, she knows what she would carve into it with her pocket knife. one day in fall, with her lips chapped and tasting faintly like clarice’s vanilla shampoo - she’d fallen asleep in her room again, that happened, sometimes - she slows, red-cheeked by the birch and finds that someone else already has.when she makes it back to campus she kisses clarice outside their criminal psychology seminar and thinks it’s too much like a romantic movie, and it’s really not professional, it’s not at all how future fbi agents should act. but clarice smiles against her mouth and she finds she doesn’t care at all.” — melissascullys​ | insp