paulson one shots

mortician's luck // hotgomery

AU: you see in black and white until you touch your soulmate for the first time: you work as a mortician, and as you start to embalm a body as usual, your world gains color.

Billie Dean's world had always been black and white and she had come to terms that it would forever remain a world of dreary grays.

Growing up, her mother had tried to instill confidence in young Billie Dean that one day her world would be as bright and beautiful as hers and everyone around her, but Billie refused to believe her.

As each day came and went and Billie's world stayed a dull shade of gray, her stance on the matter became just as stone as the world around her.

Her teen years were dreary and dark as she saw her peers day after day have their world's change in front of their eyes. Every day she had the magical world of colors taunting her every move and it began to weigh on her.

So by the time she was an adult and ready to choose her life path, she chose a path as deep and dark as they come. A mortician. Because see, Billie wasn't your every day woman, she was also a medium. The dead was already her forte, so Billie ran with it.

Her mother had frowned upon her choice to pick up mortuary, but the science had just become popular, and since Billie already had the knack for the dead, she figured, why not use that talent for good? Why not be a soul that understood the deceased and could accompany them as she prepared their bodies for burial?

She had frequent conversations about the colorful world with her dead friends as she prepared their earthly bodies for burial. She rather enjoyed talking to the dead about colors much more than she did the living. The dead were much more honest of the drears of life than the living, after all.

This day however, was not like the rest.

The day had been quite quiet for once, much to Billie's dismay, as not a single body had arrived in the seven hours she had been at the mortuary already.

There were hardly ever any days that Billie spent alone, and she always dreaded them as they came. Billie was almost always alone outside of her job, so this place of dark brick that might seem dreary to most, was a lively home in her eyes.

She leaned against an examination table, peeling the gloves from her sweaty hands that had been stuck underneath the fabric for hours now. She figured today was just going to be one of those lonely days.

She sighed as she untied her apron and let her hair down from the pulled back pony tail that yanked her temples back and gave her a nasty headache.

I might as well go home. She thought; her shift would end in an hour anyway. Hardly any bodies ever arrived at the butt end of a shift.

As she began putting away her apron and gloves, closing cabinets and making sure drawers were locked tight, her coworker's voice rang through the hallway and into the room.

"Yo Billie! You've got a late one today." His voice became louder as he rolled a cart with the usual black body bag laid atop it into the room.

"Dammit Rob, I just finished cleaning up. Not a single body today and the second I go to leave one shows up! What luck I have." Billie complained light heartedly, not really at Rob, but at the situation.

He chuckled at her response and gave a soft pat to her shoulder, a habit he had when he conversed with her. "Sorry darling. Heard this one was interesting though Bill! Might make up for the hassle?" He peaked her interest at the comment and Billie rose her hands in defeat.

"Alright alright. Thanks Rob. See ya." Billie waved him off and he gave a quick salut before skipping through the doorway.

She rolled her eyes as his childish antics and began gathering her supplies again, pulling back her hair into a pony tail and tying her apron behind her back once more.