For the first time in a long time, Erin and Holtz were happy.
After the apocalypse, following the rather awkward “and we’re dating” encounter, Erin approached Holtzmann in her lab later that night to apologize and confess her feelings. Erin never did well under pressure, and panicked at the thought of being outed to Holtz’s mentor, a complete stranger.
“No, it’s my fault,” Holtz mumbled, avoiding eye contact with the nervous redhead while tinkering half-heartedly with some gears on her desk. “I’m not that good with picking up signals, I guess I just saw something that wasn’t there.”
Erin picked at her fingernails, gulping down a breath before stuttering out: “Well the thing is, i don’t think you did. See something, that was not present. Meaning that, I mean, it was present. ‘It’ being, like, something along the lines of-mmph!”
Holtz’s soft lips cut her off with a gentle kiss. When she pulled back, the short blonde looked up at Erin with hopeful eyes, still tinged with a bit of fear that she had once again misjudged the situation. “Something like that?” she ventured.
Erin found herself lost in those sparkling blue eyes, body flushed with relief at finally crossing that bridge she had been hoping to cross since the day she walked into Abby’s lab. “Yeah,” she breathed. A breathy laugh escaped her lips. “Something a whole lot like that.”
—
What surprised Erin the most about dating Holtzmann was how easy it was. With people like Phil, it was so much work just to keep the relationship afloat. She practically had to force him to share things with her, with most talk being about their work at Columbia (primarily Phil’s). And she was kept on a strict quota of affection: only being allowed to cuddle for a short time after sex, and never even dreaming about PDA.
With Holtzmann, there were no such restrictions. From lazy kisses on their afternoon breaks that made Erin flushed with puppy love, to Holtz playfully slapping her rear end when running past her in the hallway, which earned a surprised (but not too indignant) yelp from the physicist. Holtzmann was a natural flirt, and that only got so much wonderfully worse when she finally got to call Erin her girlfriend.
Erin was enamored, to say the least. She had been caught far too many times by Patty and Abby staring at Holtz’s ass while she danced around in the lab. She dreamt about Holtz’s blonde curls and adorable dimples whenever they spent the night apart. And she drank up any bit of information she could learn about the engineer, every piece of the puzzle of Holtzmann’s past making her fall more and more in love.
For example, Erin learned from Abby that every 1 or 2 months, Holtz would drag herself to Temple. When she asked her girlfriend if she was Jewish, Holtz was currently hanging upside down in a dangerous looking harness, trying to fix the top of her (ahem) “only slightly nuclear" reactor.
“Yup!” Holtz called out cheerfully. “New York Jew, born and raised.”
Erin furrowed her eyebrows. “I saw you eating a bacon cheeseburger yesterday!”
Holtz pointed her screwdriver at her girlfriend, attempting to look threatening while hanging upside-down 10 feet in the air. overall straps flapping in her face. “You saw nothing!”
That afternoon, Erin decided to do a little research on Holtz’s faith, not having ever learned too much about it. In bed that night, she timidly asked Holtz if she could come with her to Shabbat sometime,
Holtz smiled wide. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Erin said. “It’s part of who you are, so I want to learn about it.” She kissed the blonde tenderly on the cheek.
Holtz grew a little misty-eyed, tugging the redhead closer into her arms. “I love you, you know that?”
Erin nuzzled into Holtz’s chest, already drifting off to sleep. “Love you too.”
—
The election was hard on Holtz, to say the least.
The stayed up all night in Erin’s apartment, the physicist holding onto her abnormally quiet girlfriend while state after state turned red.
When the results were announced, Holtz closed her eyes, letting the tears that had been building up all night fall down her cheeks.
Erin wiped the tears away from Holtz’s cheeks, drawing her closer into her chest on the worn old couch. “It’ll be okay, Jill. We’ll get through this.” Her voice shook a little, as she didn’t quite know if she believed it herself.
Holtz merely shook her head into Erin’s chest, still saying nothing.
Erin’s voice grew firmer as she cupped Holtz’s face in her hands, realizing that she had to be strong right now. “Jill, look at me.”
Holtz slowly raised her tearful blue eyes to meet erin’s steely ones.
Erin held her gaze firmly. “Noone is going to hurt you, not while I’m around, okay? None is going to take you away from me.”
Holtz blinked, nodding once before letting her face fall into the crook of Erin’s neck. Erin rubbed her back soothingly, resolving herself to pick up the pieces of her broken girlfriend tomorrow. Tonight, it was okay to be weak.
—
It was mid-morning in January as Holtz walked to work, a rare morning when she was alone. She had worked late last night and gone home to her rarely-ever-lived-in-anymore apartment, not wanting to wake Erin up in the middle of the night by going back to her place.
She stopped into Erin’s favorite coffee shop to grab two cappuccinos, to make up for working late. “It’s okay Jilly,” Erin had murmured into the phone last night. “Don’t blow anything up before tomorrow morning.”
Holtz smirked as she continued down her usual walk to the firehouse. Things had been going well with Erin. Really well. Well enough to make Holtz almost feel back to normal after all the awful shit that had been happening in the news.
Holtz turned the last corner to the firehouse, already thinking about what she was going to work on today, if they didn’t have any busts.
And that’s when she saw it.
The cups of coffee in her hands clattered to the ground as all the blood drained out of her face. A large, black swastika was scrawled on the door of the firehouse. A can of spray paint hastily discarded next to it. Her hands shook as the symbol glared at her, as if daring her to cross the threshold.
Vandalism, some small part of her head said. Hate crime. Call the police.
But the rest of her was sinking into memories of slurs shouted at her on the playground, of beatings she had recieved for praying in hebrew after lunch. Worst of all, the images she had seen of relatives she never met, tortured and killed under that same black symbol staring her in the face right now.
She fumbled for her key with trembling hands, slamming the door shut once she finally got inside. She sank to the ground, breathing heavily, trying to steel herself for the day. She didn’t know how she was going to act normal around her friends today, and Erin… Erin didn’t have to know about this. She’d only worry. Holtz resolved to clean the thing off before anyone in the firehouse could see it.
As she walked up the stairs to the entryway, she was passed by Kevin, toting a large bucket of soapy water, with an unusually angry look on his face. Still in a haze, Holtz trudged into the kitchen, only stopping when she registered the sight in front of her.
“Good morning, sweetie,” Erin chirped cheerfully. The redhead’s face was scratched and bleeding, her hair mussed up and her blouse torn in several places. Abby was in the process of wrapping thick bandages around her right hand, as Erin sipped coffee with her bruised left one. “How did you sleep?”
“Erin, oh my God what happened?” Holtz rushed to her side, checking her all over to see if there were any large, gaping wounds that had been missed.
“Oh, not much.” Erin said casually, taking another sip of her coffee. “I just took the garbage out this morning, and now I’m here.”
Holtz looked to Abby, gesturing to her disheveled girlfriend in confusion.
Abby looked up at Holtz, looking just as angry as Kevin had in the hallway. “When we got to work, we saw the guy who was putting that… thing on the door.”
Holtz’s heart sank. “Oh. You saw it.”
Abby growled: “You bet your ass we saw it. Don’t worry Holtzmann, Kevin’s washing that filth off right now. Who does that bastard think he is? No one gets to mess with our family, no one!”
“Damn right,” Patty chimed in, having just finished a phone call over at her desk. “I just got off the phone with the police, gave them the bastard’s description. But oooh, I wanted to beat his ass. Oh I’d like to see him try again, he’s gonna feel the Power of Patty.”
Holtz’s heart warmed a little at her friends' words. She hadn’t expected them to be this angry on her behalf. “You didn’t beat him up though, didja Pattycakes?” she joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Patty shook her head with a smile. “Nah, Holtzy. Your girlfriend beat me to the punch.”
“Literally,” Abby added.
Holtz’s eyes bulged out of her head. She turned to Erin, who was still sipping her coffee like it was a normal Tuesday morning. “You WHAT?”
Erin turned to her girlfriend and smiled sweetly. “I told you Jilly, I took out the trash. It had to be done.”
“I’m telling you Holtzy, you should’ve been there. I don’t know how she chased that guy down the street in those heels, but when she got him, she got some excellent cracks in,” Abby chimed in. “Your girl packs quite the punch.”
Holtz was shocked. Her Erin, sweet, nerdy Erin with the tweed jackets and kitten heels, beat up a Nazi. For her?
Erin stood up from her seat at the table, putting down her coffee and taking Holtz’s face in her hands tenderly. “I told you, Jill. Noone gets to hurt you, not while I’m around. Not if I can help it.” She kissed her deeply. “I’d beat up a thousand Nazi’s for you.”
Holtz teared up, embracing her girlfriend as Abby and Patty piled on for a group hug. It would be a long, painful four years in the desert.
But she had her family.