Pairings: Gen, none, mention of unrequited Janine/Egon
Summary: Ten (or fewer) moments in the life of Winston Zeddemore.
Notes: Unbeta'd, despite the generous offer of MaryCrawford who offered to beta read this way back when I first wrote it - about fifty years ago, I think. Any mistakes are all mine, feel free to point and laugh in the comments!

Winston Zeddemore in Ten Words or Less

Blue

Tired. His body ached with the bone deep exhaustion of several days' hard work and no rest, the kind of tired that made even the thought of movement hurt. He wanted to get up and move, but he couldn't think why. Something nagging at the edge of his consciousness, prodding him to movement even through his body had long since thrown in the towel.

He should at least get up and move to the bunkroom, he thought distantly, because the couch was even less comfortable than he remembered. How Pete managed to sleep on that thing all day was a mystery to him. And it was cold in the firehouse, too. Money wasn't this tight, was it? Surely they could turn up the heat a little. Maybe he could convince one of the guys to bring him a blanket.

He felt, more than heard, something moving nearby and he opened his eyes, a little chagrined to find he could barely manage a flutter of his eyelids. He caught a glimpse of blue fabric and felt some part of him relax. "'gon."

Fingers touched the side of his face, oddly unsteady. Maybe Egon was tired, too. "I am here, Winston."

That was good. Maybe Egon would get him a blanket.

There was the unmistakable sound of a proton pack blasting in the distance, and instinct had Winston's muscles tensed and trying to stand even before he realized what he was doing. He barely managed a twitch, but it cleared his mind a little, pushed back the cold and the exhaustion enough to realize that he was lying on concrete and that the cold was coming from the inside. "Egon," he said again and this time he managed to get his eyes open for a few seconds.

Egon was kneeling beside him, Winston's head cradled in the crook of one arm. His free hand was still pressed against the side of Winston's face and Winston could feel the blood trickling down his cheek and throat. "Don't move," Egon instructed him firmly. "The situation is well in hand."

"Snake," Winston managed, a warning that the Six was still out there somewhere.

"Yes," Egon said. His glasses were slightly askew and halfway down his nose. If Pete were there, he'd have pushed them back up since both Egon's hands were full at the moment. Winston might have done it himself, if he thought he could move. "Do not worry about the ghost. Peter and Raymond have the situation well in hand. You need only concentrate on staying awake."

That didn't sit right in Winston's mind, and he tensed again as he heard the proton beams kick into gear again, closer than before. Egon heard it, too because he hunched over Winston slightly, shielding him from anything that might come through the door.

"Just stay awake," Egon said again, and somehow his voice was still calm and even.

Childish

"Remember," Ray shouted over the noise of the wind. "Poltergeists are-" He broke off into a startled shout and ducked a bicycle before it could knock his head off.

"Child-like," Winston finished for him in as dry a voice as he could manage.

"They don't act like children to me," Peter bitched from his position crouched behind a park bench.

"Yeah?" Winston said. "Well I have five nieces and nephews and let me tell you – this poltergeist is weak in comparison."

"I must concur with Winston," Egon contributed from somewhere in the bushes. He'd hit the dirt hard when the poltergeist started pitching rocks a few minutes back and Winston hadn't seen him since. "I may not have any nieces and nephews but I have a number of second and third cousins yet to reach their adolescent years and I see a fair degree of similarities."

"Man," Winston said with a sudden flash of humor. "Little baby Spenglers, running amok over their genius parents. Egon, man, you gotta take me to your next family reunion. I'll pay to see that."

"Take pictures!" Peter ordered.

Forever

The afterlife never scared Winston before he became a Ghostbuster. His faith had always been strong that there was a loving and ultimately just God running things and he'd tried his hardest to be a good man. He was also a practical man, and if there was nothing after this life, then he'd hardly need to worry about it, would he? Oblivion was only frightening in the anticipation. Once it happened, his problems would be over.

Since he joined the team, he thinks about it a little more. On the one hand it was reassuring to see that there was a world beyond this one, a life after this one. But at the same time it was worrisome to see just how many spirits remained after death, unsatisfied, restless, tormented. Winston did not want to be one of them.

He was pretty sure he wasn't the type to become a bitter, restless spirit. Except… for the guys, he could be. If he died while they were still in danger, never knowing if they were safe, it was easy to see himself trapped in one place, desperately trying to discover their fates. Or if he had to see them die, knowing that whatever killed them was still going free. Yeah. He could do vengeful.

Monster

The creature they were up against wasn't a ghost, it was a vampire and it could take memories out of their heads, twist them around until they didn't know if they were coming or going. It got ugly fast and the proton packs weren't doing them any good. They were getting their butts kicked hard when Winston, his head only half in the present day, the rest of him in Vietnam, covered in blood and brain matter, crawling over something that had used to be Ray to reach the sniper taking them down, got his hands on a weapon. He had enough of himself in the real world to tell the vampire from his teammates, but that was about it.

When his head cleared, the guys were alive, if pale and battered-looking, and the vampire was slowly decomposing and turning to dust beneath Winston's hands. When it passed, he was left holding the stake he made out of a broken chair leg. He dropped it and checked his sleeves for blood. When he didn't find any he took a deep, relieved breath and bolted from the room.

Peter found him gagging over the sink in the kitchen, trying not to throw up. "You okay?" Pete asked, laying a hand between Winston's shoulders and rubbing gently.

"I'm all right," Winston said, swallowing to keep the taste of bile out of his mouth. "Just give me a minute." He didn't raise his head to meet Pete's eyes, and wouldn't, not until he could forget what it felt like to shove a wooden stake through someone's chest. The vampire had looked human enough, damnit.

"Look at me," Pete said, and Winston knew an order when he heard one, even one said that gently. He shook his head but lifted his eyes to meet Pete's and couldn't help but swallow when he didn't see anything there he hadn't seen countless times before. "Winston. You okay?"

"In a couple days," Winston said. It was mostly the truth. Killing the vampire wouldn't haunt him for long, though the sense memory of stabbing into human-like flesh would probably linger a while. It was knowing that the guys had seen him do it, had seen him hit the heart on the first try and drive the stake into the monster's chest that would take longer to recover from.

Peter moved his hand to cup the back of Winston's neck and grip lightly. "What do you need from us?"

"Don't-" Winston swallowed bile again. Don't think less of me for knowing how to do this, for being glad I can do it because it saved all your lives and you're worth the nightmares. Don't look away. Don't feel sorry for me.

He didn't say any of it, because he knew he didn't need to. Pete nodded anyway and leaned against the counter next to him, his hand warm and steady on the back of Winston's neck, and waited for him to be ready. "All right," Pete said. "I won't."

Petals

Yellow and white roses.

Winston loved Egon, he did. And he knew Egon wasn't a cruel man. But sometimes he wondered if Egon knew more about human social interaction than he pretended to.

"Janine," he said.

Janine shook her head and sniffled a little, putting aside the card that had come with her Secretary's Day bouquet. "I know," she said. "I know. Just… let me pretend, all right?"

Alive

It was a police investigation. Five little girls in five weeks, all of them disappeared on their way home from their music lessons, all of them under ten. Winston had heard the reports on the news, been as horrified as anyone, but he wasn't a cop. He hadn't expected-

Well, what he expected doesn't matter now. The parents of the first little girl had come to the Ghostbusters, claiming that their daughter's ghost had visited them and asked for help. Winston has seen clients come to them in all kinds of distress, grief, terror, but he'll have nightmares about watching Jessie's parents try to be brave as they ask four strangers to put their daughter's spirit to rest.

That was how he got here. In the sewers – he thinks he's somewhere near Central Park and he can't stop humming the Ninja Turtles theme song under his breath, and god he's going to have such a concussion when he can afford to slow down for a few minutes. Jessie is flitting down the tunnels ahead of him, pale and iridescent in the dark tunnels, stopping every few yards to make sure he's still following.

The other girls are spread out between them, pale and tired and tear-streaked. They're clutching at each other's hands for support as they run, trying to be quiet as mice. They were crying when Winston first saw them, and he promised them all ice cream after they escaped if they could try to be quiet. He has five nieces and nephews and he's learned the value of bribery years past.

His head is swimming as they finally reach a ladder. Jessie is waiting for them there and as Winston reaches her she whispers, "No traffic sounds. Can we go up?" and all the other girls hold their breath.

"I need to go first to push the cover aside," Winston says. "Jessie, can you keep watch?"

She nods solemnly and flits back down the tunnel so she can watch the way they came. No telling when the monster is coming back. Winston doesn't know how long he was unconscious and his head is pounding too hard for him to keep track of time. They might have been trekking through the sewer tunnels for five minutes or five hours for all he can tell.

Christ, there's a part of him that isn't even sure any of this is real. He didn't see any little girls until after that son of a bitch knocked him out, and he's afraid the girls are part of his concussion. They're too quiet, this is too easy. And Jessie…

He ignores that part of him. He's going to pretend he never even thought that. They're getting out and they're getting out now.

Climbing a ladder when he can barely focus is… interesting, and exerting enough effort to push aside the manhole cover makes his head feel like it's going to explode. But the metal cover slides aside slowly, an inch at the time and when it's clear Winston lowers himself back down the ladder. "Okay, okay," he says. "Carly, you go first."

He sends the oldest girl up first and helps the little ones clamber up until Carly can pull them through. It's sunrise outside, the dawn just starting to peak through the trees and Winston thinks they might have made it. He waves Jessie on and sends her up ahead of him – ghost or not, he isn't leaving any little girl down there, not with that monster roaming the tunnels.

Jessie and Carly pull him up just like they did the little ones, and Winston's a little embarrassed that be might actually have needed that extra boost to make it. They girls are clustered around him, babbling and crying and Jessie is patting him on the shoulder asking him what she should do next.

She doesn't look nearly so luminescent in the dawn and he pats her hand. "Keep the girls together while I find a phone," he says.

They came up just outside the park, and there's a payphone not far away. Jessie does a nervous little dance, trying to keep him in sight without getting too far away from the girls. Winston holds it together long enough to dial 911, and the next thing he remembers is a paramedic shining a flashlight in his eyes.

"Winston." Egon's voice is tense, worried and ever so slightly annoyed. "You will wake up immediately."

And jeez, only Pete would argue with Egon when he had that tone. Winston parted his eyes and groaned at the light. "Egon."

"That is much better," Egon said. "Winston. The man who hit you. Where is he?"

"Dunno. Left me down there." He tries to lift one of his hands to show Egon the restraints, but the paramedic is doing something to his wrists that feels wonderful. "Woke up. He was gone. Got away. Took the girls." He tries to pull his hands free at that and feels a brief spike of panic when the paramedic tries to restrain him. "The girls! Egon!"

"Quiet," Egon orders in that same tone and he spreads a hand out on Winston's chest. "Stay still. The girls are fine, Winston."

He breathes in through his nose and tries to steady the pounding in his head. "Alive?"

"Yes, Winston. All five of them. They're all alive."

"Jessie," he says. "Not a ghost?"

"No." Egon placed the palm of his hand on Winston's forehead, like he's taking his temperature. Egon's hand is cold. It feels good. "No, she is very much alive. Peter has a theory about astral projection and latent telepathy, but none of that is important now. The girls are alive. You are alive." Egon's voice gets a little shaky for a minute there and Winston lets his eyes close as Egon strokes his temple. "That is more than any of us hoped for these last few days."

Book

It's dark out when Winston wakes up. He feels pretty good aside from a lingering ache in his shoulder and the residual grogginess of the sedatives and painkillers. He knows better than to try to move; this isn't the first time he's been shot.

He drags in a deep breath to clear his mind and turns his head to the side. "Pete."

"Hey." Peter's sitting in what looks like the world's most uncomfortable chair, slouched down as low as he can go without being on the floor, his feet resting against the side of Winston's hospital bed. He has a book propped up on his chest. He looks rough, but uninjured, and Winston feels a weight lift that he hadn't even known he was carrying.

"The guys?" he asks, but he already knows they're safe. Peter wouldn't be able to hide it from him if they weren't.

"All right. Ray's asleep in the waiting room and Egon's gone to get your folks." Pete grins at him. "Man, I talked to your mom on the phone and I don't think she's decided if she's pissed or proud. Probably both."

"I'm gonna live?" Winston asks, even though he's already feeling a hundred times better than he was when they brought him in.

"You'll have a manly scar," Pete says. "The ladies will swoon."

Winston's already got a manly bullet scar and he can testify that it's not particularly pretty to look at, but he just rolls his eyes at Pete's nonsense and nods his chin at the book. "Whatcha reading?"

Pete grins and holds up the book – a Jack the Ripper mystery starring Sherlock Holmes, something Winston had been dying to get around to for days. "I'm going to know who did it before you," Pete teases him, waving the book slightly. "And if you're very good, I won't blurt out the ending before you get the chance to figure it out yourself."

Winston narrows his eyes. "Dirty pool, Venkman."

"Yeah," Pete acknowledges. "This is your first warning. Get yourself hurt like that again and I'm stealing all your autographed Agatha Grimesby novels." He leans forward slightly and pokes Winston's uninjured shoulder with the corner of the book. "And then I'll set them all on fire. We understand each other?"

Coffee

It took a second for Egon to notice the coffee mug sitting by his elbow, but after a minute or two he looked up and blinked at the steaming mug. He picked it up carefully and took a small sip, then blinked at the man sitting across from him. "Hello, Winston."

Winston grinned around a mouthful and nudged the plate of cheese and crackers closer to Egon's side of the table.

"How long have I been up here?" Egon asked, glancing around for a clock.

"Eleven hours," Winston said. "Not even close to breaking your record."

Egon gulped the coffee, willing to believe he could feel the caffeine kicking in already, even though it wasn't possible. A glance at the clock showed that Winston wasn't exaggerating; it was nearly ten o'clock at night. Egon was getting spoiled having Peter around to drag him out of the lab. It made it far too easy for him to lose track of time. "Are you taking over Peter's usual duties while he is out of town?"

Winston snorted. "Hell no. Do I look crazy enough to get between you and the wonders of science? Besides, you're a big boy, Egon. If you want to work all day, it's no skin off my nose."

Egon raised an eyebrow as he pointedly helped himself to a cracker topped with cheese and sliced olives.

"I wanted a snack anyway," Winston lied shamelessly.

"Peter has been a terrible influence on you," Egon said.

"Look who's talking," Winston said. "Drink your coffee."

Home

Winston had his own place. Winston liked having his own place. He'd shared a room with his brother Teddy when he was a kid, and then he'd gone straight into the army where he slept in barracks when he was lucky and in a ditch with a half dozen other guys when he wasn't. When he came back from 'Nam he'd stayed with his parents for a couple of months while he made sure his head was screwed on right. After that he'd gotten a place with an old army buddy because rent in New York was hard to make on a construction worker's pay. They'd split a two-bedroom in Brooklyn for a few years until his roommate got married and moved out, and by then Winston was making enough that if he pulled a little overtime here and there he could make the rent without having to eat pot noodles every night of the week.

So by the time he even heard of the Ghostbusters he'd only had his own place for a few months.

"This is the bunkroom," Ray said, throwing open the door and gesturing Winston to look inside. The younger guy was way, way too happy, Winston thought. He'd pretty much bounced his way through the tour so far and every other word out of his mouth was a comment on how much Winston was going to love this, that or the other thing. The kid was so damn enthusiastic, Winston almost believed him. "We sleep here."

Winston checked it out. A big room, with a window at the end and three beds lined up against the far wall. "All of you?" Winston asked skeptically. "Willingly?"

Ray blinked at him, then grinned. "Well, it took pretty much everything we had to start the business."

"And a little bit we didn't have," Dr. Venkman's voice added dryly. Winston did a double take before he realized the lump on the four-poster bed by the door wasn't just dirty laundry, but a person hiding under the blankets. As he watched, Dr. Venkman flipped a corner of the blanket down and rolled his eyes at Winston. "The bank owns more of this place than we do, at the moment." He seemed to think about that for a minute. "That might be an understatement. The bank owns more of this place than we do for the foreseeable future. That's better. Ray, I'm trying to sleep here."

"I'm giving Winston the tour," Ray said.

"Show him Egon's lab."

"That's okay," Winston said quickly. He'd been hearing nothing but crashes and the occasional sizzling sound coming from the direction of that lab all day. He didn't want to know.

"Show him the containment unit."

"He's already seen it," Ray said, and by now Winston could tell that Ray was just stalling to push Venkman's nerves. "He unloaded the trap from this morning's bust and didn't even unleash an apocalypse. I think he's got a real knack for this kind of work."

Winston didn't know about that. An apocalypse?

Venkman's voice got low and dangerous. "Ray."

"We can bring up another bed and get it put together so you'll have a place to sleep," Ray said. "There were a dozen of them in here originally, but we disassembled the ones we didn't need and moved them downstairs."

"Is sleeping here a job requirement?" Winston was pretty sure that might be a deal-breaker at this point. He didn't even know these guys. And damnit, he liked having his own place.

"Relax, Zed," Venkman said from his little cocoon. "We're not really into the communal living thing. We just poured so much into this place that we can't afford to live elsewhere." He sighed. "I miss my old place. The hot tub. The balcony. Being able to take a damn nap without a tour group tramping through."

"Yeah, well, Egon and I miss being able to do our laundry without finding mysterious bits of lingerie turning our shirts pink," Ray said. "Life is hard, Peter."

Winston disguised a laugh as a cough. These guys were all right.

They ended up assembling a bed for him anyway. "You'll be glad," Ray promised him and Egon concurred. "After a bust sometimes we get pretty wiped out. This way you can crash here if you're too tired to go home."

They rearranged the bunk room to fit him in, two beds on each wall, and Ray and Winston wrestled the bed and a simple bedside table out of the basement and up the three flights of stairs to the bunkroom.

He didn't use it at first, oddly aware that he was the outsider here, for all that they treated him like he'd been there all along. So he dragged himself home after every bust, no matter how rough he was feeling.

The first time he spent the night at the firehall was after a poltergeist threw him twenty feet and dropped a bookshelf on him. He was bruised everywhere and he banged his head pretty hard and the last thing he wanted was to move even enough to get up off the floor. Peter and Egon hauled him up and he leaned a little more heavily than he'd liked to admit getting out to Ecto (and oh, that poor car, he's gotta find some graceful way of taking over maintenance from Ray, he really does. Did that boy say he had an engineering degree?).

Peter flat out refused to let him go home, citing any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Winston might fall asleep on the subway and get mugged or black out and fall in front of a train. By the time he started going on about subdural hematomas and swelling on the brain and painful sudden death, Winston had already surrendered. He crashed in the bunkroom for the first time and, well, it was good knowing someone was watching his back again.

It felt even better the next morning when the bruises had appeared, mottling his skin from head to toe and his muscles had stiffened to the point where getting out of bed was the most painful thing he could contemplate. Ray brought him breakfast in bed – which Peter helped him dispose of uneaten, dear god, who thought bacon could be slimy? – and Egon brought him a bowl of cereal and coffee. He stayed for a couple of days until he was back on his feet again. After that he stayed more often, whenever a bust went ridiculously late or he was too exhausted to face up to the ride home.

After Gozer, Peter offered Winston a buy-in.

"It's up to you," Peter said. "We're not going to fire you if you turn it down. But you're good at this, and we'd like you to be a permanent partner. You can take as long as you want to think about it."

So Winston did. He took a few days off now that the craziness was over, looked over the paperwork and thought about it. He could pay them in installments and since they were already paying him a lot more than he'd ever made as a construction worker, he could have his share of the company paid in full in about five years. It'd be tight, but…

Or, he thought, he could let the lease on the apartment expire, move into the firehouse, and be a partner in full in three years.

And he liked living alone. He liked having his own place.

But he spent as many nights at the firehouse as he did at his own place, these days. That might decrease now that Gozer was gone and supernatural activity was going back to normal levels, but they didn't know that for sure. Even Egon admitted flat out that no one knew what constituted normal with ghosts and demons. So why pay a lot of rent on a place he only used half the time.

And the business… He liked the business. He liked the work. He felt like he was doing something important. He loved the guys, having them at his back. Being a partner, that felt right.

He wanted that. To be part of the team, not an employee. The four of them fit, they were already becoming the kind of unit that could beat the odds.

He sublet the apartment and moved into the firehouse at the end of the month.

And yeah, he missed having some peace and quiet – especially when Egon started blowing things up in the middle of the night. And he missed never having to pound on the bathroom door to get Pete to stop preening long enough for him to take a piss. And God almighty, did he miss not experiencing Ray's cooking.

But it was worth it anyway.