Yup, still missing Life. Here's a little something to aid our mourning, dedicated to the talented Silversurf4 because she's working so hard to keep the category alive! Mildly rated.
Angels in Lowly Stations
She loves him this way.
Directing his often wandering attention to the task at hand, Detective Crews doesn't know she's invaded his home. Perpetually unlocked doors are accomplices in welcome crime and Dani Reese is afforded the luxury of studying unhindered a man rarely unguarded. His lean frame arches over an open folder, photos spread before searching eyes. Only a stand of bananas shares the kitchen island with him, the echo of distant night held in silence by the expanse of land surrounding the house. No fences, which caters to his need for space, the scope of which she's just beginning to comprehend.
No fences around him either. Not tonight. Only a wealth of focus on righting wrongs, the expression pure in resolve like an angel of vengeance.
He's worn that look for her. And for himself.
'Anyone ever love you that much?'
Having secured Charlie's love through seasons of vexation turned craving, Dani has become convinced that she's had no prior connection to the sentiment. It is more than a balm to cover wounds, more than radiance in dark places. It is the rewiring of a soul, the revision of needs, a revolution of wants and a resurrection of every good thing that a jaded mind loses along the way.
It is the personification of Zen and the death of her bitter self. It is her version of his journey.
Tonight he is miles away in a place she cannot follow. But she has borrowed his light and knows how to hold it aloft, illuminating the path back to her.
Two bodies had been discovered in a windowless, homemade cell of such unfathomably small proportions that Crews had struggled to enter it. Not that anyone else would have discerned the signs. But Dani can read his jaw like a manual. Processing the scene had been completed with few words and despite his quiet assurance that he was alright, complete with perfunctory Zen reference, she'd been quick to remove her partner from the physical reminder of an ordeal that still wedges between him and peace. Had kissed him ferociously in the car. Had infused a plea for calm in every gesture thereafter.
He is not easily shaken in daylight hours and his determination to remain in the present inspires her.
However resolved he is to the principle of the moment, the impact of the scene lingers and Dani treads gently the shadowed ground between the door and the bananas. They are new to this relationship, still learning the safe routes around the maze of mutual baggage. She must be careful not to startle him. Once before, reflexes trained by the academy and incarceration had caught her before he'd registered the target. Only her small stature, not the masculine frame his instinct expected, kept her from being laid out. Now she knows; subtle warning. A cleared throat, a purposed shuffle, a heated whisper.
Or a fingernail on a doorframe. Drawing Charlie's eyes from the details of slaughter, the flicker of pleasure at her sight is Dani's goal. She loves to evoke enchantment in him. Stepping between long legs, eager hands find his shoulders, noting the tight muscles that will become a personal mission later. Her touch had, in the beginning, troubled him. A tactile man, Charlie had no qualms about kissing her, letting his clever fingers map out her skin. But her hands induced his suspicion when directed into intimacy. That the hands of familiar law had betrayed him is the impulse that drove his flinch, she'd deciphered. And she too is the law, something that sometimes feels worthy of apology. The touch of strangers had been easier for him to accept because there was little trust needed.
He could soothe the ache and never have to learn their names.
With willing patience previously unknown to the hotheaded woman, Dani taught Charlie to trust the intentions of her body, to trust her with his, to let her unravel him without fear that his pieces could never be reassembled. In return, Charlie instilled in her a sense of worth. Made her beautiful because he speaks the word as though it explains her.
The reward is enlightening.
His hands brush across the swell of her hips, tugging her closer. A small grin plays at his lips, which she leans down to sample, enjoying the rare height advantage his seated position grants her. The sweetness on his tongue is evidence that he'd been munching on fruit before she arrived and she sucks on that nectar with purposed hunger. Peripheral vision catches the photos of a mangled couple and Dani breathes out the negative in favor of inhaling him. For now, she will turn them both away from the doomed pair whose killer won't elude them much longer.
Her own lover beckons.
For all his Buddhist tendencies, Charlie can be terribly impatient. She's mostly naked before she can get him to the stairs and they never make it to the bed. He lifts her effortlessly, trapping her between the granite tension of his body and the cool plaster of a dark corridor. The muted moonlight casts burnished copper into his hair and Dani's trembling fingers grip the short strands near his neck, her legs a vice around his slim waist. She's done this before and yet never before. Everything with him is new, virginizing her that first time. A sharp sting and he's inside and moving deep, certain and swift as though this is all that can ground him. He has these nights, the anger and anxiety nipping at his flesh until she quiets the tempest. Post-nightmare is typically when he reaches for her with a need born of panic, seeking the solace of her body to prove he's not where his sleeping mind drags him. More often now, their joining is about reclaiming a completeness that the day's perils tries to tear asunder. Sometimes they simply have time to indulge.
But the week's case is a waking demon they both must exorcise.
As Charlie takes what he wants in a manner just on the delicious side of violent, Dani gathers up what inconsequential breath she can spare to chant her singular desire, chasing away all that has him tonight. And then she's screaming with the abandon that seclusion encourages. Clamping down hard where they connect, blunt teeth are sunk into his shoulder, coaxing him into a strong release that triggers her second fall.
Before Charlie, she'd never laughed after sex.
But here, spine protesting the discomfort of a solid surface and legs tingling from their crooked position, Dani lets the joy of this miracle swamp her, filling her panting lungs with audible bliss. He's smiling as he kisses her, silencing the sound but not the feeling. Contentment is her priority now and she wishes Charlie could understand and believe that happiness is all she wants from him and for him. He's occasionally resistant, the specter of two others hovering in the recesses of his battered heart. One who couldn't deliver on promised eternity and another who couldn't accept his integrity. But the new Dani rushes nothing, knowing that overcoming his doubts is to save him with the same lifeboat he'd been steering toward her since they met.
Against her most sensitive skin, Charlie tells her that he loves her. Unadorned, unexpected and unbridled. The first time she's heard the words and they fairly bounce through her brain, firing synapses as no drug ever had. An addiction that needs no intervention. She speaks her love in rawest form.
And he believes.