A/N: Told you all my muse was fascinated with Kellerman as of this morning. Odds are it'll be stuck on him for a while. I don't own anything, but apparently, muse wants to start this short little 'Before they were Murder Police' series, and so this is the first one. Sets up a couple of things for later things in this AU I've set up, and...that's about it.
"So, they want you in Homicide, huh?"
The question comes out of seemingly nowhere, and it takes a moment for Mike to realize that it's coming from behind him.
Turning, he finds his partner there, and Melanie is smirking as she goes on. "What'd you ever do to deserve that lot?"
He laughs at her. "They're not that bad, really," he says, and wonders if this opinion will change when he's actually working with them. "Just have to get to know them."
Melanie shakes her head at him. "You sure you're up for it?" she asks, and comes to sit on the edge of his desk. "I mean, you've been stuck here for so long…"
"I think," says Mike, "That I need to get out of here before the other four start driving me up the wall."
She knows what he means, and looks away. "Yeah, well…Don't let yourself get burned, huh?" she asks, and he pokes at her.
"Hey," he says, quietly enough that no one else will hear, "I'll only be two floors up if you need me."
Two floors up.
After Melanie walks off to answer their own lieutenant, who's probably in a worse mood than Giardello upstairs, it hits Mike that leaving Arson means leaving her behind.
It's not something he's ever really thought about before. They went through the academy together, but didn't actually get to know each other until they both got stuck here, first him, and then a few months later, her.
"Hey, Kellerman, heard you're gonna go chasing after dead bodies," says one of the other guys, and Mike rolls his eyes.
"Shove off, Goodwin," he replies, and then, "Better than getting paid to keep your mouth shut, huh?"
Goodwin gives him a look that is a veiled warning to keep his own mouth shut, but the truth is that Mike knows too damn much about the Arson unit to want to stay here any longer.
The only thing that's really going to hurt is leaving her behind.
Three years ago, they were making jokes about him wearing a bridesmaid's dress, and her wearing a suit and tie, and it ended up that she wore the latter at his wedding, but he'd flat refused to wear the former at hers.
It's still one of the squad's inside jokes.
"Hey, you," says Melanie, catching his attention, as she walks out of the lieutenant's office, "Parsons says we've got the day since we broke that last case. What say we skip on out of here?"
"Don't have to ask me twice," says Mike, amused by the fact that they're being let off the hook so early in the day. "Where to?"
Melanie shrugs. "Anywhere but here," she says, and spares a glance towards the other four, making a face as she turns back to him. "Let's just walk around for a while."
"Sounds good."
She wanders off to grab her coat, then, and he doesn't miss the looks that come from the others when she does.
"They think I'm sleeping with you, y'know," Mike remarks, once they're out of the squad room and out of earshot.
Melanie gives a derisive snort. "They've got nothing better to do than sit around and speculate about everyone else because they've got no lives themselves," she says. "You'd think they knew better."
"I should live to see the day," says Mike, and then, "Parsons didn't tell us to take the day because of the last case, did he?"
Melanie looks away. "Damn, you've got me," she says, and trails off for a long moment before continuing. "I asked him if we could skip out early."
"Yeah? What'd you do that for?" Mike asks, knowing that out of the entire squad, Melanie's probably the only one that could ask this and get away with it.
"'Cause I don't wanna spend my last day with you as my partner having to work, that's why," comes the reply. "And I sure as hell don't wanna sit in there with the rest of them."
He knows exactly why this is, and so he doesn't say anything, but they continue walking anyway.
"No shop talk, then," he tells her. "If we're off work, we might as well act like it."
But even as he speaks, a fire engine goes rushing by on the street beside them and they both watch to see where it is going before following after it.
"This is sad," says Melanie, shaking her head. "Here we are with the next however many hours off work, and we're reduced to following fire engines."
"We're probably not going to catch up with it," Mike replies, amused by this. "At least we have something to do."
"Thought there wasn't going to be any shop talk."
"There's not. We aren't the fire department."
They avoid each other's gaze for a moment but when they finally do look at each other, both of them laugh.
As it turns out, they really don't catch up with the fire truck, because by the time they've rounded the second corner, the sound of sirens has already faded.
"Well, that's that," says Mike, and then, "So, how's what's-his-face doing?"
"What's-his-face has a name," says Melanie, dryly, though by this point, she's so used to her partner referring to her husband this way that it doesn't bother her anymore. "He's fine. On a business trip. Couldn't tell you where."
"That's what you said last time I asked you how he was doing," Mike points out. "Honestly, Mel, is the guy ever home or is there something you aren't saying?"
Melanie rolls her eyes at him. "He's home, just not as often as I might like," she says. "Then again, I suppose he could say the same of me."
"He probably does," says Mike, and Melanie gives him a look.
"I know you don't like him, but could you at least pretend to? For my sake? I mean, really, Mike, you didn't hear me talking smack on Annie…never mind."
He laughs. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
They continue walking in silence for a moment longer, and then finally, Melanie speaks again, breaking the ground rule of no shop talk.
"I still can't believe you're leaving," she says. "What the hell am I supposed to do with those idiots in there?"
"Kick their asses like you threatened to kick mine if I ever took Rollins' money," Mike replies. Melanie gives a derisive snort.
"Yeah, right," she says. "There's one of me and four of them. I'm sorely outnumbered. And I'll still kick your ass if you take any of that idiot's money."
"The thought has never crossed my mind," says Mike, "Cross my heart and hope to die."
Melanie laughs. "I'm gonna miss you, Mikey," she says. "I'm really gonna miss you."
"What, you're not gonna come visit me upstairs?" Mike asks, feigning hurt, and Melanie shakes her head.
"You know I will," she says. "It's just gonna be different, not having you as a partner, is all."
It'll be different not having her as a partner, too, but he doesn't say this out loud. Instead, he looks down at her as they continue on, making another turn in a direction that's probably going to lead them all the way around Baltimore before they figure out where they're going.
"Hey, we're still partners, y'know," he says. "You never forget your first. As a detective, anyway."
"I wasn't your first partner as a detective," Melanie points out, and he shrugs.
"You're the first one I gave a damn about," he replies. "That's all that matters, wouldn't you say?"
She nods, mutely, not really trusting herself to answer out loud and hating herself for it, because this is one of those things that's gonna happen no matter what. She's had changes in partners before, and so has he, but somehow, this is the only one that seems to really matter.
"Yeah," she says, finally. "Yeah, I would."
Mike stops in his tracks and gives her a sideways look at this. "You all right?" he asks, and she nods again.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she says. "Keep walking, will you?"
When he turns away again and resumes walking, she wipes quickly at her eyes.
He pretends not to notice this, and instead talks over his shoulder.
"There's a place up here I haven't been to in a while," he says. "What say we duck in and grab something to eat?"
"You're such a guy," Melanie mutters. "You had something to eat right before we left the squad room, which, by the way, was supposed to have been hidden in my desk…"
"That's what you get for telling me you had something in there," says Mike, turning to grin at her. "I looked when you weren't in the squad room."
"Remind me never to tell you that again," says Melanie, and it hits her as the last word leaves her that she's not going to have to worry about it anymore.
"I'll do that," Mike replies, to make the awkward feeling of the moment go away. "So, you want to or not?"
"Might as well; I'm gonna be hearing it all day if we don't," says Melanie, a note of mock annoyance in her voice. "Go on, then, Sir Michael, lead the way."
The nickname is another inside joke.
Later on, he will hear it from someone else in Homicide and it will make him think of her and he will miss Arson more than he's already starting to. It will hit him that it isn't so much the unit that he misses as much as it is Melanie, but he doesn't know it now, and so he smirks at her, and reaches back for her hand, pulling her forward to where he is.
"I hate it when you walk behind me," he says. Melanie rolls her eyes.
"I fail to see why it matters," she replies, but starts to walk a little faster just so she can keep up with him.
"You're my partner, not my sidekick," he tells her. "That's why it matters."
It's one of those weird things that seems to be only between the two of them, because she's never heard of any other set of partners giving a damn one way or the other, but he does, and she has to admit that she does, too.
"Fine, then, if you insist," she says, just because she knows he will, and that he'll also insist she walks into wherever they're going before him.
Sure enough, he does.
"Well, look at that," she says, laughing as the door swings shut behind him. "I guess chivalry isn't dead after all."
Once upon a time, the two of them had gotten into a conversation about white knights and fairy tales and happy endings, because they'd been on a late night stakeout waiting for some firebug who got his kicks lighting up old abandoned apartment buildings.
It is where the nickname 'Sir Michael' came from, and it is also the reason why although the rest of the arson squad jokes about 'Lady Melanie', he's the only one that can get away with calling her that to her face.
"So, you want me to walk with you to the Homicide squad room tomorrow?" Melanie asks, as they sit, just to get on his nerves. He rolls his eyes.
"No, but thanks for asking," he says, biting back the desire to laugh at her. "I think I can find my own way."
There's a double meaning to this that is lost on neither of them, and Melanie nods, slowly.
"Hope so," she says. "I'd hate to have to be chasing after you and cleaning up whatever messes you might make for the rest of your life."
This time, Mike does laugh. "And here I was thinking it was the other way around."
It probably is, because in all truth, Melanie is the flighty one and he's the one who usually has to bring her back down to earth.
"You know, this whole thing with Rollins isn't just gonna go away," she remarks, and Mike nods.
"Yeah, I know it," he says. "That's what we get for getting involved in the first place."
Melanie shakes her head. "We're not involved," she says. "Never took anything, never asked for anything, and we're never going to…right?"
"Yeah," says Mike. "Right. Got better things to do, yeah?"
"Rollins can take his money and shove it where the sun don't shine," says Melanie, with an air of finality that tells Mike that the other guys in Arson can say all they want after he leaves, but she's not going to change her mind.
Neither is he. And so he pushes at her foot under the table to distract her long enough that he can take a sip from the glass in front of her without her noticing.
They pass the day this way, wandering around Baltimore, ducking in and out of various places until the sun sets and the sky starts to get dark, and he walks her home.
"I feel like I'm back in high school," Melanie remarks, going through her pockets for her house keys. "Damn it…I probably left 'em in the squad room again…"
"Got 'em," says Mike, and produces a silver keyring on which resides Melanie's many keys. One could probably open anything in Baltimore with this thing, he thinks.
But not her heart, says a voice in the back of his mind and the thought startles him enough that he nearly drops them.
"Nice, Mikey," says Melanie, catching them in midair. "You sure you're feeling all right about all this?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Mike replies, still startled by this seemingly random thought that is now stuck in his head. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, yeah?"
"You better, 'cause I'm sure as hell not cleaning out your desk," says Melanie. "Tomorrow, then."
And she goes inside, and closes the door and locks it as he walks away.
In the morning, he goes to the Homicide squad room to let Lieutenant Giardello know that he's there, and is promptly partnered off with one Meldrick Lewis.
His desk in the Arson squad room is cleaned out by Melanie, anyway, when ten o'clock hits, and he still hasn't bothered to come around. She's told when she wanders up with the box containing all his stuff that he and Lewis have gone out on a case, and if she wants to leave the stuff on his desk to go right on ahead.
She writes a note, too, and tells him that he owes her, 'cause his desk was a mess and like hell is she ever cleaning up after him again, but she doesn't really mean it, and she knows that he'll know it, too.
There are flowers on her desk by the time she gets back, and a hot cup of coffee. She picks up the cup, takes a sip, sees the card, and opens it, to a note with familiar handwriting inside.
"Thanks for being there to lead me through the fire. Come upstairs and see me sometime."
That's all it says.
Somehow, it is enough, and so Melanie goes about her own work, and Mike goes about his own, and though their paths don't cross, both of them figure at some point, they will again, and maybe, they might even be able to work together again.
Later, it occurs to her to look up the meaning of the flowers he left for her, camellias, colored blue.
The meaning beside it reads You are the flame in my heart.