A special story in honour of this being my thirtieth story!!!
Each chapter shows a different stage in the FM relationship, each a bit of comedy of errors…in a loose sense. Each help lead up to my dramatic, multi chapter, end story at a year and a half. But more on that later.
3 Months
They hadn't exactly ever said the word dating.
Neither of them referred to the other as their girl/boyfriend, other half, or partner. Unless they where on duty and then it was strictly in a professional sense.
But when they reached three months of whatever they had been doing, three months since she had accepted his invitation out to lunch after an early morning start, he really thought they were going somewhere.
That day at lunch, it had just the two of them. Work, and everything else that came attached to it, wasn't on the menu; and they got to know one another a little better outside the confines of walled glass and interrogation rooms.
It was there that she asked him if wanted to give them a try; give this a try.
It had three months filled with coffee, walks in the park, ball games (all types) and silly arguments over this and that, where he always felt like a winner; even when he lost, if he had just made her smile, made her forget the world they lived in. Even if just for a second.
There was no grand proclamation.
No wild romantic gesture.
He was just going to take her out to lunch. Same thing they did a couple of times each week.
It didn't mean anything that they where going back to the same diner they had sat in three months ago almost to this very day. He just liked the food there.
He wasn't even sure she knew it had been three months, if she was even counting at all.
He should have known it was all going to go pear shaped before he even opened his mouth.
Though in his defence, the guy had come out of no where. They hadn't even been tracking anyone down, he had just been on his way back from the coffee shop; hoping to entice her to lunch with a midmorning caffeine boost.
He'd gone sprawling sideways. Right into the cool, hard, unyielding metal of a dumpster. The scolding hot coffee sloshed over his chest and hands.
He never made it up to see her in the crime lab.
She did managed to make it down to the morgue to see him though, trying her best not to seem overly worried or amused at the situation. He would have told her she looked cute then, the worry and amusement teaming up together to cause her to bite her lower lip, had the room not been filled with colleges.
And if his teeth could stop chattering; his hands being submerged in ice water and his chest with various icepacks, to try and take the heat out of the burns.
So he'd been sent home, thoroughly threaten with desk duty for a month if he came back before the doctor said he could. Which doctor he wasn't sure, but both Hawkes and Hammerback had offered to check in on him in a day or two.
Sitting on the couch that night, feeling sorry for himself and holding an icepack gingerly to his chest, he hadn't been expecting the company.
But his doorbell had rung and right now, she was pottering round his kitchen; pulling out plates and pouring him something to drink.
He'd noticed the name on the side of the bag of food she'd brought in but tried not to think too much about it. It didn't have to mean anything just because he wanted it to.
She must'a just liked the food too.