Hurricane

The first time they made love was the day she buried her father. Dani was uncharacteristically needy and Crews was attentive and tender. He could not know that the woman he made love to that afternoon would disappear hours later and not make another appearance for so long that he thought he'd imagined them together.

Charlie remembered holding her that night and knowing they were in for a rough stretch but he had no idea how deep that hole went. The Dani he knew was fierce and at times tragic, but she was more alive than anyone he knew. The woman he held that night was docile, frightened and shy. He wanted to remember her smooth skin and the smell of her hair; but that night while she was mute and gentle, she was not Dani.

Conversely, she wanted to forget she'd taken refuge in him. Showing that level of need felt like weakness to her leaving her profoundly embarrassed. Despite the desire they both felt she was unable to overcome the feeling she'd used her partner which was part of the reason she left before he woke and in the following days his texts and calls went unanswered.

After four days he gave up and left her alone.


Two weeks later, Dani returned to work.

He rose from his chair to greet her and was met by a scowl fierce enough to force him back into his seat. Twice he leaned forward to speak and twice she shut him down with a pointed stare. Then they sat in awkward silence until she turned and looked at him and spoke.

"I wanna say something to you," she started strong and powered through what she wanted to say. "I made a mistake and I'd like to keep working together but I don't know if that's possible," she stared past him at the wall behind him.

"You mean because you let me help you?" he asked.

"If that's what you want to call it," she tried to skirt any characterization of the joining of their breath and bodies in the quiet, shade of his bedroom the afternoon after the funeral.

The image of his flushed face and blue eyes above her flashed in her mind, forcing her to look away from him. Seeing him now with clothes on seemed strange. He was so comfortable being striped bare in front of her. His scars didn't seem to bother either of them that day. It turned out he did have tattoos – another question she could un-know the answer to. But the ugly prison tattoos didn't bother her. They were evidence of a well-fought battle one that he'd won; she respected them and what he went through to get them.

His hands explored every inch of her body as they lay in his bed and enjoyed themselves - repeatedly. When she closed her eyes for days after that she could still feel Charlie's hands on her.

She heard his laugh for the first time that day as they talked about everything and nothing. He told her stories from prison, some sad, some funny, all things she'd never known about or heard from him before. They were real to each other and with each other and she realized in those hours that for all she knew about him – there was still much to learn.

She'd left in the early morning hours while he slept without a word - ashamed of her weakness and indulging him. She didn't love him – not in the way he did her. She didn't allow for the possibility that she ever could.

The possibility that being together could break them apart never occurred to Charlie and he was still puzzling over it quietly in his head when their number came up. It was a new case, a new start, not an end – but not a beginning either.


"Crews, Reese," Tidwell barked from his doorway. "Got a body in Century City. You two back?" A look passed between them that showed their indecision. "Detectives?"

"Yeah," Charlie answered for them, "we're good. Tell them patrol units we're on our way. Reese? You with me?" He held his breath, but take charge Charlie was just what their current situation called for. She nodded curtly and reached for her battered leather jacket.

When she returned to work she was wearing her armor of old, the beaten, burgundy leather jacket. Charlie realized, she was just protecting herself after her father's death. It was one of the many ways he knew she'd regressed. He could also tell she'd started drinking again. The death of a parent is a profound loss – even one you dislike, because you still love them on some level. Dani was wrestling with this and she needed help – help she didn't want to take.

Dangerous road ahead – the yellow warning sign read.

He was silent as she drove them to the scene. He was thinking about when his mother died and how profoundly it affected him. Being convicted for a crime he didn't commit, sentenced to life in prison, imprisoned in a federal maximum security prison and even his divorce were nothing compared to the news that his mom was gone.

Parents seem invincible even when they are not a SWAT Commander and the iconic police image you grow up emulating. Charlie knew this firsthand. The death of his mother rocked him harder than anything he'd ever experienced. He missed her every single day. Charlie loved his mother, even when she was imperfect; maybe because of those imperfections. He wondered if that was what drew him to Reese – her imperfection and the rawness in her. He just needed her to understand that he saw it – that realness she was unable to hide – that she didn't need to hide – not from him. He puzzled over their quandary on the drive being uncharacteristically silent.

"Say something," Reese demanded.

"Like what?"

"I don't know…" she bordered on a whine. "You always talk. Now you're not talking at all. Say something that will make me know I haven't screwed this up too. That I don't need a new partner. That we'll get past this and forget about it."

Something in the way she delivered the words chaffed him. While he understood her trepidation, he refused to believe that she could be so dismissive of their link. His anger came easily, a rarely used, but always ready and sharp answer.

The snap in his voice surprised even him," You have no partner but me, I have no partner but you and we aren't ever getting past anything - because it will never be over between us. You know it and I know it. Now grow up and deal with the fact that I love you or quit, because I'm not leaving."

He pulled down his shades and waited for her glare with his steel grey blue eyes. She did not disappoint blazing away at him with those smoldering nearly black eyes of hers. She blinked first, although he was thankful for the added distraction of her driving, which drew her attention way sooner than she might have otherwise lasted. They both withdrew to lick their wounds and the car was silent again.

Charlie considered all the time he'd wasted pursuing Jennifer who in his mind was still perfect, unblemished, shiny and new, when the woman he truly needed and who needed him sat no more than three feet from him for the past three years. Dani Reese was dark, tangled, tarnished and in some ways still broken, but in ways he wanted to help her fix.

But Dani rejected help almost pathologically; she was an island in the midst of raging storm. But if one could get there without drowning, she could be beautiful. He felt that he alone could see this in her and for that, for her, he continued to try in the face of her outright and forceful rejection. He was the battered lighthouse who stayed on the rock in the face of a mighty hurricane – Hurricane Dani.