Disclaimer: All recognizable people, places, and events in the CSI:NYverse are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
A/N: My crack drawer is now temporarily empty.
This was not going at all as he had expected. When he had slid the small, black velvet box across the white table linen, he had hoped for a cry of delight from behind cupped hands or a smile, but instead, there was no response at all. She stared at it in stone-faced silence, a piece of fettuccine dangling limply from the tines of her upraised fork. The muscles in her jaw twitched, and her lips pursed in contemplation.
He shifted in his seat, and sweat prickled beneath the armpits of the linen shirt he'd worn for the occasion. Giddy anticipation had soured to miserable apprehension in his mouth and the bite of osso bucco he had taken threatened to lodge in his throat. Suddenly, the low chatter of the other diners and the tinkle of cutlery and glassware was thunder in his ears, and he was certain the waiter at the next table was watching his discomfiture with clandestine amusement.
Fuck you, buddy, he thought savagely, and swiped ineffectually at his numb lips with his napkin.
He had thought she was ready; they had been together for a year, and for most of it, he had secretly marveled at his good fortune. She was smart and steadfast, and her wicked mouth and serrated tongue had often left him speechless or laughing until his sides ached and the tears streamed down his face. She was quiet and soothing against the raucous backdrop of the city, and when he came home at the end of his shift and found her there in her socked feet and one of his old Rangers t-shirts, propped on her side of the bed with a doorstop book on Occam's Razor on her lap, his spirit settled, and the air was lighter and cleaner in his lungs, devoid of the stench of blood and sewage and raw, undiluted anger.
Her arm slithered from beneath the table, and her hand closed around the box and pulled it toward her, an albino spider swallowing a hapless fly. She put down her fork with pained care and fumbled indelicately with the box, her spastic fingers splaying and spasming in rhythm to her frustration. His hands itched to open for her-hell, proper proposal etiquette probably demanded that he should-but it was too late. She had already engaged in battle, and if he intervened, he'd wind up wearing his tie as a jockstrap, so he merely watched.
Eventually, the hinges of the box relented and surrendered their prize. She studied it wordlessly.
"Is this what I think it is?" Strangled. Her face was impassive, but her hands were trembling.
Just my heart, he thought, but he was damned if he were going to admit that, so he pushed the osso bucco around his plate and said, "Yeah. Well, I just thought-," He shrugged, a brusque, inarticulate jerk of his shoulder. "Maybe you'd…"
Maybe what? sneered a caustic, pitiless voice that reminded him of his father. That she'd want to spend the rest of her life with you? Get real. You're a dumbass cop with an A.A. from a juco that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. She's got a Master's going on a doctorate and is a professor at NYU. She brings home books with titles you can't pronounce, and sometimes you come home and find her buried beneath a pile of equations so complex that it makes your eyes hurt to look at them for too long. What have you got to offer her?
Baseball, he countered nonsensically. I've got baseball.
Six months into their courtship, he'd taken her to a night game at Yankee stadium. She'd never been to a game, she'd said, and the idea of a life without the joy of baseball had so affronted his New York sensibilities that he'd resolved to remedy the situation at once. They sat in the nosebleed seats in the upper deck, huddled between the rest of the Bronx faithful and eating overpriced dogs that had never tasted so good.
His back had ached from carrying her up the stone steps to their seats, and the beer had been flat and stale, but her small, cold hand had fit perfectly in his own, and when the game bored him, he could bury his nose in her hair or steal a quick kiss. She had been entranced by the game and the seething swell of the crowd around her, and he had never forgotten the unspoiled awe on her face as she'd watched a Derek Jeter homerun arc over the field and disappear into the horizon like a fading comet. He had loved her hopelessly then because he'd never thought to see such innocent wonder again on a face long out of childhood. Later that night, he'd kissed her in his car in earnest, all tongue and clashing teeth and spicy mustard, and later still, he'd taken her virginity atop his rumpled bedsheets, terrified and exhilarated all at once.
All that I have, I owe to Derek Jeter, he thought with grim hysteria, and pressed his napkin to his lips to conceal a smirk.
You think baseball is going to keep her here with you? She can see a ballgame anytime she wishes, and if she winds up with one of those snooty academic types, she'll be able afford box seats instead of freezing her ass off in the nosebleeds.
"Hey," she said softly. "You all right?"
"Huh? Yeah, I'm good." He took a deep breath. "Look, I know I don't got much that you want, but you make it good, and I-," He paused as it dawned on him that what he'd just said could be construed as cheap sexual innuendo. Heat rose in his cheeks. "Not like that. I mean, yeah, you do, but what I meant was-,"
"Shhh." Soft and gentle as breath, and three fingers rested on his burning lips. "Shh."
Then she leaned across the table and kissed him, and his fork fell from nerveless fingers. She was alfredo sauce and warm tongue, and he shivered as she breathed into him. His skin prickled, and his cock twitched greedily inside his pants.
Several heads had turned in their direction by the time she broke the kiss for want of oxygen, but she was unperturbed as she sat back in her chair again. "Yes, I will," she said, and smoothed her skirt.
"You'll what?" he asked stupidly, and then he understood. Oh. Elation bubbled in his veins like champagne, but he was determined not to reveal himself as any more of an idiot, and so he ducked his head and grinned at the tabletop. "I guess I better do this, then. At least get one thing right."
He picked up the ring and rose from his chair to stand beside her. He plucked the ring from its velvet nest with unsteady fingers and slipped it onto the third finger of her right hand. A plump, elderly woman who had been watching the entire affair from a nearby table applauded and raised her glass, and the heat in his cheeks spread to his nape. Rebecca, too, flushed and giggled behind her hands. The small diamond that his salary had been able to afford winked in the light, and his heart lurched inside his chest. She was beautiful, and she was his, and suddenly, he didn't want to share her with anyone else.
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "So, hey, what do you say we get out of here, go for a walk?" He rocked on the balls of his feet and offered her a shy smile, one eyebrow cocked in roguish invitation.
She wiped her mouth on her linen napkin and set it carelessly atop her uneaten fettuccine. "All right, babe."
She struggled into her coat and gloves while he paid the check, and he smothered a pang of disappointment when the ring disappeared beneath black leather. Then her hand slipped into his, and it was all right again. He led her from the restaurant into the New York winter and stood for a moment underneath the green awning. Breath plumed in front of his face, and beside him, Rebecca shivered at the sudden drop in temperature.
"We can just go home if it's too cold." He absently tugged her muffler around her cheeks to protect them from the cold.
"No, it's fine." Breathless, but when he looked at her, her blue eyes were dancing inside her face. "Besides, you'll keep me warm, right?" She waggled her eyebrows at him.
He chuckled. "Damn right I will."
He set off with no destination in mind. His feet knew every inch of this city, and they wandered where they would, over his old beat and past crime scenes he had known before. He passed alleys teeming with garbage and rats and the homeless trying to fend off the cold by sleeping in the filth; odds were, he'd be called out in the morning to find one of them frozen to death in their bower of used diapers and old pasta primavera. But he didn't want to think of that tonight, and so he stole a glance at Rebecca as she trundled beside him.
"I'm sorry I screwed up back there," he said at length.
"Fucking sidewalk," Rebecca swore as she negotiated a crater in the sidewalk large enough to be classified as a sinkhole. "Dumb bastards ever heard of concrete patch?" Then, "What are you talking about? You did good."
He snorted. "I sounded like an idiot."
"You were sweet."
"I was going for smooth."
"Yeah, well, if you'd come on with a rose clamped between your teeth and your hair glued to your head with a vat of Vitalis, I'd've kicked you square in the ass."
He blinked at the image that conjured. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah."
They settled into companionable silence again. He watched her as she watched the people around them. To an outsider, she might have looked dull-witted, slouched and expressionless as she rolled, but he knew that behind those half-closed eyelids, her speculative gaze was cataloguing and assessing her surroundings with a mathematician's cool precision.
"We'll fix the bathroom," he said.
She stopped in her tracks. "Where did that come from?"
He didn't know why he had thought of their bathroom now. His bladder was empty, if not shrunken from the cold, and she had given no sign of needing to go, but suddenly, it had been in the forefront of his mind, and once he'd thought of it, he couldn't unthink it until he'd spoken it aloud.
The bathroom was too small for her. The doorway was too narrow, and the first time she'd tried to use it, she'd gotten stuck. He'd had to pull her from the chair and collapse it to free her, and she'd ended up crawling on her hands and knees and pulling herself onto the toilet by sheer force of will. In fact, she still did it that way. She swore it was all right, that she could manage, but it wasn't all right as far as he was concerned; it was dangerous, and it hurt to see her crawling on all fours on the bathroom floor like a drunk because the home he had chosen was not meant for her.
There was another year on his lease, but he'd been talking to the super about another apartment in the same building, one with wider doors and enough room in the shower for a grab bar and a plastic shower chair. The prick was trying to gouge him for another hundred and thirty a month, but he'd pay it if it meant that he didn't have to worry about coming home to find her lying in the shower with her thin legs akimbo and her neck at an impossible, lethal angle.
He shrugged. "You just need a bigger bathroom. You shouldn't have to engage in the Stop, Drop, and Roll method of bathroom engagement whenever nature calls."
She gaped at him for a moment and then dissolved into helpless laughter. "Stop, Drop, and Roll," she repeated, and rested her head on his arm with a sigh of contentment. "You worry too much."
"Someone should. Besides, how do you know I'm worryin' and not anglin' to give you a practical dowry?"
"What?" she sputtered. "I'm supposed to bring you a dowry."
"Yeah? Where is it?"
She grinned into the fabric of his coat. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I could run you downtown for impeding an investigation." He brushed the crown of her head with his gloved fingers.
"Mm. Would you interrogate me?"
"Yeah."
"Would you break out the cuffs and your nightstick and work me over, Detective Flack?" It was a salacious purr that coiled at the base of his spine and dried the spittle in his mouth.
"Seven ways from Sunday, doll. You mind if I grab somethin' to eat first? I'm starvin'."
She looked at him in surprise. "How can you be starving? You just dropped sixty on osso bucco."
"I had a lot on my mind. There's a great pizzeria a couple blocks over."
She rolled her eyes, but she was laughing as he pulled her along, bright and sharp amid the sullen vitriol that radiated from the bundled passersby and rose from the pavement like steam, and as he glanced to the horizon, a shooting star blazed across the sky. It reminded him of a baseball that Derek Jeter had sent out of the park one August night and of wonder not yet dead.
Somebody's swingin' for the fences, he thought, and was inexplicably glad.