This story picks up where "Hiding Amongst the Flames" left off. While it is not essential that you read that one first, it does make things clearer and smoothes out the flow and order of the story. And if you feel the impulse to review, I welcome it. I only get better with help and constructive critique. Thanks -- Surfer

Second Grade

How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar. – Zen saying

There were times when Charlie Crews felt Dani Reese and he were so in synch it was scary; he hardly noticed an inch of daylight between them. And then there were times like these…

Currently, they were comparing second grade experiences in an effort to spark his flagging memory and aid in their pursuit of the conspiracy wall suspects, but right now - it was just making him feel really old. Ostensibly to assist, Dani had brought to his house a box of things she'd dug up from her parents' garage. It contained an array of memorabilia from her childhood; report cards, Little League ribbons, some press clippings her mother kept and the 5" x 7" school photo, which he now held in his hands and stared at. On the reverse, Roya Reese had written neatly in indelible marker "1988, Dani – Age 8" and it mocked him.

Charlie remembered 1988; it was the year he got his license, the year he learned to drive; the year he bought and placed condoms in his wallet on the off chance he got lucky. And Dani Reese was eight years old and in pigtails.

Clinically, mathematically, Charlie knew that he was eight years senior to Reese; sometimes nine because his birthday was in February and hers was not until August. But eight years between adults in their late 20's to mid 30's - was a whole lot different than it is between kids, he swallowed hard at the thought.

It was precisely the difference between second grader Dani Reese with huge dark eyes, grinning broadly in pigtails with a gap where her two front teeth were still coming in and a gangly freckled tenth grade Charlie Crews with a borrowed car and condoms in his wallet he still hadn't found a use for. It made him feel kind of dirty to think about it; their age difference and the naughty things he did nightly to the girl in this photo. He shook off the thought physically like a dog ridding itself of rainwater.

"Crews, focus dammit," his insistent younger partner turned lover, barked at him.

"What was the question again?" he returned with a dull stare and her eyes narrowed. "Sorry, my mind wandered."

"Orange underwear?" she questioned with raised brows.

"Uh, no," he gulped hard and shook his head vigorously, but added nothing further.

Dani Reese was however a student of human nature and one damned perceptive cop and she could tell something was not right with her partner. "What is it Crews? Spit it out."

Charlie cocked his head and examined her. Could their relationship stand any more scrutiny he wondered. Then assessing she would drag it out of him eventually he capitulated and unburdened himself.

"Do you ever think about how much older than you I am?"

Dani snorted a short laugh in response. "Only when you are leaving me in the dust chasing a bad guy." But when Charlie didn't laugh back she realized he was somewhat serious.

"Come on Crews. You can't be serious?" But his look told her he was.

"So what, now you're freaked because of looking at some pictures of me as a kid? I got news for you Crews, I think I broke all those carnal knowledge rules before you even got laid for the first time. It's not like we're kids." But he continued to look from her to the photo and red crept up his throat to his face.

"Look," she said, "gimme that," taking the photo from him. "I'm not seven…"

"Eight," he injected. She glared at him and continued.

"I'm not eight anymore and neither are you. So stop worrying about that photo and think about what we are trying to think about - now," she ordered.

"But all I think about sometimes is you," he confided softly.

"Christ, Crews," she sighed. "Don't do this now. We're working remember? On your case? Trying to figure out who put you in jail for murders you didn't commit?" She sighed again when the expression on his face flickered but didn't change.

She had a soft spot for his "moments" – those rare times when Charlie seemed to doubt himself, doubt his suitability for her. Normally, Crews was solid, stable, unshakeable, the bedrock of their pairing; but very rarely a chink in his armor would show and she'd have to shore him up. It wasn't something she felt any good at, but he was worth the effort.

"Honestly, with all the shit we are up against, this is what bugs you?"

Then for some unexplainable reason, Charlie smiled softly. Maybe she was getting better at this, or maybe he was just screwing with her, which he had been known to do.

"So you're just fucking with me?" she smiled back at him tentatively.

"No…. but you just said "we" again - three times in under a minute," he grinned. "And that makes me happy for no reason."

She turned away pretending to be pissed and Charlie approached quietly, wrapping his long, strong arms around her and leaned down to nuzzle her neck.

"You're not worried I won't be able to keep up with you?" he teased, whispering the question against her ear and jaw line, pausing to plant little kisses there.

"Not likely," she demurred, "not if your performance in the bedroom is any indication, hot shot." She could feel his smile against her neck even as his teeth lightly nipped at the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder.

"I told you we need to focus," she chastised him without any real weight behind her threat. It sounded weak even to her.

"I am focused," Charlie promised as his hands slid lower, down her front over her jeans, working his way over her delicate ticklish spots, ones he'd memorized and knew his way around by touch in the dark.

"On the case, Crews," she ground her teeth trying to retain some degree of control although her body was rapidly betraying her and her precious self control was unraveling under her skilled partner's touch.

"One thing being older is supposed to mean is you are more disciplined, Charlie."

She felt him chuckle, knowing with her use of his first name that he'd won.

"I hate it when you do this to me," she confessed, turning to face him. She wanted to be able to touch him, to make him burn the way she did, but he restrained her hands and held her gaze.

"No, honey," he said as he closed to kiss her, "not when I do this to you. You hate that I can do this to you, but it's one of the many things I love, that you trust yourself to me," he said before kissing her. She knew he was right, but no longer seemed to care. She melted into his kiss and made quick work of his belt and pants.

"Slow down, sweetheart," he murmured.

"Aren't you the one anxious to prove you can keep up?" she teased.

"Oh, I can keep up," he told her with steel in his voice. "This requires all that patience and discipline you keep talking about," he promised.

The way he kissed her was agonizingly slow and sweet. It made her want to cry sometimes; his gentleness and the depth of the attention he paid to her. Other men couldn't wait to rip her clothes off and bury themselves in her, but Charlie could drive her crazy without taking off one stitch of clothing. He recently elevated his game to being able to coax an orgasm from her without disrobing either of them, with just his touch and his kiss. With anyone else it would have been too personal, more intense than she could tolerate, but with Charlie it felt natural and so very Crews. He could drive her to distraction whether talking her to death in the car, or with his tongue in their bed.

Strangest of all, Charlie Crews could be amazingly quiet, almost silent in bed. But it was his growl, low and rumbling in his chest, one he made without knowing - that was her undoing. It alone evidenced how badly he wanted her and the amount of restraint he exercised in seeing her past the edge of orgasm before he would permit himself to indulge - in her.

As he climbed atop her and slid into her, even before they began to move in rhythm, he growled or purred. It rumbled through him and it was not something she was even sure he noticed - but it sent chills coursing through her, setting every nerve on fire for him – and him alone. No one could do this to her. No one but Charlie Crews and she loved it, loved him. He was right - he owned her; and that was the thing she both loved and hated.

Charlie teased and occasionally taunted and she knew he could be mean, but he never was to her. He was an attentive, controlled, skilled and intensely passionate lover, but he was so much more. Crews was actively restoring her faith and that was something Dani thought forever lost. Her trust in him was unshakeable.

Early in their partnership, everyone sought to compromise their link. Lately, when that proved impossible, they'd tried to use her to get to him – they always would. They both knew it. Secretly, Dani hoped the eight short years between them gave her enough of an edge to never disappoint him and to keep up with her rambunctious red haired partner who often acted first, thought later.

Without incredibly gifted instincts and reflexes, she feared Crews would have already have gotten himself killed, but it was a talent earned at a price; one extracted in blood from him inside Pelican Bay Federal Maximum Security Prison. She yearned to ask him about Roman and the guard he'd injured in the same way, but knew it was a dark place and Crews did not like the dark. He lived in and off of the sunlight, almost like he was solar powered.

In quiet moments, Dani lay awake tracing his many battle scars with the edge of her nail, learning each cut, each stitch line and staple mark with her hands and her tongue. Sometimes, when he was really relaxed, Charlie would grin in the dark as she hit a ticklish spot, but she'd learned Crews rarely, if ever, fully relaxed. He tolerated her exploration because he trusted her and Crews trusted even fewer people than she did.

She marveled at how alike they were and how completely different. Charlie was fond of the saying "same difference", which held a meaning to him entirely opposite than the rest of the world. To Crews it meant there was a sameness in their difference and in the months it had taken to penetrate Crews' shiny shell she realized the importance of his distinction. Whereas Dani seemed unapproachable because of the attitude she projected and Crews seemed very approachable, they were equally closed off, cloistered and distrusting. "Window dressing" Crews called it; underneath, inside, they were kindred souls, both betrayed by everyone they'd ever trusted – except each other.

She'd never met anyone who understood her so completely and satisfied her sexually to the degree her partner could. Perhaps it was the trust that was the missing ingredient in sex with strangers because Crews was only with his ex-wife before prison and he didn't pick up his bedroom behaviors in Crescent City. He shouldn't be able to do the things to her that he could.

It was clear that she had a similar effect on him. The couple of times she'd teased him at work had proved that, and it was the only time he got annoyed at her anymore. When she toyed with him and he couldn't touch her, it drove him crazy. No amount of dirty talk and heated glances could satisfy him and more than once it had resulted in a detour to slake his thirst. Those instances marked the few times their lovemaking was brief. She didn't know why he worried about their age difference when he could clearly go for hours, but it bothered him so she let him tell her why.

As they lay in bed later, she asked, "Does our age difference bother you, Charlie?"

He fidgeted and sighed. "Yes and no," he responded. A flippant reply stayed on her tongue and she waited knowing there was more.

"I guess I wonder if…. But then that's the future and there isn't any future, so it's a wonder that I shouldn't wonder and it's thinking about where we're going next, which I shouldn't do. I should just stay in the moment, because the moment is all we have and the moment is good, really good, great actually." He sputtered to a stop having answered his own question, which is what normally happened.

She was tempted to tell him he was doing it again – talking to himself, but settled for "I'm glad we could have this talk," as she smiled and kissed his chest.

"Why do you put up with me?" he smiled down at her.

"I ask myself that everyday, Crews. Every single day." She grinned at him.

"Couldn't be because you love me could it?" He surprised her sometimes with his shyness.

"Would I do it for any other reason?" she teased.

"My big screen TV. My massive house. My super fast sports car. I know you find it unbelievable, but most women are impressed by these things." He had admitted somewhat honestly that his wealth and the privilege it brought garnered him a lot of female attention before they became exclusive.

"None of those things interest me, Crews," she promised him. "Not all that money, not your massive…" she looked down at his groin, buried beneath the sheets for emphasis, "things." He laughed aloud and it was a rare thing to hear Charlie Crews laugh.

She pushed off him intent on taking a shower, one in which they would both end up and be chased from – only after running the house out of hot water. But he grabbed her and held her tight. "Tell me, honey. You know what I want."

"I do know what you want, Charlie," she whispered kissing him deeply and winding her hand under the sheet to find him hard for her again. She pulled back and looked from her deep coffee brown eyes to his greenish blue ones and gave him what he wanted. "I love you… you nut job. Always have. Probably always will."

He smiled and released her.

"Probably?" he groaned, throwing his head back on the pillow. "Why do you torture me like this?"

"If you knew all the answers, you might stop looking," she replied cryptically as she sauntered off to the shower without a stitch of clothes on, knowing he was watching the whole time, adding, "Oh and Charlie, the car? It's mine. You need to remember that."

He rolled onto his side and pulled open the bedside table drawer where he kept his Zen book, certain she was reading it when he wasn't looking. Dani Reese got more and more Zen the longer he knew her.

"Hey, stop reading that damned book and get in here, mister," she told him a tone brooking no argument.

Charlie dropped the book, slammed the drawer closed and vaulted off the bed like a shot. "That's the kind of response I'm looking for in my junior partner," she teased. "Why can't you do that at work?"

"I jump over things at work, occasionally. There was a car once, and that fence, which in retrospect was not such a good idea…" he countered.

"I meant listen to me, smart ass," she sassed him back.

"Honey," he captured her again as they stepped into the stream of hot water, "I am always listening." He began the gentle exploration of the curves of her body that she so enjoyed.

"Charlie?" she questioned. He paused and hummed against her neck inquiry.

"Don't Buddhists believe in old souls?" He nodded yes.

"Well, I have one of those, so we're even." She felt his smile against her shoulder blade as he kissed it.

"Nice try, sweetheart," he murmured onto the pulse point on her collarbone as he turned her to face him. "Old soul, huh? Then why do I have to explain Zen to you?"

"Who says I don't just let you do that for your own benefit?" she smirked, kissed him and grabbed the shampoo bottle.

The idea made Charlie twist his brain and wonder. Was she just being coy and cocky? Because he considered there were times when he could swear that Dani Reese was the most unconsciously Zen being he knew. It was a good train of thought, but just then he returned to himself as she turned his palm up and squeezed shampoo into it, while he stood there mute. The smile on her face was peaceful, like still water on a crisp fall day.

In his head, he heard the refrain from a song Dani was singing in the car a day prior. He adored the fact she trusted him enough to sing quietly without being self-conscious about it. It spoke to her level of comfort with him, even if he didn't think she realized she was doing it. Charlie knew that singing or humming subconsciously meant happiness and that meant Dani was in a good place, with him.

As he reveled in the feel of her skin and the wonderful things her hands were doing to him, Charlie leaned down and got lost in the feeling of kissing her. The lyrics echoed in his brain melodically coaching him "close your eyes, clear your heart… cut the cord" and Charlie found all thoughts of Zen, grade school and their relative age difference fled his mind like morning fog flees the rising sun.

Author's Note: The lyrics are from the song "Human" by The Killers and no copyright infringement is intended. Those words speak to me too.