"Eleven."

"Huh?"

Jason Walsh looked up, his expression perplexed as he watched the new detective walk past him on her way to her desk. She sat down, and caught his eye briefly, then busied herself with the case file in front of her. Walsh looked at his partner to see if he knew why Detective Beaumont had said a meaningless number without explanation, but Kowalski looked as mystified as he was. Walsh looked over at Beaumont again, frowning slightly, then shrugged and went back to his paperwork. But his mind wasn't really on it.

Beaumont had arrived a couple of days ago, as Cole's new partner. She had a solid record behind her as a uniformed cop, and seemed to be thriving in her new role as detective. When they'd been introduced, Walsh had shaken her hand, and noted that it was warm and dry, with no hint of nervous perspiration, which was a good sign. He'd thought at the time that although the woman couldn't be described as traditionally pretty, there was something indefinable about her that made a man take at least a second look.

She had an air of being able to handle just about anything. Some men might have been intimidated by that, but Walsh approved. He wasn't good with the helpless type, who needed her hand held over every little thing, and screamed for help at the sight of a spider. His last girlfriend had turned out to be that type, which was why she was now his ex-girlfriend. His place had spiders. A lot of spiders.

So far, Beaumont definitely seemed up to the job, displaying a wry sense of humour, and making it clear that she didn't take any shit, though she wasn't overly defensive about it. And she'd seemed refreshingly free of major quirks until now. But Walsh decided it wasn't worth worrying about. Spouting numbers at random moments was pretty tame in the grand scheme of things.

For about ten minutes he continued with his paperwork, then Sgt. Brown walked in and began handing out assignments. All fairly standard stuff, and Walsh had completely forgotten Beaumont's odd comment, until he stood up and started to turn away. He heard her chuckle and say "Thirteen!"

He turned back to look at her, frowning. "Thirteen what?"

She smiled and shrugged. "Never mind. Not important."

After a moment Walsh shook his head. He had no idea what she was doing, and he didn't have time to worry about it. He pulled on his suit jacket, and started to follow Kowalski, but he could have sworn that as he went out the door, he heard her say, "Fifteen..."

The inexplicable counting continued over the next few days. From time to time throughout the shift, Beaumont would suddenly announce a new number. The count went up over the course of each day, and then reset the following morning. Sometimes it increased slowly – that seemed to be when they were particularly busy, so his first theory that it was something related to her cases didn't hold up. Other times, it jumped rapidly, but Walsh couldn't find any correlation – people arriving and leaving, sirens sounding outside, roaches scurrying across the floor – no explanation he could come up with made sense. The fact that her gaze sometimes seemed to stray in his direction right before an increase just made it more confusing. He wasn't aware of doing anything that could account for it.

Around midnight on the fifth day, a thought struck him, and he caught Cole just as the intense young man was leaving. "Hey Cole – does Beaumont do that all the time?"

"Do what?"

"The counting thing. Is it all the time or just around..." He caught himself, not wanting to make it obvious. "Around the squad room?"

Cole considered the matter seriously, as he did everything. "Mostly just in the squad room. Though yesterday she did it while we were staking out that fast food restaurant – the one that was robbed four times in the past month... we'd been there for a couple of hours, and she suddenly did it."

"And all she said was a number?"

"Yeah, just... I forget what the number was, but it was pretty high."

"Huh." Walsh thought about that for a moment.

"Is that it?" Cole checked his watch.

"Hmmm? Oh, yeah, thanks..." He slapped Cole on the shoulder and let him go. He knew the man frequently went to church right after he got off shift, and although Cole got a certain amount of needling about religion, he was so obviously sincere that most of the time they just accepted it as his 'thing'. Walsh went back to his desk, telling himself that counting was just Beaumont's 'thing', some sort of compulsive behavior, maybe – though he hadn't pegged her as being O.C.D.

As he sat down, Beaumont herself walked past, pulling on her coat. "Night, Walsh," she said casually.

He looked up, suspicious. As infuriating as it had become, the lack of a number somehow put him on his guard. She smiled, and he pulled himself together. "Night, Beaumont."

She walked out. And then, faintly, he heard her say, "One seventy seven."

For almost a minute, Walsh sat there, fuming. He had to know! He got up and went out into the hall. "Hey, you see Beaumont go past?" he asked Delahoy, who was talking to a uniformed cop.

"She was heading downstairs," the other detective told him.

Walsh could hear faint footsteps on the staircase below him. "Hey, Beaumont," he yelled.

The footsteps stopped and her voice came back, "Yeah. Walsh?"

"Yeah, stay there, I'm coming down."

He took the stairs two at a time, and found her leaning against the wall next to a janitor's closet. She met his gaze with a politely interested expression. "One eighty three. What can I do for you?"

"You can tell me what the hell this counting shit means!" The irritation in his voice surprised even him.

She heard the note of frustration, and her smile became apologetic. "Sorry. Just this thing I do. I didn't realize it bothered you so much."

"It doesn't..." He stopped. It would be silly to deny that it was getting to him. "Look, I just want to know what it means. It's getting to the point where it's distracting me from my work."

Beaumont looked at him, her expression... odd. Half worried, half... what? Almost as if she were anticipating something. "Okay," she said finally. The numbers, it's..." She sighed. "It's the number of times in a day that I think about having sex with you."

Walsh stared at her, thunderstruck. Boy, had his theories been way off. She was looking at him, clearly waiting for a reaction, but he just stood there, silent, and let his gaze drift off into the middle distance.

"Walsh?" She sounded almost nervous. "Hey, look, I didn't mean to embarrass you. Really, I won't do..."

"Three," he said calmly.

"What?" Her mouth quirked as if she was trying to decide whether he was mocking her.

"I... oh, wait..." He got that glazed look again, then his eyes widened. "Five... no, six..."

She started to grin, as he said, "Hold on... nine." He turned his head slowly, to look her in the eye. "Fourteen!" he whispered in an awed tone. "Seventeen..." His next words were muffled as she moved in and kissed him.

Several minutes later, they came up for air and grinned at each other. "Okay, I lost count," he admitted. Beaumont glanced towards the door of the janitor's closet, and raised an eyebrow suggestively. Walsh smirked and tried the door handle. It was not locked. Beaumont opened the door, then moved backwards into the cramped little room, reaching to grab Walsh's tie and pull him in there with her...

Next morning, Walsh was at his desk, drinking coffee, when Delahoy wandered in, carrying a bouquet. Walsh grinned, giving nothing away. "Cute. Those for me?"

Delahoy shrugged. "They got delivered downstairs, I just brought them up. I don't know who they're for."

Walsh looked quizzical. "Well what does the card say?" he asked, nodding at the little ticket attached to the flowers.

"That's the thing, there's no name..." He showed Walsh the card. All that was written on it was '39'.

"Oh, those must be for Beaumont," Walsh told him. His expression was innocent.

"How do you...?" Delahoy began, but at that moment Walsh's phone rang, so he he just took the flowers over to Beaumont's desk.

"Apparently these are for you."

"Yeah?" She took them and looked at the card, then grinned. "Yeah, they are."

Delahoy shrugged and headed for his own desk. Working here, you just learnt to roll with the weirdness.

Still talking on the phone, Walsh looked up and met Beaumont's look. He nodded very slightly and she grinned, before looking back down at the report in front of her.

Half an hour later, as Beaumont and Cole headed out, she discretely dropped something on Walsh's desk as she passed. He picked it up. It was the card from the flowers, but the '39' had been crossed out, and underneath she'd written '61'. Turning towards the door, Walsh called out, "Seventy five!"

Across from him, Kowalski looked up. "Jeez, don't you start."

Walsh chuckled as he put the little card in his inside pocket. His partner was just going to have to get used to it!

A/N: I'm checking to see if there was a specific mention of when Beaumont joined the 2nd Squad. If there is I'll edit to make the story match the canon.