She didn't notice the picture until a few days after they'd visited that restaurant, and he'd talked one of the waitresses into letting have the Polaroid camera. But there it was when she looked over at his desk. He'd gone off in search of coffee, or so he'd told her, but she had no reasons to believe that he'd lied to her: he never had before, and she knew he never would.
The problem, however, with the picture being on his desk was that it was in a place where she could not exactly see it. He was nowhere in sight, and she had the feeling that he wouldn't be for at least a few more minutes, so she got up and walked over to his side, momentarily forgetting where it was, but then it caught her eye again. And when it did, she felt her breath catch in her throat for a brief moment.
There she'd been, standing in that restaurant beside her partner, inwardly rolling her eyes when he'd managed to get the camera from the waitress. She'd noticed, though, when he'd turned the camera onto them; and had paused in asking questions long enough to smile as he'd snapped the picture of them. She'd known that he'd kept the picture, but she hadn't really known why until now.
He was smiling. And she'd known him long enough to know that it wasn't just one of those random candid moments when neither of them were looking, because both of them had been looking. Granted, she too was smiling, but for some reason, the fact that he was, as well, only served to make the picture mean that much more. At this point, she looked up and glanced around the squad room, making sure that no one was watching as she reached for her coat and left in search of her partner.
She found him just as he was coming in. The picture was in her hands, and when he saw it, he looked away, muttering something in an awkward sort of voice, but she wasn't paying attention to that, nor to the fact that they were standing outside a place where any number of cops could see them and call them on 'fraternization' or whatever the hell else they called it these days. She pushed the picture into his hand, and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek without a word.