Chapter 2

Stepping off the elevator on the homicide floor, Rick covered a yawn with the palm of his right hand while nodding a hello to a few of his coworkers. He took a drink from the extra-large size of coffee he held and continued to shuffle his way to his desk. He had no idea what had made the prior night's sleep so terrible, but waking up every hour had not left him well rested at all. Unfortunately for him it was a Monday and Monday's usually dragged.

"Morning."

He hummed, stifling another yawn, before greeting his partner and desk-mate. "Morning."

She grinned at him, seeming unusually chipper for eight-twenty-five on a Monday morning. As he shrugged off his blazer and hung it over the back of his chair, he heard her ask, "How was your weekend in DC?"

Ah, his big weekend away visiting his parents—not exactly an exciting endeavor for a thirty-five-year-old man such as himself. Really, it wasn't bad; he was simply mad at himself for mentioning it to anyone before he went which thereby encouraged them to inquire about it upon his return. "Oh, um, fine I guess."

"You guess?"

He sighed and took another sip of his coffee, trying to backtrack on his less than positive-sounding statement. "No, it was ok. Weather was good and I had a nice time with my mother yesterday. We went to brunch and then walked around before I had to get the bus."

"How was the game? You had tickets right—oh. Sorry."

Ever the observant one, Kate had instantly translated his flat expression into one of negativity. That was the part of Friday he regretted the most—talking about how he'd purchased tickets for he and his father to go to a Nationals game. Not just tickets, either—great tickets, right on the first baseline. He doubted he'd ever sat that close—at least not at a major league game before—and he was sure his father would enjoy being that close to the action.

Right.

"It's fine; it's not your fault. I knew it was a long shot that my father would actually have a good time—I'm still not sure that's actually possible for him—but it's just—no forget it." He quickly terminated his complaints, shook his head and turned towards his computer screen.

"What."

"I'm an asshole," he muttered, cursing to himself. What a moron he was—an inconsiderate moron. Going on about his daddy issues in front of Kate of all people.

"Why?"

As she sounded genuinely confused he flicked his gaze in her direction to clarify his position further. "Because I'm complaining to you about my father not having fun with me at the baseball game but I still have both my parents; just forget it."

He'd known for well over a year about the untimely death of Kate's mother; he'd actually been the first of the trio of males to learn not that she was no longer living, but that her life had been taken by an unknown criminal. That January day, not more than six months into the onset of their partnership, he found her crying alone in a stairwell and become immediately concerned. She confessed the truth to him: that day was the tenth anniversary of her mother's murder. The investigator in him had wanted to ask a million questions, but instead he let her be and covered for her with Ryan, Esposito, and the captain for the next hour to give her some space.

Shortly thereafter he'd made one of the biggest mistakes of his life: pulling up her mother's case file. She'd caught him and been unbelievably furious. She shouted at him in front of everyone, which was how Ryan and Esposito found out the truth, and subsequently refused to talk with him for several days. He later found out she'd even asked Montgomery for a transfer, but he hadn't budged and instead encouraged her to make amends. It had taken nearly a full week of groveling for her to acknowledge his existence once more. After another few days of cooling off she even apologized for her aggressive reaction and simply requested he not look into the case ever again and he'd happily agreed.

Ever since, she'd been slightly more open about the subject of her mother, but not by much. He could tell she became sad if their topics of conversation became too family-focused and thus he tried not to rub any family events in her face. Now, he was the idiot actually complaining about a parent in front of her and he couldn't believe she hadn't called him out for it. Instead, she shocked him by doing the exact opposite.

"Rodgers," she began, her head tilted just a little bit to the left. "Just because I lost my mom it doesn't make your feelings invalid."

She gazed encouragingly at him for fifteen more seconds before he rounded his shoulders and let out a long exhale, returning to the sentiments he'd almost said before.

"It's just…I know he has an important job—if anyone gets that a few events and holidays need to be missed here or there for the greater good, it's me, right? He didn't want to stay for the whole game because he had an early flight the next morning and that's fine, but I just…" Rick sighed and rubbed his fingers over his upper lip as visions of his father awkwardly shifting in his seat every five minutes while subtly glancing at his watch each time flashed in his mind.

"I just wish that when he was there, he was there, you know? And not sitting there to placate me while counting down the minutes until he can leave."

"But he cares enough to placate, right? Some people don't even get that."

He bobbed his head. "True." Assuming he didn't have a previous work obligation his father rarely said no to one of his suggested invites, but then again it was the way he acted while they were at said event that discouraged Rick from inviting him to more things. Sure, now and then they had what he could safely categorize as a good time, but mostly Rick felt like he remained that twelve-year-old boy, desperately trying to get his father to throw a baseball to him one last time before disappearing off to make another important work phone call.

"I know, I know—doesn't make it less frustrating. Where'd he jet off to this time?"

"El Paso."

"Drug bust?"

"What he does best," Rick said in a sing-song manner. Jackson Hunt had not achieved notoriety for writing parking tickets that was for sure.

Though the specific details had never been revealed to him (and Rick very much doubted they ever would be), he knew his father had stumbled upon the seedy, drug-filled underbelly of New York during the early days of his career. During his tenure he'd spent multiple years undercover ultimately using that status to dismantle a major drug ring in the city, thus earning him the bulk of his NYPD notoriety—and ultimately leading to his career at the FBI.

The level of knowledge about drugs, how to traffic them, and the business side of dealing them that his father possessed far exceeded Rick's scope of knowledge. Sometimes, it was downright disturbing, and as a kid it had certainly been eye-opening, particularly all the times his father threatened him with untold horrors if he ever became mixed up the drug scene. All these factors made his father an impressive agent, but unfortunately not the world's greatest dad.

"Oh!" Rick quickly turned his head back in the direction of his partner's desk. She gazed at him curiously. "Hey, wait—weren't you and your dad going to a game, too?" He vaguely recalled her sharing that detail with him on Friday shortly before he'd left to get his bus to DC.

She nodded and then shrugged. "Yeah but it got rained out in the third inning."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's fine; we can always go to another. You…you could, ah, come with us sometime if you wanted."

Rick almost laughed at her invitation that clearly only happened because she felt bad about his negative experience. "You don't have to take pity on me, Beckett."

"I'm serious! I'm sure my dad wouldn't mind at all. Actually, he'd probably love it—you two really got along well at the NYPD picnic last summer, right?"

He pressed his lips together, trying to think back to the event in question. Ah, yes, he did remember Kate's father: a kind, soft-spoken man, clearly beaming with pride at the success of his only child. He had run into the elder man while grabbing a soda from a bucket of ice and, when he'd read the man's nametag, he introduced himself and they'd had a ten minute conversation about Kate, baseball, and the man's profession as a law professor. "Oh right—yeah he was a cool guy."

She grinned. "Great—so what do you say?"

"Oh…" He hedged. It wasn't that he didn't want to hang out with his partner—or his partner and her father—outside of work. He was sure he would have a fine time with the Becketts. It was, after all, easy to have a good time at a Mets' game assuming everyone in attendance actually wanted to be there. Yet, at the same time, he feared becoming the third wheel in what was presumably a father-daughter tradition. "Let me think about it, okay?"

She merely shrugged. "Sure, I don't want to twist your arm into it or anything—just putting the offer out there."

"I appreciate it."

"Guys?"

Rick looked up barely two minutes later to see Ryan approaching their joined desk. He thumbed in the direction of the elevator and said, "There's a body in a dumpster downtown."

He stood, arched his back, and then scooped up his coffee cup. Looking down at his partner he said, "Ah, nothing like a good dumpster body to kick off a Monday morning."

She merely laughed and said, "C'mon; I'm driving."

Sitting at her desk, Kate continually found her attention being torn away from the arrest report she was supposed to be typing up; the sight to her left was simply far too tantalizing. An ordinary observer would probably have found nothing interesting at all in watching a man pull photos and evidence bags off the so-called "murder board" and file them into the box labeled with their latest case's number, but for Kate the visual involved some of her favorite sights starting with Richard Rodgers' backside.

She knew it was wrong; she knew she should not be thinking of her coworker in that way, but she just couldn't help herself. He was just so damned attractive! In addition to what she recognized to be inappropriate gawking at the way his dark jeans fit snuggly over his ass, she grazed her eyes over his hands and forearms, exposed by the way he'd rolled up the sleeves to his light blue button-down, as he removed each item from the board. She shivered involuntarily when the image of those hands splayed across her thighs popped into her head and then chastised herself immediately for it.

No—no! She was supposed to be actively stopping herself from having sexual fantasies about her partner not encouraging them. But it was just so hard to stop!

Two years earlier when Rick first walked into the Twelfth precinct with a small cardboard box of belongings tucked under one arm Kate honestly was not sure what to make of him. When her former partner was unable to return to work after the car accident he was in while off duty she had expected a new partner, but she had not expected that man to be the son of the legendary Jackson Hunt. Though Montgomery assured her she would retain the team lead, she had to initially admit to fearing they would butt heads both due to the fact that he was a former lead himself and the fact that his father was practically NYPD royalty. Within two days of their partnership, Kate realized that was not going to be a problem.

Rick could certainly be a ham, and a show-off, and had been known to gloat about a particularly important evidentiary find or arrest he made, but he was by every account a team player. He took orders from her and never let her see any negative feelings or disgust with the fact that she was in charge. In fact, other than their obvious facial similarities, Kate quickly realized that he was different than his father in nearly every way—well, except for the fact that they were both exceptional cops.

The more cases they worked together the more Kate grew to respect and admire his investigative talents. Rick was a sharp, clever, and a highly observant individual. His speed sometimes astounded her. Where she needed to study a scene and take her time, he seemed to be able to glance once at an area and pick up three clues that would have taken her at least twenty minutes. The one downside of this was that he sometimes jumped the gun and ended up being wrong, but he was good enough about admitting his mistakes that she didn't mind.

As time passed, they grew closer both as partners and as friends. Their well-perfected routine inside an interrogation room was infamous throughout the precinct, but they got along just as well outside the box, joined together by many shared interests. In fact, just about the only thing Kate didn't like about her partner was his womanizing tendencies, which in her opinion involved too much over-sharing and were at times downright absurd. Then again, those sentiments were probably yet another manifestation of her jealousy.

Though she recognized Rick as handsome from the moment they met, Kate's romantic feelings for him built up gradually under the surface until they bubbled over one night while they were staying late, staring at a murder board, and wracking their brains trying to find the next clue. He'd volunteered to make more coffee but before he walked away he'd squeezed her forearm, stepped in close and said, "Don't worry Beckett; we'll figure it out." Then, he'd winked at her, and she'd fallen: hook, line, and sinker.

To that day, well over a year later, she could not have explained in words why that moment, so seemingly insignificant, had been the moment but it was. Ever since then she'd begrudgingly found herself a swooning school-girl around him, waiting for him to wake up one morning and realize that they would, in fact, be a perfect couple. Well, maybe not perfect, but she'd make a much better companion for him than whatever blonde was his flavor-of-the-week. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to share that opinion.

As Kate crossed the year mark of her crush-turned-more for her partner, she told herself it was time to move on. Never before in her life had she been that hung up on a man. She was too independent, too focused on her career. Historically, if she was interested in someone and in a short period of time it became obvious that interest was not mutual, she moved on with her life, and that's what she needed to do with Rick.

But then he would smile at her. Compliment her. Or, on rarer occasion, pull her into a hug at random and back down the rabbit hole she would go. There was simply something about him she could not make herself get over no matter how much she tried or wanted to. And, okay, maybe she didn't try that hard, but she tried a little bit…until those times she gave up entirely, like before their case began two days earlier when she invited him to go to a baseball game with she and her father. And, okay, partly her invitation was born from trying to make him feel better after he'd tried to be a good son and it had blown up in his face, but the other part was definitely a desire to hang out with him outside of work in the hopes that he would see the potential for, well, more.

"Like what you see?"

"Hmm? Oh, no—no." Kate quickly tried to recover from being startled by Rick's voice and casually turned back to her computer, though she was certain her cheeks had a pinkish hue. That's what she got for gawking at him and getting caught doing it!

"I was, ah, just thinking about how to word this one sentence and, you know, staring blankly off into space."

"Sure you were," he said, his tone teasing. He then placed the lid on the case box and reached for the eraser to clean up the writing they'd done on the white board's surface. "Thanks for working on that report, by the way—I owe you one."

She merely shrugged and continued tapping away at her keyboard. "It's fine. I know you have your, ah," she cleared her throat as she forced out the word, "date."

"Oh I wouldn't call it that," he said, dropping the eraser back onto the board's tray and sashaying his way back to his desk. "More of a…social get together."

"Whatever." She half-laughed while also hoping he wouldn't tell her any more about the event.

"You really are the best, Beckett! Have a good—oh! I nearly forgot!" He had already walked three steps past her desk when he stopped suddenly and scurried back. "Would you and your father be free for next Friday night's Mets game? Saw some really great seats for sale online and I thought we could all go—if your offer still stands, I mean."

"Oh!" Kate grinned as she took a moment to recover from the surprise of his invitation. She had figured she'd never hear from him on the subject again—which would have been fine, but this was much, much better! "Um, yeah I'm free, but I can check with my dad. I'll let you know tomorrow, okay?"

He bobbed his head. "Tomorrow works—thanks again Beckett!"

"Thank you!" she called out after him then mentally cursed herself for a comment that sounded so silly. Then, as she heard the elevator doors chime as they opened, she covered her hand over her mouth so no one else would see the grin exploding across it. She was going to a Mets game with Rick—and she couldn't wait!

A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews & follows!