It didn't take long for everyone to essentially forget the "office" and settle into a night of partying and/or romance. The singles: Grace, Natalie, various detectives and denizens of the coroner's department, took over a group of tables where they swapped stories of disastrous dates, toasted each other's future prospects, and generally raised the kind of congenial hell reserved for such occasions. Married and otherwise coupled members of the precinct spent more time on the dance floor showing off their harmonious partnership during the fast numbers and indulging in shameless PDA during the slow ones. The band had, wisely, tilted their set lists toward the latter.
As promised Maura joined the band for just three songs. She'd made Derek promise to stack them together so she wouldn't be interrupted at various times during the evening. The week before (and before she'd confessed to Nick she'd be "working" a bit this night) she'd consulted with the boys to arrange the three songs of her choosing.
"You're kidding, Luna, right?" They all stared at her when she told them what she wanted.
"This one's a freaking country western number! We don't play that cowboy crap," Dryden announced firmly. He was objecting to a downbeat love song, Bring It On Home, whose charts showed an extended pedal steel break. "You think we're hillbillies or something?"
Maura rolled her eyes. "Shit, you'd think I was asking you to play a Catholic mass or something. Look, Derek, arrange it any way you like for you guys, as long as it ain't a rock fest." Ramon was grumbling too.
"Dudes, take it or leave it!" They took it. The other two songs were quite acceptable, Your Love Amazes Me ("Guess who she's gonna sing that to?" Dryden announced as he rolled his eyes) and Addicted to Love.
"We'll start out with that, then Amazes," she told them, and was interrupted by "Gonna need a neck brace for that segue," from Ramon.
"Shaddup. And from Amazes we'll close it with Bring It On Home. That is if the King of Rock doesn't object," she glared at Dryden.
"Fine. I'll play hillbilly music in a tux. It's not like I don't have time to live it down."
"Miklos!" Maura hollered, "gimme a stake and a hammer will you?"
Derek shook his head, laughing. "Luna you're the only woman I know who can turn a love song into a death threat."
She shrugged. "It's a gift."
Now a sultry instrumental was fading and Derek was beckoning Maura from where she stubbornly clung to Nick on the dance floor. "Don't wanna," she whined.
"Hey, this was your idea, not mine. A woman's touch, and all that," Nick reminded her with a smug grin as he pried her loose. He had to admit he was glad he'd worn the leather tonight, she couldn't seem to keep her hands off him and as they danced her fingers wandered all over the smoothness and managed to stay just within the bounds of decency, at least when they were outside of his jacket.
"I'll give you 'a woman's touch'," Maura warned him. He kissed her under the ear and rumbled, "I'm counting on it."
Nick wandered to the bar where Amanda Cohen, whose husband had the night shift at the hospital tonight, stood with Angela and, shoot me now, LaCroix. In fact LaCroix had been displaying an inordinate amount of interest in the department "new-hire" for most of the evening, having tired of enthralling that young female detective.
"Ah, Nicholas, your true love is going to serenade us, how sweet." Nick's expression tightened at LaCroix's emphasis on the last word and his utter enjoyment the guaranteed reaction it triggered.
"Just a few, she said. Derek persuaded her it would be a nice touch."
"Maura is a singer?" Angela inquired. "You never mentioned that." She wasn't referring to their sessions, of course, but to casual conversation here and at work.
"Just for fun, once in a while. Nothing professional," Nick explained. "I enjoy hearing her, but I guess I'm a prejudiced source."
"Nonsense, Nicholas," LaCroix chided, still the picture of exaggerated charm. "What voice could not be beautiful when singing to her true love."
Behind the bar, Vachon pretended to stick his finger down his throat and gag.
Maura's opening rock number drew more dancers onto the floor.
"Interesting choice for a love song," Captain Cohen observed. "Then again you've said she's not exactly a romance queen."
"To say the least."
Suddenly LaCroix jumped as if poked with a cattle prod. In the final chorus of the song, Maura fixed him with a laser stare and sang, "Might as well face it you're addicted to blood."
"Guess this one's for you," Nick muttered from the side of his mouth, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed. Apparently not.
"She's such a droll creature," LaCroix drawled in return.
But by then Maura had launched into the "real" love song, and as he had at their first Christmas party here at Raven Nick stood transfixed, his eyes locked on hers, hearing the voice of an angel where others heard only something fairly pleasant and on-key but not much more.
"For a woman allergic to romance she seems to be doing pretty well," Cohen commented to Nick, but he was in another zone entirely. She turned to Angela and added, "Well doctor, I guess you're seeing a good example of the therapeutic effects of our detectives' 'primary relationships' tonight."
Angela took in the various couples on the dance floor and entwined in various dark corners, and the "singles" entertaining one another elsewhere. "Do you often host parties for the precinct?"
"Several times a year if I can get the department to budget it. These people spend so much time together for the worst of reasons, I think it's important to give them a chance to get together for better ones. They're good cops, and against all odds their families help them stay that way most of the time." She excused herself to join the "singles" table. Nick had wandered closer to the band the better to stare at Maura.
"I must say, Dr. Johnson," LaCroix interjected with apparent casualness, "my friend Nicholas has been rather transformed since meeting his Maura."
"Oh?"
He clucked sadly like a worried mother. "He'd always been such a dark soul. I can't say that I understand his attraction to such an… independent and often unrefined creature, but the result has been undeniable. Where he used to keep his own grim counsel, Nicholas now someone to help lighten his cloudier aspects."
Angela looked from LaCroix to where Nick stood. "You've been friends a long time?"
"Oh, centuries," he quipped, enjoying his own joke. "Though we haven't always seen eye to eye."
"Then you know Janette DuCharme, as well?"
"Indeed. You could say we're something of a family of convenience."
"Uh-huh…"
"Tell me doctor, in your interviews with Nicholas you haven't uncovered anything… disturbing?"
Now she focused on the tall stranger. "Mr. LaCroix,"
"Lucien, please."
"Very well, Lucien. I certainly can't discuss anything said in session. And even if I could, I wouldn't. And certainly not at a party with someone I've only just met." She meant to walk away, but couldn't even seem to remove her gaze from his preternaturally deep eyes.
"You would tell me, though, because after all I am family." Nobody was nearby, and it looked to anyone as if he merely leaned down slightly to be better heard. In fact, he had Angela Johnson in the grip of his "persuasive" power.
"We have discussed nothing out of the ordinary realm of a detective's concerns," she found herself saying, though she wouldn't remember it later.
"Nothing at all?"
"Well…" LaCroix tightened his psychic grip as she hesitated, "he does seem far more determined to share his deepest concerns and stresses only with his girlfriend, but it doesn't seem to be a harmful habit."
"Nothing else?"
"No."
Abruptly LaCroix straightened. Good. The only reason he'd insisted on attending this wretchedly boring gathering was to determine whether this mortal doctor had managed any insights into Nicholas's immortal nature. The last thing the Community needed was a clever woman drawing Nicholas "out of himself" and into disaster. While LaCroix never entirely approved of Nicholas's mortal friends, even those who claimed to love him more than life, he at least knew they could be trusted not to expose him or his kind if only because of their devotion to him. Given the choice, though, he'd prefer to have the knowledge resting entirely with the good Dr. Lambert. Maura had proven herself prey to a dangerous lack of self control, as evidenced by her revenge on the killer of that friend of hers. While admittedly diverting, in the end the incident had caused LaCroix all manner of inconvenience.
Angela re-focused on the scene around her as if emerging from a fugue. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr., ah, Lucien, my mind seems to have wandered. What were you saying?"
"I was asking how your new project agrees with you. No details, of course, I always respect confidentiality . Are you finding areas to improve conditions for the police as they struggle with the dire tragedies they are involved in?"
And so the conversation continued. Angela did take note, between LaCroix's long-winded storytelling and philosophizing, of the final song in Maura's set, which expressed a support particularly appropriate to Nick and his coworkers. She'd already filed (however unconsciously) tonight's group of detectives and associates under "well adjusted", and their loved ones obviously made up a large part of that equation. Though it was unlike her to hinge a conclusion on something as flimsy as a public display of affection (and Nick and Maura, not to mention Don Schanke and his wife, hardly were shy in that respect) it seemed tonight that he had spoken the simple truth when he said that their rather isolated relationship answered all of their emotional needs and questions. Those that weren't answered were simply rendered moot. She was willing to admit the difference between secretiveness and privacy.
Nick engulfed Maura in a warm hug when she left the band to rejoin him.
"You really should be careful about that," he teased her as she pried her mouth away from his to gulp a breath.
"About what?"
"Well if you keep making me feel like we're the only two people here, who knows what I might get into my head."
"Mrrr," she mimicked a sissy version of his guttural growl and reached inside of his jacket to grope his butt. Again. He'd stopped jumping hours ago, now replying with a sly smile as he led her back to the bar to rescue Angela from LaCroix. Nick didn't suspect any truly dangerous intentions on his mentor's part, but he did imagine that the poor doctor was about worn out by his elegant attentions.
"So Angela, have you levered any dark secrets from the Night Crawler?" Maura asked with a too-curious smile. Angela's head snapped back to face LaCroix as if she'd just realized something.
"I knew there was something familiar about you, it's your voice! You have that call-in show on CERK."
LaCroix cast a smug glance at Nick and Maura. "How nice to know that my humble attempts to aid the struggling souls of Toronto has drawn the attention of a true professional."
Gawd, I should've worn hip boots, Maura groaned inwardly.
"Your approach certainly is effective in drawing out the callers' abilities to answer their own questions."
"I feel I've achieved a balance between Rogers and Socrates that listeners respond well to." LaCroix was on an ego roll, and only Nick and Maura knew what cold disdain he actually felt toward his listeners, and this "professional" as well. He believed emotional uncertainty to be a sign of weakness and inferior intellect. His pleasure was in manipulating; if ever he suspected he were actually prompting callers to change for the better he would immediately abandon the game. Of course Angela Johnson heard what the rest of Toronto heard.
"Be right back," Nick told Maura and took off. Swell, she thought, he's abandoning me with the shrinky-dink and CERK's analyst from hell. Her eyes glazed over as LaCroix continued to hold forth for the benefit of the attentive psychologist.
