Anger & Pain
"So….where to?" Charlie asked as he blew out a breath from his tight chest. He both knew and feared what she was going to say. She did not disappoint.
"Home…my home," she replied clarifying where she meant. "I need clean clothes and we haven't been apart more than a few hours for what four or five days now? We should take a break."
Charlie didn't want a break; he didn't need a break. His heart ached knowing she would not be with him tonight. He slept better with her cradled in his arms matching breaths until they dropped off to sleep. She belonged with him, but she obviously still doubted that. He drove without comment and the silence felt deafening to him as they pulled to the curb outside her place.
She cracked the door, stopped and then turned to him and said, "its not like we're not going to see each other you know?" He nodded but his melancholy was palpable. She sighed and leaned across to kiss him. "Charlie," she breathed across his pursed lips, "you won't even have time to miss me."
"What if I miss you the moment you saying you're going?"
"That's not possible," she grinned. "I'm not that charming."
"I love you anyway," he countered.
"One of many reasons I continue to believe you are mental, Crews," she joked. He distanced himself in degrees. She could feel him leave the moment though they were inches away. "Hey, Crews? You here?" The familiar refrain caused his eyes to flicker and then they dulled again.
"I'll be around," he said idly. His mind and heart were somewhere else. The visit to the office building had shaken him. No matter how much he insisted they were partners, there was still a part of Charlie Crews that remained imprisoned and it was there that she could not reach him even with her tender good-bye kiss.
"Detective Crews," came the clipped British accent over the phone line. "Why stop by and not stop up?" Amanda Puryer asked as she studiously examined her nails. "Do come by tomorrow so that we may talk."
"About what?"
"About why you were in my lobby, Detective and why you didn't come up." She seemed bother annoyed and insulted simultaneously reminding him of Dani.
"You do know I'm not a Detective anymore?" he ventured.
"Officially you still are. And it suits you. I think I shall call you Detective even after you leave the Police," she supremely stated with the arrogance of a cat. "And bring your fiancée with you. I'd like to meet any woman a man like you is willing to go that far for," she teased.
"She's not my fiancée," Crews gritted out through clenched teeth. That woman had a way of rubbing him wrong - like nails on a chalkboard.
"Not yet, but then you've bought the ring haven't you?" she "tsked, tsked" chiding him audibly like he was some errant schoolboy. "I suspect you carry it around in your pocket. Still working up the courage? I find it stunning that you'd face down the Russian mob and be afraid of a tiny brunette, don't you?"
Charlie counted to ten as his temper flared. The blue box in his pocket weighed a ton and felt massive. The silence on the phone line stretched. She knew so much about him without even trying and it chaffed him. He thought only Dani had a severe penchant for personal privacy, but he was fast discovering it was yet another trait they shared.
"Detective?"
"We'll be there in the morning – at 7AM, sharp," he pronounced with snap in his voice and strain in his neck muscles. He was really learning to hate that woman, but they needed her help so he kept his beast in check. Someday he was going to tell her exactly what he thought of her and people like her – but not today.
He was laying in bed feeling lonely and alone when he heard the door open. An empty house echoes like an empty heart. His heart should be full, but he was still resisting. He heard the footfalls on the stairs, but was still surprised when his door swung open and her silhouette filled the sliver of light.
'Thought we needed a break," he remarked still detached from his emotion. Two hours of meditation made him bulletproof and invisible.
"I got…I thought… you know what I'll just go," she said turning to leave.
"Don't," he held her on the thin string of his reedy voice. He sounded strange even to himself. "I don't feel like I seem or like I sound."
"I don't even know what that means," she said still twisting in the fell wind.
He rose and walked to her. "I feel empty when you're not here," he explained taking her hand. "Please stay," he implored. "I won't even touch you. I just need to hear you breath, feel your heat."
"I thought you wanted a helluva lot more than that," she pulled away angry.
He stepped in front of her and blocked her path, "I do, I'm just figuring out how to do this."
She pushed against his chest in a feeble attempt to leave. Her effort was as ineffectual as a fly trying to move a plate of glass. He looked down at her and her anger colored his vision. He saw it as brilliant reds, crimsons and a riot of other hues. It battered against his cool blue Zen shield. He was actively repelling her and he didn't even know why.
"I want not to hurt anymore. I'm in love with you, but you scare the hell out of me," he blurted out.
She ceased struggling. "I scare you? That's ridiculous," she asserted sternly. "You ripped out a Russian mobster's throat; you scaled a fence to confront a man with automatic weapons; you have no fear."
"My fears are all inside. Russians don't scare me, Feds don't scare me, men with guns don't scare me, but a woman with my heart in her hands – you – do," he said rationally. "It may not make sense but there it is," he said in a quiet, but true voice.
"It's because of her isn't it?"
He didn't need to ask whom. They both knew. Ghosts of Jennifer fluttered through his mind. "Yes," he admitted. "And you're nothing like her – nothing at all," he commented. She said nothing so after a pause he continued, "you're brave and brutal; you're tough and so very fragile; you're caustic and witty. Jen….she. She was beautiful and kind and polite and gentle and ..."
This seemed to make sense to his angry young partner because her head cocked to the side considering her chosen mate as he spoke before interrupting him, "I'm not her and I never will be. You should find that comforting because she nearly killed you. Your beautiful, gentle Jennifer – she nearly killed you."
Dani truly hated his ex, one part loyalty to him and a good helping of good old fashioned jealousy. This was not a discussion he wanted to have. "Is this like my near death experience not being a full death experience and how I should be happy about that?" his attempt at humor was incongruent with his affect.
"Don't pretend with me," she warned. "We're not past this yet. You're still back there in that place where you can't trust me," she explained just how fully she understood his torment. "You're weirding me out here, Crews," she confided. "You're supposed to be the strong one. I'm the screw up remember?"
He exhaled and twisted his neck. His entire body was taut. It felt like earthquake weather. "You know things, can tell things about me that I vowed no one would ever know again," he admitted in a low dangerous tone.
"And still you hide things from me," she said presciently. "Haven't you learned you can't? And that you don't have to?"
"It's instinct. I'm not sure I can ever stop hiding," he explained.
"Then I'll find you," she vowed.
"Why'd you come back?" he wondered changing the subject, tacking away in the wind.
"I missed you, moron." She slugged him in the shoulder. "And you're still hiding," she tenaciously pursued him.
"You're not going to let up are you?"
"Nope," she smarted back. "Just like you wouldn't leave me in that bar. I'm not leaving you in the dark with your fears."
"What are you afraid of Dani?"
She did not answer. Instead she took his hand and led him to his bed. She pushed him down on it and wordlessly began undressing. He watched mutely for moments before he found his hands helping. Simple assistance became deliberate brushes of his hand in areas that left goose bumps in their wake. She pulled his t-shirt over his head.
No words were spoken as she stepped between his legs and pulled him to her. She sunk her fingers deep into his short hair and turned his face up to hers. She slowly and deliberately kissed him deeply. It was not the frenzied pace she enjoyed, it was the gentle, meaningful inquiry that laid his soul bare. She buried her anger and pain there – the red-hot fire melting away the ice that held him away from her.
In the night he awoke to find them intertwined and combined. His Zen was gone, but then so was her anger. The room was bathed in muted shades of moonlight, purples, grays and otherworldly tones. This was them together. They balanced one another. Zen taught balance; maybe she was his Zen.
