XV. Favorites
"Do you think two people can ever truly love each other?"
"What?" Dani choked on her drink, nearly snorting Coke through her nose at the abruptness of his query.
"I asked if you thought…" he began repeating his question.
"I heard what you said," she interrupted, "its just…." sighing heavily. "Can't you ever ask me anything simple? Something easy?" she complained.
"Like?" he offered.
"My favorite color? My favorite restaurant? My drink preference? How come it's always gotta be these end of the world, deep questions?"
"I know your drink preference – coffee - and your favorite restaurant – Tia's," he offered. She shot him a sideways questioning glance and he nodded in assurance he did in fact note these things. She smiled shyly, but did not answer him.
He sucked on the straw in his own drink, "Do you?" he continued undeterred with his original train of thought.
She hadn't recognized how doggedly he pursued things when they first began working together; now she knew better than to try to deflect or dissuade his line of inquiry. He was like a dog with a bone; he wouldn't let it go, so she gave him what he wanted – the truth, her truth.
"I guess…. I dunno…. I hope… I hope so," she responded honestly, but rather unenthusiastically, adding as an after thought, "But that's not been my experience."
"Me neither," he said sounding uncharacteristically glum.
"I don't really think about it all that much," she volunteered, "Not since…." Then fearing she'd said too much Dani became the impassive, inscrutable wall of indiscernible moods she was when he first met her. She resumed her default setting – angry, "Why the fuck is it so important anyway?" she snapped.
"Wanna know what I think?" he asked quietly.
Her wry response was peppered with frustration and anger, "Do I have a choice?"
He shot her a dark look of his own and she swallowed hard knowing Crews was intimate with heartbreak and betrayal himself. Her heartbreak bubbled to the surface and lay there waiting like lava from a volcano for some unsuspecting fool to break through the tough crust and fall into the molten hate just below. But Charlie had mastered the art of walking on hot coals; he was ready for her. She shrugged indicating he should continue, but Charlie made her wait - then he made her ask for it all without saying a word.
"Okay…okay, what do you think?" she glowered; knowing he'd just forced her to ask something she didn't really want to know and didn't want to talk about. He could do these things to her– how - she could never figure out, but he did things to her that defied explanation.
"I think that until we love ourselves we are incapable of loving each other," he said very intimately.
"Are we talking about us or people in general?" she inquired, ducking her head at the personal insinuation.
"Do you wanna talk about us?" he asked carefully, after a beat added, "Is there an 'us', Reese?"
She nodded. He was never really sure if she consciously answered him when he asked those types of questions or if her heart did it for her and she just couldn't control the non-verbals.
"Yes? Yes, you wanna talk about it? Or yes, there's an 'us'?" he delicately asked.
"When have I ever wanted to talk about anything, Crews?" she smarted back looking beyond him. She wanted out of this conversation bad enough to jump into moving traffic on the 405.
He nodded, finding his answer in her non-answer. There was an 'us' but she did not want to talk about it and if he pushed, she ran. He touched her arm, "Hey," and her exasperated sigh told him everything she dreaded, but she returned to him anyway.
She looked at him expectantly waiting for that next tough question.
He smiled softly, and surprised her. "What's your favorite color?"
The expression she wore was both priceless and wondrous as her smile dawned like day breaking after a long dark night. "Red," she whispered to him and spun on her heel and left him standing there speechless.
XVI. Scars
They were in the park, taking a well-deserved break from a morning spent canvassing the bordering housing complexes for witnesses in yet another murder case. She was particularly introspective on that morning and had been very quiet as she finished her coffee, which he quietly took from her and deposited in the trash before reclaiming his seat alongside her on a bench in the sunshine.
He wanted to ask something, but had no idea what. Dani did this to him at times, robbed him of questions. He could spend hours in her presence and feel no need to extract data from her in the form of questions, some times just being there quietly together was plenty. Maybe that was why her question surprised him.
"When you were shot," she began tentatively, feeling her way through a question she ached to know the answer to. "When you were shot the paramedics took your shirt off…"
"I'm sorry you had to see that," he quipped. Charlie was always handy with the verbal parry when the topic involved looking inside his battered psyche.
She brushed it aside knowing its origin was the betrayals of trust he'd suffered in the past. But she was different, they were different and deep down he knew that. His reaction was habit, one that was hard to break, but was destined to crumble in the wake of their advancing connection. A lot of walls were falling between them, more every day it seemed.
"There were a lot of scars there," she ventured into deep and uncharted waters.
Turmoil churned in the ocean blue of Charlie's blue eyes, his panic was subtle but she saw it. "We don't have to go back there," she offered.
He took a deep cleansing breath and reached for his Zen. He no longer felt the need to say it aloud to Reese, she waited for him, patiently – and that was new too. "Not all my scars show. The deepest ones you can never see. No one can see them." He gave her an absolute truth.
"Hmmm…this I know," she mused. "Just cause I can't see them doesn't mean I don't know - some things you don't have to see to know," she said presciently.
They were out in front of the storm, on the leading edge, where the air is clear and crackled with static electricity. It was a heady mix. They were bridging the gap, building intimacy with fragile glass building blocks of trust and transparency.
He reached for her hand and she gave it freely, reaching to meet his. Touch with no end state, no goal but to comfort, it was new to her, but the moment Charlie's warm palm clasped hers they both relaxed. He looked to the heavens and released a shuddered breath.
"I'm not very good at this," he confessed.
"Which this is that?" she queried and he shot her a sideways glance. Dani Reese was the most unintentionally Zen person he'd ever met. Sometimes he swore she did it on purpose, but for the expression on her face, which was open, innocent and guileless.
"I….uh…well…" he looked down at his lap, unsteady, unsure and tethered to the world only by her small hand holding his.
She sensed his discomfort, the way he seemed lost and trailing away from her and she sought to call him back. "Charlie," she breathed softly her voice barely above a whisper. It was simple but powerful so she used it sparingly, but it seemed to have an almost magical effect – his given name off her lips.
Not Crews, not Detective, not anything else, just his name - his real name, the one he had chosen for himself, not Charles like his father, just Charlie. That was him and she knew him.
"Charlie, you here?" she questioned with a devilish grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. He nodded, but said nothing. "I'm not gonna have to give you mouth to mouth am I?" she joked.
"You'd do that?" he asked somewhat forlornly, still halfway between the past and the present.
"Yeah," she smiled, "but I'd rather do this," she said as she rose, stepping between his legs and trailed her hand down the side of his face, as she leaned close and gently kissed him.
Slowly she was healing his scars, the ones you couldn't see. She was a salve for his soul. Never in a million years would he have believed they could be the answer for one another, but now he knew – every day above ground truly was a reason to celebrate and she was part of that. In his heart a small cascade of fireworks erupted.
She stilled inside his personal space, deeply, intimately inside his space. Her hair fell across his face like a whisper, keeping them both in the shade of her dark tresses and in that moment he was not capable of restraining himself. He reached for her and she did not pull away.
Author's Note: Think I'm gonna leave it there folks….leaving the rest to imagination - hopeful, leaning forward, with both Crews and Reese in a good place and full of potential for "what comes next". Like Charlie I don't believe in the future, just the now - but although no one knows what comes next - everyone does it.
I appreciate the reviews (and yes, the watchful eyes of my beta – Jo Taylor can be seen at work in some of the more cogent chapters), I think we all continue to miss these beautifully written, rich and well portrayed characters and Life.
