Title: I'll Be Your Safety

Fandom: Life

Pairing: Charlie Crews/Dani Reese, minor Reese/Tidwell in a couple of chapters

Rating: T

Word Count: 2,780/?

Warnings: violence, occasional bad language, discussion of alcoholism, drug addiction. Title taken from "Kiss Me" by Ed Sheeran (which I obviously don't own).

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise from the show. If I did, it would still be going and Dani and Charlie would be married by now, or at least making out on a regular basis.

Synopsis: "If you say 'you don't have to understand here to be here' I swear, I'll shoot you." She says. Her mask of annoyance and irritation is betrayed by the slight upwards quirk of her lips. He wordlessly tugs back the sheets on the other side of the bed with a careful expression on his face. "I can't sleep either."

A/N: So, a little light heartedness and fluff to serve as a breather between the angsty stuff from the last few chapters and (I think) the next few chapters. I'm sorry that this is perhaps a little bit of a filler, but I think it was necarssary for the next parts of the story.


Dani ends up staying at her Mom's house until a little before one in the morning, when Lila finally convinces her that she's honestly okay now, she just wants to go to bed.

She's only five minutes away from her place, so she drops by and picks up some extra clothes to take back ho- back to Charlie's. She has basic toiletries over there; toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shampoo and conditioner, but she adds extras like her face cream and her body butter and her vast collection of make-up and nail varnishes (read: limited array), and then after that adds in her favorite comfy sweats for good measure. She almost adds her slouchy old Police Academy sweatshirt, but then doesn't bother. If she wants a too-big cosy sweater, she'll just steal one of Charlie's.

Jesus, when did we get so domestic and comfortable? She wonders to herself as she adds a few last minute items to her bag and heads out the door. She can't even remember the last time she went grocery shopping for her own place. Whenever she buys food she just automatically puts it in Charlie's kitchen, like a habit, and she hasn't slept in her own bed in weeks.

She pauses with her hand on the handle of the trunk of her car.

Are we… living together?

She throws the bag in the trunk and then climbs into the driver's seat, then drives- then drives home as if on autopilot, forcing herself not to wonder if the crime scene techs have found all the pieces of her father yet.


When she walks through the door she tries to keep quiet, assuming that Rachel and her boyfriend will have crashed from the time difference by now - she's guessing, on account of the so-called "hunky" Italian, Rachel was in Europe - and she doesn't want to wake them up.

Charlie hasn't gone to bed. He's stayed up waiting for her, making sure she was doing okay. It's a really, really fucking terrifying thing, outliving your parents. It's supposed to happen like that, of course it is, it's just the natural order of things - but that doesn't make it any less bizarre when it happens.

Although, that being said, his experience of losing his mother and her experience of losing her father will be vastly different things. He and his mother may not have seen eye to eye about every little thing, but as far as he's concerned, she was an angel and he adored her. Jack Reese - and his relationship with his daughter - is a whole different story.

She dumps her bag on the floor at the back of the couch (don't smile, that's not appropriate, someone just died) and then stands still in the middle of the living room looking completely and utterly lost. He stands up from his chair at the kitchen counter and walks slowly towards her not wanting to startle her. As soon as she sees him she walks to him too, and without protest, lets him bundle her into his arms.

"I'm sorry." He tells her honestly. His personal feelings for the man aside, he was still Dani's father - and no matter how much you hate your parents, there's always a part of you that's eight years old and screaming for their love and attention on the inside.

"I don't know how I feel." She mumbles into his shoulder. His hands stroke a slow, soothing pattern up and down her back and he kisses the top of her head.

"I don't think you're supposed to." He assures her, and he feels her nod against his chest.

"Do you want me to heat up the left over Chinese food, or do you want to just go to bed?" He asks softly. It's not much, but it's the best he's got under the circumstances.

She pauses, thinking and then looks up at him and says hopefully, "We could heat up the left over Chinese food then eat it in bed?"

He can't help it. He grins at her. "You're my dream girl." He tells her admiringly, pleased that he's managed to coax a smile out of her at last.

"Don't you forget it." She tells him, with a passable imitation of her usual sass that tells him that things are going to be okay, maybe not right away, but at some point, they will be.


They're sitting in bed in sweats, stealing bites of left over Chinese take-out from each other's plates and it's domestic and comfortable and god, he loves her so much he's not sure there's space for it all in his body.

After a while she pauses with her chopsticks half way to her mouth (he sticks to a fork after several noodles-and-sauce based disasters that had taken so long to clean up Ted had virtually banned them from the house) and looks up at him with a strange expression on her face.

"My Mom said something weird while I was over there today." She says, resting her plate on her knee, "I- I asked her if she knew Dad was part of something that landed you in prison, and she said-" Dani pauses shaking her head, "She said she knew he sent someone to jail who didn't deserve it because they'd found out about something 'they' had done."

"And you think I know something." He surmises, swilling it round in his mind.

"Do you?" She asks skeptically, "I mean, is it possible you stumbled across something without even knowing it?"

He narrows his eyes and looks away, deep in thought. "If I knew something, wouldn't I know that I knew it?" He asks and she shoots him one of those don't start with the talking in circles looks, and he rolls his eyes with a self-deprecating smile. "You know what I mean. If it was something serious enough that they'd fit me up for a triple life sentence it had to have been something big, right? Something that I would know that I knew."

She nods slowly, hating that it seems the more they find, the less they seem to know.

"She said it was something illegal, so they sent someone away to keep him quiet and 'protect their families from the fallout'."

He stares at her for a moment. "You keep saying 'someone' not 'you'." He observes, and she sighs, shaking her head.

"I just- it doesn't add up. Like you said, how could you know something and not know that you knew it?" She asks, and it's mostly just rhetorical. He doesn't know either.

"You think they might have done this before - set someone up." He states flatly and she shrugs.

"I don't know anything anymore." She tells him, and this is the part he understands.

Her faith in the force - in the job that she'd once taken so much pride in, is gone. It's something he went through a decade ago in prison, and it's something she's trying to come to terms with now - how she could possibly have been so wrong, so blind that she didn't see the awfulness that was happening right under her nose. In her case - in her own home.

A little while later, when the food is finished and they are, for lack of a better term, spooning, she turns over in his arms so that they're facing each other, and gently cups her hand around his cheek.

For a second she seems to struggle with finding the right words, but she settles on keeping it simple. "I love you." She tells him. There's a stunned, slightly awestruck expression on his face, and he just manages to catch the words marry me before he says them (she'd probably freak out and never talk to you again and that's a best case scenario) and instead says, "I love you, too."

Then he kisses her and neither of them say much at all for a while.


When Charlie and Dani walk into the kitchen the next morning they find Rachel and her boyfriend already there. Rachel is sat at the counter, her chin propped on her hands with a dreamy look on her face while she watches him glide around the kitchen making breakfast. He's wearing sweats and no shirt with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder, displaying a tanned and toned torso, narrow hips and broad shoulders - and then he turns around from the oven holding a tray and the guy has a freaking six pack. Charlie finds himself wishing Ted was here so he didn't have to endure this alone.

"Is it uh, is it wise to cook without a shirt on?" Charlie asks, trying to figure out the nice way to tell the guy to put on a fucking shirt for the love of god without getting yelled at by Rachel.

"Yes." Rachel and Dani say at the exact same time - then they make eye contact with each other and honest to god giggle.

Dani Reese is giggling in his kitchen over his not-niece's boyfriend.

He feels like he must be trapped in some kind of bizarre alternate reality.

The guy looks up from where he's taking round pastries off of the tray and smiles at Dani, displaying (of course) two rows of perfectly straight, pearly white teeth.

"Ah, you must be Mr. Crews' wife! Daniella, no? My name is Francesco." he steps out from behind the counter, takes Dani's hand and drops a feather light kiss across her knuckles.

Don't get Dani wrong, she's happily in love with Charlie and has absolutely no plans to ever change that, but holy hell that accent.

"I- just Dani, is fine." She says, looking equal parts charmed and freaked out, "And I'm not his-"

"Your wife is very beautiful, Mr. Crews." He says, ignoring her denial, and Dani looks over at Charlie in time to see him grin.

"She is, isn't she?" He says, sliding his arm around her waist.

"We are not married!" Dani protests, hitting Charlie across the chest and then rolling her eyes and absolutely not blushing when he leans down and whispers in her ear, "Yet."

"Are you done flirting with Charlie's girlfriend yet, or?" Rachel asks, raising one eyebrow. Francesco crosses the kitchen and cups her face in his hands.

"You know I only have eyes for you, amore mio." He tells her with a smile, then leans down and kisses her. And kisses her. And keeps on kissing her.

Dani turns to look at Charlie, who's staring at the two of them with narrowed eyes and his mouth half open. Then Dani remembers Charlie's known her since she was a baby and she feels a little sorry for him.

"Hey, so, what's for breakfast?" She says loudly, "It smells great."

Rachel and Francesco break apart and Charlie's eyes snap to her. He mouths 'thank you…' at her and she just rolls her eyes at him.

"So- breakfast?" Rachel says, a little breathlessly.

"Right, yes. I hope you like Brioche." Francesco says without missing a beat, missing the glare Charlie is shooting at his back - and therefore also the glare Rachel shoots at Charlie.

"I thought Brioche was French?" Charlie says, raising his eyebrows.

"But the language of food, it is universal, no?" The guy looks so goddamn sincere that Rachel and Dani are practically swooning. He turns to the fridge to grab the orange juice and to hide the fact that he's rolling his eyes and gagging just a little - and trying to work out at exactly which point his life had become a bad sitcom.


"So I've been thinking-" Charlie starts as he steps into the closet where Dani's currently getting dressed.

"I thought I could smell burning." Dani remarks, and it's testament only to his rather extraordinary self restraint that he focuses on the insult rather than the fact that his girlfriend is standing in his closet in her underwear.

"Fine, if you don't want to hear my brilliant idea…" He trails off, smiling because he knows she's going to roll her eyes at him and then make him tell her.

As predicted, Dani rolls her eyes and then turns to face him with her arms folded across her chest. "No, please, tell me your brilliant idea." She says in a monotone voice. Some things never change. Except for how she always smiles now, when she says stuff like that.

"Okay, so I was thinking that maybe the answer to all of this might be in one of the cases one or all of them worked together." He watches her mull the idea over in her mind.

"That's a sixteen year window." She points out, reaching for a dark blue v-neck t-shirt and pulling it over her head.

"I know," he agrees ruefully, "It'll take forever, but it's the only thing I've come up with."

"It's a valid idea for sure, but I'm seeing a small problem." She tells him as she pulls on a pair of her jeans.

"How are we going to get access to the files when you're off the force and I'm sort-of-halfway-mostly-off the force?" He guesses and she nods.

"Plus, sixteen years is a hell of a long time in terms of cases; they must have worked hundreds - if not thousands - between the six of them in that time." She points out.

It's a hopelessly monumental task, and she's pretty sure she doesn't have the stomach nor the patience for it.

"Okay, so how would we go about narrowing it down?" He asks, mostly hypothetically. There isn't really a whole host of ways to narrow the field here.

Dani pauses, and then as if without thinking about it pulls his green hoodie off of the shelf in front of her and pulls it on. He grins, deciding she seems to look better in his clothes than he does.

The two of them are walking down the stairs to the kitchen when Dani says, "We could try going through the files we already have" she suggests, thinking six files is a better starting point than sixteen years worth of files, "We've got their personnel files, and it's not like we've trawled through them in that much detail yet, so why don't we read through them and see what we find?"

"It's worth a shot." Charlie agrees, and they're standing by the open kitchen window when he realises Rachel and Francesco are in the pool together. He feels like he should probably get blinds or something on account of how much he's seen of them both in the last couple of days since they arrived.

"We should get some more of the weed." Francesco says to Rachel in his mostly fluent but still slightly stilted English.

"Does he know we're sort-of-cops?" Charlie asks with an extreme dose of exasperation at the same time as Rachel says, "You do remember my Uncle's a cop, right? I told you twice on the plane." She pauses, "His girlfriend's a cop too, and we are not smoking weed in their house, okay?"

Charlie can't help the smile that appears on his face when she refers to him as her Uncle. The last time she called him that was before he went to prison.

"She's a good kid." Charlie says absently, and Dani smiles a little ruefully.

"She's doing better than I was at her age." She remarks in agreement.

She doesn't know much - if anything at all really - about Rachel Seybolt, beyond the fact that Charlie went to extremes to save her - and that the person she needed saving from was Dani's own father. At some point they're going to have to tell her what happened to him, and it's one conversation Dani already knows that Rachel and Charlie will be best left alone for - one of the few scenarios where she and Charlie working together is a bad idea.

"Come on," She tells him, turning away from the window and taking his hand, "We've got work to do."