Out of the Closet
Dani stood in Charlie's monstrous closet, with her head cocked to the side, looking critically at the information arrayed before her. "I can't believe you have a murder board in your closet" she commented almost to herself. "How is it IA didn't find this when they searched your house after Ames' death?" she looked back at him.
Charlie was leaned up again the wall, examining her examining the wall, more than a little distracted by Dani in his closet. "Huh? Oh, Ted." He pronounced.
"Was I ever on this wall?" she asked returning her examination to the rust colored wall and the photos and data arrayed there.
"Ye…well, not really…kinda… no" he stammered through his emotions. He remembered the day Amanda Puryer gave him the photo of Reese on Rayborne's boat. It was the darkest day Charlie had since he got out of prison, darker than the day they took Ted back to prison. "There was a picture of you on Mickey Rayborne's boat the day before he died, for awhile I didn't know what it meant…." He trailed off.
"What did you decide it meant?" she asked again - looking back at him arching an eyebrow provocatively.
"I don't know, but I decided it doesn't matter. I decided to trust in my trust and to trust in you. I decided my faith in you is stronger than any photograph." He paused a moment then quoted her another Zen saying "suspicion in the mind make ghosts in the dark."
There was a long pause as they both considered what had been said and thought, before Charlie continued. "After I was convicted, after I was in prison, for awhile...I even thought maybe I did it. I guess it destroyed my confidence in my ability to know what I knew. I couldn't trust what I thought I knew." He confessed.
"I know that feeling" Dani said softly without looking back. "What changed your mind?" she wondered aloud.
"You" he said simply. "When I let myself trust in how I felt about you, a lot of my confidence returned. It's how I realized that I knew my friend, Tom. He wasn't laundering money. He was a good man and he didn't deserve what happened to him or his family. They were like family to me, Dani. I knew them, like I know you and I know that whatever put you in that picture, it doesn't matter."
"I was there trying to find my father Charlie" she told him.
"I don't need you to explain. I trust you." He said trying to stop her.
"I know, but we're partners and that means we don't keep secrets. My mother took my father's disappearance very hard, I was desperate to find him – for her. Mickey Rayborne used to come to the house when I was a kid. I know what a big shot he is now, I figured if anyone had the juice to find my dad - it was him." Dani explained.
"Did he help you? Did you find your father?" he rapid fired the questions.
"No" she said tersely. "He laughed at me, said I didn't know anything and never would" she said suddenly very far away.
"Hey" Charlie said wrapping her in his embrace, draping his body around hers in a gentle hug. "We'll find him."
"So you can put him in jail?" she asked sadly.
"I'm not after revenge, Dani. I seek only to understand. Why me? Why Tom Seybolt? Twelve years of my life, my wife, my family, my future. I just need to know why." His tone was laced with need.
"Roman said my father is dead. He said he killed him." Dani said biting her lip.
"Do you think he's dead?" Charlie turned her around to look into her eyes.
She thought hard about his question. "No. No I don't. I think he's too tough to kill. I think he's too stubborn to die."
"Like father, like daughter" Charlie said smiling with his eyes.
"How can you hate my father and love me?" She asked a deep probing question.
"You are not your father, Dani, any more than I am mine. Both our father's are bastards" he pulled her to his chest and rested his chin on her head.
"Yeah" she said quietly agreeing with him. At that moment the doorbell rang.
"That would be the take out." She stated the obvious.
"Is it really take out, if they bring it here? Isn't it only take out if we go there and get it? If they bring it here, isn't it bring in? or carried over?" he teased.
"Just go pay the man, I'm hungry." Dani said rolling her eyes at him and shoving him out of the closet.
"Hey, does this mean we are out of the closet?" he continued to joke with her on their way downstairs.
Charlie opened the door to a young man in his late teens or early twenties wearing an Ed Hurley t-shirt and stonewashed jeans. Only in LA were even the delivery boys rich. The boy looked past him into the massive, expensive house "Wow, this is some place" but the boy's mouth dropped open when he saw Dani. "Dude, your wife is hot" the boy whispered. Charlie smiled handed the boy a fifty and let him keep the tip.
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Dani sat on the couch, Charlie on the floor, sharing egg rolls and General Tao's chicken in companionable silence.
"So you think they partnered us together for a reason. It wasn't just coincidence?" Dani inquired thoughtfully.
Charlie finished chewing before taking a swig of his beer and answering "I think that it doesn't matter anymore. Whatever they intended is not what happened."
"I was supposed to set you up Crews. Davis pushed me hard to find something to use to leverage you out of the Department" Dani quietly confessed.
"I know" was all Charlie said.
"You know?" she looked at him incredulously "did you always know?"
"Yes, I always knew." He said plainly.
"Then why would you…? Never mind… I'm never going to get you Crews." There was a long pause but Dani decided she just couldn't let it go. "No. Why would you let them partner us if you knew I was supposed to help them take you out? Why would you do that, Crews?" Dani asked.
"At first I had no control over it. Then after what happened in that crack house, I knew you were struggling too. I think I recognized in you someone who had also been disappointed and betrayed, who life had dealt a bad hand to. But you didn't quit, you survived, you battled back, you were in a way….very much like me. Out of place in time, out of step with world and I thought we might be in the same moment, a different one than everyone else, but the same one as each other." He paused. "Does that make sense?" he inquired.
"Only if you speak Charlie Crews" she smiled back at him "which luckily I do".
"When I was at the Bureau, they tried again you know?" she continued.
Charlie was amazed at her intensity. Reese usually chose not to share, not to welcome anyone into her thoughts and motives, but once she decided to let him it is was as if she had flung open the doors and windows all at once. Charlie found his views of her were dazzling, amazing and varied – he was entranced.
"Hello, Earth to Crews…. Did you hear me?" she said running her hand through his hair to force him to look at her.
"I didn't know that" he said simply. "What did they want?"
"For me to come back to work, with you, for me to help them build a case against you, for me to help them take you down" she catalogued all the pitches the Bureau made to her.
"Take me down for what?" he asked curiously.
"They showed me pictures too, Charlie. Pictures of you with my father, you arguing with my father and they made me think…." She trailed off.
"Made you think I was why he left" he finished for her.
"Yeah" she said softly.
"Dani that's at least partially true. I dogged your father, I followed him, I harassed him, I wiretapped him and I told him to come in on his own terms before I used Kyle Hollis to bring him in" he said tersely.
"I know you told me" she said biting into an egg roll. "Can I have some of your beer?"
Charlie looked levelly at her, an unspoken conversation occurring between them in those moments. His eyes asked can you handle this? Her's answered yes, I don't need to get drunk with you, and Charlie took a long slow draw off the bottle before handing it to her. Dani drank a bit and handed it back.
They were sharing everything now, it was so natural and so clear to her that this is how it always should have been and always could be. It was like that corny Tom Cruise movie with the "you complete me" line that she never really got until now. Now that movie made sense. Even when he drove her berserk, she loved him and it was not something she could control.
"You're not mad then?" Crews interrupted her thoughts.
She shrugged. "My dad's not one of the good guys, I told you that. And….I know you are not one of the bad guys, so…."
"So?" he left it there waiting for her to finish.
"I decided it didn't matter. I decided to trust in my trust in you." She smiled returning his words back to him. "I couldn't do it. After all you've been through, I couldn't be the one who betrayed you again and I didn't want to. When I came back, I wanted to come back to us." She smiled at the word.
"So you do think about us?" he smiled at her with a teasing tone in his voice.
"Yes, Crews as it turns out…I do." She handed him a fortune cookie wrapped in plastic. "Now open this and tell me your fortune" she said smiling.
