Author's note: Posted cause I can't stand logging in and seeing non LIFE stories on our page. Cheesy little snapshot, more later.

"I need to tell you something," he whispered into her hair. She smelled of an unnamable spice, not cinnamon, not cardamom, not anise, but something tickled his nose. She was all those and more. She was coffee and chocolate and exotic fruits he had yet to discover. He inhaled again concentrating on the pheromones and a scent that was uniquely here.

"Is it about Zen?" she replied against his chest.

"No," he laughed. "I'm serious."

"You're never serious," she argued.

He pulled back from her and looked into her eyes. "Your father is alive."

Her eyes were a mixture of anger, relief, suspicion and curiosity. "You're sure?"

Charlie nodded, his eyes never leaving hers.

"How are you sure?" her tone held a tenseness that made him know she had intimated the answer and was looking for confirmation. Now was when he proved there were no more secrets between them.

"I didn't fall," he admitted. "Well….I sort of did fall, but only after I got pushed by the bumper of a silver Cadillac... driven by your father."

Her eyes widened slightly and he noticed an uptake in her pulse as his hand travelled to her wrist. He was mildly concerned that she might recoil from the news and him both. He was wrong, dead wrong. A moment later, she buried her head in his chest and gripped him tightly.

For a few moments, neither trusted themselves to speak. Then the twelve-year-old doctor reappeared and cleared his throat. Charlie looked up but made no effort to extricate himself from the embrace of his partner.

"She really is your girl," the young man blurted out. Obviously, he was surprised that the battered and scarred older man had such an attractive young partner. He smelled a lie, but his eyes told him the truth. His ability to filter his thoughts was like unto Charlie's – weak.

"For as long as she'll have me," Charlie promised her.

"Can we go home now?" Dani asked quietly from the shelter of Crews' arms.

"Technically," the boy doctor began, "being discharged requires we wheel him out in a chair." However, the look Crews gave convinced the man that a wheelchair was both unwelcomed and unnecessary. "But I think we can make an exception," he offered.

The pretty girl smiled at him from under dark lashes. She was quite striking even plainly dressed and held in the arms of another. The doctor stared a moment too long and when his gaze returned to Crews, the blue-eyed man's gaze was cold and hard coupled with a spooky smile. It spoke of possession and an unspoken challenge.

"I just need to remove your IV," he said cautiously approaching and motioning to Crews forearm where the IV was anchored. Charlie's feral grin eased, but he remained tense and watchful.

Dani withdrew and watched as the young man expertly removed the line, stemmed blood from flowing down Crews' forearm and wrist and then taped the opening tightly to prevent seepage. He was young, but very capable.

The show concluded with the doctor's attention on Charlie, Dani's attention on the doctor and Crews' on his partner. No one noticed Kevin Tidwell enter the area.

"Does someone want to tell me what happened?" Tidwell broke the eerily silence in the exam area.

"I fell," Crews replied, as both the doctor and Dani said "he fell" in unison.

Tidwell smelled cover up. "So we're gonna do that song and dance?" he alluded to his awareness that he was being lied to, "again?" His cynicism met silence. "I'm not sure how I got to be the bad guy here," he argued against a mute conclave. "Whatever," he sighed helplessly. "As long as you're okay," he locked eyes with Crews. "You're still both my detectives," he explained.

Crews' head tilted oddly. "Am I still a detective?" he wondered.

"Yeah, dude," Tidwell confirmed. "You too," he looked at Dani.

"I would have thought..." Crews began to say something ill-advised about Roman and the burned-out car. Dani stopped him with a look. "Well, isn't that's something…." he covered quickly.

"All you did was save her," Tidwell gushed. "The brass is pissed cause you broke a few rules, but you've got a lot of friends. Stark, Seever, Bodner, me….we all explained that you had to act fast and didn't have time to bureaucracy and politics. They want you, but they don't have enough to get you," his eyes searched for a face who believed him.

The doctor was now confused. "I thought you said you were in prison," he questioned dully. Charlie grinned a silly smile at the man's confusion.

"But he's a cop," the doctor looked at the badge on Tidwell's belt. "Are you a cop?"

Charlie puzzled over that. "Am I a cop?"

"I just asked that," the doctor said, "you heard me ask that right?" he spoke to the room at large.

Both Reese and Tidwell rolled their eyes knowing that the first experience of Crewsisms was confusing.

"He does that," both Tidwell and Reese answered in unison.

Charlie didn't like the symmetry of their response but was helpless against the bond there. He'd helped create it, their bond, their relationship. He'd built the tiny fire under Tidwell's attraction to Reese, helped it along, giving Tidwell tips and encouraging Reese to explore a healthy relationship. Now he wondered if all along it had been to push her away from him; if all along he'd known that he loved her and if all along he'd feared what the two of them together could be.

He was still in his head replaying all the times he'd thought about them together and how it bothered him. He considered that he'd become cool and disconnected from Tidwell, who had done nothing more than have to courage to pursue what he wanted, who he wanted, and, in that moment, Charlie Crews felt a bit of a coward.

"Crews," Dani called to him and from her tone and her look, he knew that she'd spoken his name more than once.

"I'm here," he confirmed.

"Are you?" she questioned with her eyes.

He nodded solemnly and then did something very unexpected. "Captain, I think I know how to find Jack Reese."

Dani glared at him. "He tried to run me over with a car, a silver Cadillac, that's probably registered to him. He probably disappeared about the same time or a little before Mickey Rayborn pulled his vanishing act. I need your help to find him."

Tidwell was flummoxed, and it showed. He ran his hand through his mop of brown unruly hair and wring his neck. "My help as a cop? My help as your Captain? Or…?"

"Your help as our friend," Dani followed her partner's lead. Her eyes connected with Crews'. It wasn't like there were not going to be words after, a tense discussion, a reckoning, but for now she placed her trust and faith in Crews and blindly followed where he led.

"Are we still friends?" Tidwell asked Dani.

Dani Reese surprised everyone in the room, by replying simply, "yes."

Tidwell registered both shock and gladness in a weird way. Charlie just beamed.

"Don't think you having a head injury is gonna get you out of the dog house with me," her tone was low and dangerous. "You owe me a lot more of an explanation," she warned.

"You'll have it," he promised. "Just get me home and all will be revealed," his winsome soft smile was her undoing. Mind blowing sex aside, she found herself having true affection for the tall redhead.

Her smile in return was all he desired; and she gave it willingly.