A/N-if you get where Bill McCai is from, I love you forever. I forgot to mention I don't own them, which I don't. I don't know whether or not to call this the prologue as this is kinda out-of-order the way I'm writing it...but anyway, enjoy it!
She had shown up in his apartment with a bag of Chinese and a case of beer, never a good sign. The look on her face told him all he needed to hear. She looked broken, hollow. He suppressed the feeling inside him that made him want to gloat, and instead he put a consoling arm around her shoulders. He was her shoulder to cry on, the only stable thing in her life, the one who had seen her at her absolute lowest and always been there for her, and right now she needed him.
It had taken them all the way through dinner and her cracking open her third bottle of Guinness for her to finally tell him what it was that was bugging her. "Just say it, get out with it." He finally all but ordered her, sick of watching her push her food around her plate, looking thoroughly defeated and not telling him exactly what it was. He knew what it was, he had sensed it from the second she walked in, but he was here to comfort her.
"He kicked me out. Told me he never wanted to see me again. Just told me to leave, never come back. Said we were through." She sounded so small, so childlike, so on the verge of breaking down. He had seen what the man in question had done to her, how for the past four years they had danced around each other, and he knew that her heart had long since belonged to the younger man.
He had accepted it, and moved on, there were some defeats that one must admit, and that had been one of them. But now he felt the urge to tear the boy limb from limb. The bullet may not have been deadly, but he could be. The boy had hurt her, hurt her more than the detective probably knew, but then again, he had known the detective for four years and he knew that beneath the innocent farm-boy facade that the young man inside was really actually smart, cunning, he had no doubt that the boy knew exactly what was going to happen, the effect his words would have.
And now here he was, the one who was holding her close, the one who was allowing her to break down all her defenses and let her just sit there, sobbing in his arms. He had always been the one to comfort her, her relationship with her father was rocky at it's best, he was the one stable thing in her life, he was the one that took her as she was, thorns and all, the one that had stood by her. The only one to have seen her at her absolute worst, he was the one that she turned to.
He couldn't count the number of times she'd shown up in the decade plus he had known her. Bad breakups, cases that got under her skin, every time she faced another ordeal with her mother, he was the one she could count on, every time she needed someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on, he was it. She had shown up on his doorstep with her customary bag of Chinese and case of beer and they ate, her being the wall for her to bounce all her problems off of.
He didn't mind, he never minded. He was happy to be that person for her, lord knew that she needed someone like him, she needed something steady, an anchor. She had him, and up until tonight, she had Woody. But that boy had gone and done the one thing that she was most afraid of. He had done the thing that had kept her from ever wanting a relationship, he left her.
Not in a physical sense, the boy wasn't about to get up and leave any time in the near future, and he half hoped it would stay that way. The young man had hurt her, and while he was never much of a believer in karma, what goes around does come around. If karma didn't get to the young detective, he would. Never had she been affected like this, he'd seen her go through some rough patches, but she looked as if her soul had been torn from her body. Not her soul, he knew that, but her heart.
"I can't do it Garret. Everything going on, it's too much. The mourge's a wreck with Slokum running the place, he's so busy playing by his double standard that because we can't do something, he's entitled to and walking with his head up his ass that even going to work is becoming something that I'm beginning to despise, and now I don't even have Woody to turn to." He sat there, rubbing a consoling arm around her.
"Things'll work out." He told her, hoping that they would. Even if it meant that she and Woody were together, at least she'd be happy with it. "They can't keep me away from there forever, I'll be back soon enough, Slokum will be gone, everything will be OK." She looked up at him, a smile on her face. He knew that look and didn't like it, it was the look she had whenever she had a plan.
"I completely forgot about what I was originally planning to come over here to tell you." She said, getting up and running down to her car and back. She returned a minute later with a folder in hand.
"What's that?" She flipped it over so that it was right-side up.
"The murder of Bill McCai." She said, handing him the file. He skimmed through it, reading what had been written.
"Says here cause of death was a suicide, that he hung himself." She grinned her self-righteous grin.
"And look who said it was that." He read the name Jack Slokum tagged to the bottom.
"He's got a fractured neck, reticular hemorrhaging, build up of fluid in the lungs, everything suggests a hanging." She pointed out something else.
"How about a blow to the head?" She pointed to where that had been noted in a different hand he recognized as one of the lab techs in charge of X-rays. It suggested the possibility of foul play.
"He could have banged it when he was swinging."
"It was pre-mortem, the fractured spinal cord would have killed him, besides he was found in the middle of nowhere. Nothing to bang himself into. Slokum didn't want anyone to realize this was murder." He looked at her, hard. He knew that once she got an idea in her head it was all but impossible to shake her off of it, but he could try, couldn't he.
"Do you honestly think Slokum capable of murder?" She thought about it.
"No." She admitted. The man was a vermin, a cretin, a worm, but a murderer he was not. He'd be too afraid of getting his hands dirty. Besides, being in a jail cell limited one's personal advancement. "But he is capable of covering it up. If we prove that Slokum's the one really behind this, then he's out and you're back in."
"Who's this we kemosabe?" He asked and she grinned.
"What, you don't want your job back?"
"I do, but there are other ways to do that." She grinned at him. He didn't like the way that she was throwing herself into championing his cause, but if it got her mind off of Woody, so much the better. She curled against him, never knowing what her touch did to him. To her, he was just the gruff man with the heart of gold who had been her best friend for a decade. Never anything more, simply friends.
He was content to let it be that way, he didn't want to risk ruining what they had with awkwardness between them, he didn't care if it ever progressed into what only existed in his mind, it didn't matter to him if it did or didn't, so long as she was happy. They sat like that for a long time, a mindless ball game on TV, the Patriots were, for once, getting completely slaughtered by Dallas, a surprising outcome for sure, but he wasn't paying much attention to Tom Brady's defense falling down around him.
She looked up at him, and her gold color eyes had regained much of their usual vigor. She still looked broken, shattered, but she was putting herself back together again, piece by piece. He met her gaze, and it felt like such a tender moment, a right moment, the perfect moment to just lean in and claim those lips for his own...
He had no sooner bent his head to meet hers than the sharp shrill tone of her phone broke the moment. "Cavanaugh." She answered upon not recognizing the number. "Really? Right." She grabbed the folder off of his cocktail table along with a pen and scrawled an address down on a blank sheet left inside. "Who is this?" She asked, but the other end of the line went dead.
He looked at her, wondering what had interrupted what could have been his moment, his moment where he rescued her from the evil throes of heartache after what she had thought to be her one true love had rejected her. His moment when he could show her that he was the one that she could trust to pick up the pieces. "Who was it?" She shook her head.
"I don't know, but they said they have information about what Slokum's covering up." He gave her a long hard look, he didn't like where this was going. He had a very bad feeling about this, something somewhere deep inside of him was telling him that this was a horrible idea.
"Don't chase them down." He told her and she looked up at him. "It's just I have a bad feeling about this. You look like hell, you need to get some sleep, not go out on a wild goose chase." He tried to downplay his fear, his concern. She smiled.
"Who said it was a wild goose chase? Slokum's hiding something. He's covering for someone, but who and why still need to be answered. There was a stray print, Nigel said he was going to try to match it under the Slokum radar, don't you want to get your job back?" He nodded.
"Jordan, just go home and get some rest, and promise me you'll save this until tomorrow." She looked up at him. "You've been through enough today. I'm not kidding when I say you look like hell, you don't need anything else troubling you." He saw a gleam in her eyes and glared at her again. "Do I have to drive you home and lock you into your own apartment?" She grinned.
"Fine, I promise that I won't do anything stupid." He smiled, knowing that this had crawled under her skin and that she was going to go through it.
"At the very least bring Framus or Santana with you." She frowned. He had avoided the word detective with good reason. She didn't need any more reminders of what the bastard had done to her.
"I'm not going to go." She said, and he gave a snort of laughter. But she made no move to get up from where she was, instead sat with her head against him for a long while, watching as her beloved football team found themselves getting beaten to a bloody pulp.
There was something that worried him about this case, something that didn't feel right. He had seen the address she had scrawled down, it was a warehouse by the docks. Who would want to meet there? It was a secluded spot, far far away from where anyone would be at this hour of the night. He repressed the thought, he didn't want to think about her getting hurt.
Instead he focused on the woman next to him, the one who was here because she needed him, he was the one steady thing, the ballast for her ship lost at sea. He wouldn't even pretend to himself that he was her anchor, but he was the thing that kept her from completely capsizing. She needed him to be her friend, to be the one to lean on, to bounce her crazy theories off of.
It was, he knew, why she was so eager to pursue anything that could prove Slokum wrong, anything to bring the rat out of his office, to bring him back. He was touched at the way she cared, the way that after all she had been through he was the only thing that she had that was a steady, a constant in an every changing equation.
He just wished that she would realize that, that he was the one that had taken her for who she was and didn't care, the one who had seen her at her best and her worst, the one that she could turn to no matter what, and he wished that she would just put all thoughts of the farm boy who had broken her heart out of her mind, and find someone else. Preferably what was right under her nose, at the moment, quite literally.
The game had long since ended and Jay Leno had just begun his monologue when she unfurled from around him. "I should get going." She said. "Thanks. You're the last person left I can trust." He grinned.
"Always here." He told her. "Always glad to help." She grinned. He meant it though, anything to make her happy. "If you want me to tear him limb from limb, just give me a call." He said, grinning to hide the fact that he really did mean it. She laughed.
"I'll keep that in mind." She said, walking to the door. She gave him a peck on the cheek that left him wanting more, and he watched her pull away, heading not in the direction of her own house, but in the opposite direction, close to the docks. He had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling.