Disclaimer: I don't Law & Order: Criminal Intent or its characters…

Author's Note: The dabbling continues… I should've known better than to let myself become attached to Barek. I was just starting to like the character and now I find out that Anabella Sciorra left the show and they are going to introduce a new partner for Logan. :-( Oh well, I'm still going to play with the characters…

Different

Another workday. Another crime. Another life lost.

Detective Carolyn Barek stared at the mess. To describe the room as disheveled was a massive understatement. It was beyond trashed, and lying in the middle of it was a young woman. She looked so pathetic, as broken and distorted as her apartment. But it wasn't her fault, and it was time to find out whose fault it was.

Scrutinizing the room intensely, Carolyn attempted to reconstruct in her mind the events that had passed there. It was so muddled, chaotic, she was having a hard time seeing what had happened in the death-saturated room. Had the victim bashed her head off the bookshelf over there? Was that bloody handprint on the wall made by her fighting to remain standing and conscious, to live? Or was it made by the perp as he/she fled the scene?

Suddenly a strong hand was at her back, pulling her away from the cold corpse and crime scene towards a warm body.

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Detective Mike Logan pulled his partner out of the way of the rushing coroners and the metal gurney they were recklessly pushing into the room. The thing about crime scenes, that his partner never seemed to grasp, was that as soon as they were discovered they ceased to ever be serene again. They were crowded and noisy, and Barek always had to be right in the midst of it, in the coroners' and CSU people's way. How many times had he saved her from getting run over by a gurney and trampled by the workers in jumpsuits who cleaned up death?

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Barek suddenly found herself very close to her partner. Workers from the ME office scuttled past with the gurney for the body. She had found herself in such situations before. Almost getting crushed by her fellow crime-solving civic employees seemed to be a rather common occurrence. In fact, people not noticing her presence had been a constant throughout her life. She was after all, the observer, the one who blends into the background. The difference lately had been that she had someone explicitly looking out for her, grabbing her out of the way of speeding gurneys and overworked CSUs.

But something was different this time. It felt different. His hand resting on the middle of her back dredged up memories, memories of that night they had spent together. Carolyn recalled the same feel of his hand on her back pulling her into him, and the smell of alcohol on his breath. It hadn't bothered her, her own breath also reeking of intoxication at the time. But there had been his smell as well, of his soap and aftershave. She had found it just as intoxicating as the alcohol then. Now, his scent still made her cheeks flush, or was that the recollection his touch had initiated?

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How many times had he guided her out of the way in the exact same manner? How many more times would he have to do it? But why did it feel different this time? And would it feel odd every time he touched her again? Sure, it had been awkward in the past, when they hadn't known each other very well. And even after they had gotten to know one another, they would hastily break away from each other and she would utter her grateful and sincere thanks. But then they would get back to work without another thought to it.

But now, now she was staring into his eyes with a strange look in hers. And he was looking back into her dewy brown ones. And he wasn't letting go of her. They were lingering with their bodies pressed together. That morning, after that night, he had asked himself a question. And now he had the answer. He had screwed things up bad, real bad.

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The two detectives broke apart, breathless and agitated, as if they had just been engaged in a passionate embrace. Carolyn tried to return her focus to the crime scene, but found her mind to be resistant. Instead it dwelled upon her partner, their previous proximity, and the affect it had had upon her. She thought about his scent, and what it had felt like to stand so close to him. She wondered if suspects felt overwhelmed by his presence when he got in their faces, if they were able to smell his aftershave, as she just had, during intense interrogations. They probably didn't find it alluring and intoxicating, like she had, considering the cause for their proximity to the intimidating detective. But all the same, she knew that she would be jealous of the suspects in the future, the ones Logan leaned in close to in order to get in their faces.

She sighed, unable to get a grip on the events that formed the crime scene laid out before them. That morning, after that night they had spent together, they had said they'd be okay. And they were okay, but that didn't stop things from being…different…than they used to be. So, the question currently plaguing detective Carolyn Barek's mind (as she tried to pretend that she wasn't horribly distracted from her work) was, Does different mean good or bad?