Every morning, Marshall Mann's first thoughts upon waking revolved around his partner. Her presence and memory wove into his daily action, because most days she needed something from him. He was partner, caretaker, rabbi and zookeeper. Some days he helped her with her paperwork. Other days he backtracked with people she yelled at to reduce the paperwork on her.

At the end of each day, he still found his thoughts drifting to Mary. He might read something random on Wikipedia, or see one of those unfortunately worded signs outside an Albuquerque church, such as "We love your children!" and casually wonder what Mary might think. Marshall assumed this was natural: WITSEC consumes the lives of its marshals. When not at work he spent the bulk of his social time with Mary, since she was as likely to get called into work on an emergency as he was. He did much the same with Steve and Greg, two partners that preceded Mary. You make friends with people who share your schedule, and the only people in WITSEC to share your schedule are the other marshals.

He spent a little less time with her lately – this Raphael she dated took a lot of attention, and she gave it more willingly than the norm. Normally Mary's guys were only blips, a Wednesday or two off from Mary duty for him. No one before had held on to her this long, and Marshall felt the absence. Despite eighteen hour days and frequent travel, he sensed a small void in his life. So he did what a badass lawman would do to fill it.

He looked for a way to meet women.

The dance school over on Girard Avenue fit perfectly. The salsa classes were the right ratio of single women to the correct absence of available male partners. Also, most were in their 30s, educated, and all wore heels to dance. Stan gladly let him insist he had a private appointment on Fridays. Weekend intakes were a bitch and it gave Stan an excuse to refuse them.

That particular Friday, Mary asked him to schlep her to the mechanic's and then on to her massage appointment. In return she offered him a half-assed breakfast by the pool while they shared his morning paper. It felt nice, sitting between the Shannon sisters and enjoying the sports pages. After all, as Mary's partner and primary handler he did consider himself in some ways part of the family. When the sports page revealed a full-color picture of the shortstop on the Isotopes, Raphael in all his glory, he took the opportunity to probe Mary about that relationship's status.

Normally when he asked about one of her boyfriends, Mary snapped something about hair braiding and pillow fights. But with the power of the almighty sports page – and the raised possibility of Raphael leaving town – he probed. He just wanted to know if she was seeing someone, because, as he realized after Dershowitz asked about her, he really didn't know.

"It says your," he paused to maximize possible reaction, "boyfriend… is on a winning streak." He watched her carefully.

"I'm happy for him. And he's not my boyfriend." Yes, something was definitely up.

It wasn't the first time he saw Mary act like China to some poor guy's Taiwan. So in Mary-speak, Mary was available. But in Mary reality, she had a boyfriend. She just didn't know what to do with him.

Marshall was distracted from pursuing the conversation by Brandi untying her top. He would swear it was an involuntary reflex. Mary bounced a strawberry off the side of his head. "Hey, these are my mambo pants!" Oh hell. That was one activity he meant to protect from Mary.

He silently thanked the witness that caused Mary to abandon her morning plans. He never met this witness, but judging from Mary's reaction, she was on his partner's least favorite list. While curious, it saved him from an interrogation about mambo.

When Brandi called, "Can somebody do me?" he raced automatically, but two steps away he deliberately stumbled. Thus he honored his own inner horny caveman, but also let Brandi get the attention she really wanted from the pool boy. Besides, he might look, but he knew better than most that Brandi's older sister owned guns.

Marshall defaulted to work, and with his paperwork filed and no intakes, he cued up some music on ITunes to practice his steps. He had his eye on the brunette with the red heels and he needed perfect form to impress her.

He was just working out the weight shift between steps three and four when Mary stormed in. The routine between his boss and his partner wasn't Who's on First so much as Pardon My Sarong. If he weren't counting, he might have laughed. Just in the middle of a transition from step eight back to one, Stan cut his music. "Stop that!"

As Mary watched open-mouthed their boss barked him through his dance steps. "The peacock struts!" After a few minutes, she turned on her heel and left. "Is she gone?" Stan murmured after the music switched to a less-brassy song at a slower tempo.

Marshall nodded.

"Thank God." Stan stepped away from his marshal. "Remember to move your hips!" he shot at Marshall before retreating to his office.

A week later, Mary's obscenity-laced phone call about the photographer actually centered more around the bridesmaid dress than it did on any danger to her witness. She left the distinct impression she was more annoyed that the witness was not harmed, because Treena remaining alive meant Mary wearing that dress in public. Her diatribe about red, purple, and why all brides were going to hell included some very specific people in the bridal industry that she wished to pistol whip. While she ranted, Marshall looked up crinoline on Encyclopedia Britannica and it turned into something of a research spree. It gave him something to think about while she purged.

Stan's calming presence when Mary returned to the office did relieve Marshall of further verbal abuse, although the strange expressions on her face as Stan inspected the dress raised alarm bells. Marshall always got nervous when Stan and Mary fell into sync; those occasions rarely ended well for him. The last time he caught an exchange between them like that, he found a good chunk of his office supplies super-glued to the ceiling the following day. Ever after that he made sure he was the last to leave the office for the night, and when possible the first to arrive during the day. Finding the right solvent to retrieve his stapler took weeks, and without an office manager he was forced to get replacements for some of his supplies on his own time.

Marshall was on surveillance at the bachelorette party for forty-five minutes before Mary arrived. She mentioned when she called she had some wardrobe problem. He assumed she didn't know where to conceal her gun; she rarely wore dresses and hiding weaponry in them is an art form. He thought longingly of the brunette with the red heels in mambo class, sad he missed out on a chance to talk to her – and then Mary arrived.

Marshall saw Mary in all her permutations, or thought he did. Even in court, she always wore a pantsuit, and out of court she wore jeans and clothing that made it easy to conceal a gun. She, like other law enforcement types, dressed tactically. Slight out-of-context outfits, like Mary in the bridesmaid's dress, was just funny.

But this…this was almost blinding.

The sequined black number clung to every curve and offered up all the good stuff on a platter. The creature in front of him bore only a passing resemblance to his partner. This woman was the mystery at the end of the bar, the one who blew on his dice at the casino, the one whose bolero and dress landed on the floor as he explored every curve of her fantasy. Internal doors between his conscious and subconscious mind burst off the hinges under the hormonal tidal wave. Marshall didn't know what hit him. "Holy jeez," he said, trying to gather himself in this unexpected confrontation between his body and his partner.

He stopped himself before he said "You look hot," replacing it quickly with "nice." She might look like a dream stepped out of the pages of Frederick's of Hollywood, but unlike the lingerie models she probably found a way to conceal at least three guns under that tiny number. He wondered where. This prompted several graphic, naughty, frankly disturbing images in the space of a two-minute conversation.

The images wouldn't stop. He focused on work, babbling through the rundown, averting his eyes to keep his tongue from lolling onto the dirt lot. Feelings he normally kept at bay overwhelmed him, at this worst of all times.

Mary, sensing change, got confrontational. "For God's sake, it's not like I'm naked!"

He struggled to verbalize. "Naked would be better. That makes me feel so…dirty." This was his partner, his responsibility, his best friend. This was an unbelievably gorgeous woman wrapped up like a present for some lucky man to unwrap.

She called him Pervis and stomped off as much as anyone can stomp in spike heels. Marshall caught himself staring at her ass and legs as though his eyes were magnetically drawn to them. He caught himself and tried to think calming thoughts. Anger burned from the pit of his stomach: anger at Mary for giving him a hard time, and anger at himself, for giving her reason to. Lust leaked into the mix, making his gut ache.

Marshall caught himself several times looking for Mary instead of checking for suspicious behavior. This did nothing to help his mood or his anger towards his partner. When a radio call came in telling him police were coming out to the location, he knocked his head back against his car's headrest. Bobby Dershowitz was always on duty when something went wrong, and Marshall could imagine what he might think about seeing Mary in that dress. He took a few calming breaths before getting out of the car.

He tried to prepare himself as he stepped into the house. Mary just left him while in a full snit, she openly disliked this witness and he smarted more than normal from their last exchange. His own bad mood was not helped when he spotted Mary.

To casual appearances, she was violating protocol so badly it begged for mercy. She was talking to a naked man, head down, a sad but friendly smile on her face. It seemed like she was flirting. A wave or resentment for the stripper tore out of his solar plexus through his feet.

He exhaled. They were both on duty, and it was his job to keep a cool head. Whatever this was, he was her partner, first.

Marshall only heard the tale end of the conversation. "You know how it is, you're in law enforcement."

He did not like what he was seeing. "You been drinking?" He dragged her off while she attempted to guess either names or membership cards.

Mary was on an uncharacteristic chatty streak, and given her out-of-character appearance, it did set off alarm bells. "Sad thing is, he really is Albuquerque PD. He's moonlighting." Marshall did not want to discuss Mary's new friend. He did his duty, pointed out Dershowitz, and stalked into the party while she talked to her other new friend, Bobby D.

While the heat towards Mary remained, all resentment for the stripper-cop disappeared when the party guests forced him into a chair and began grinding on him for the camera. Officer Rod looked at him with pleading eyes. Marshall cringed on his behalf. When Mary came over to tell him that the diamond thieves were in town, he felt only too glad to shut down the party if just to save Rod further torment.

His first act of protection was to disengage the stripper and find his pants while Mary explained the situation to Treena. This had the desired effect. With no naked man to torture, the guests considered the party over. Mary introduced Marshall to Treena, and the guarding began – with her immediately telling him she needed to visit the bathroom.

Witnesses were allowed to pee and Treena did look a touch green. He initially heard the telltale gagging, the toilet flushing several times, and then running water. Even so, when Mary called, the knot in his stomach went cold and sank. Sure enough the bathroom was empty with the window curtains waving in the desert breeze. Hell, it wasn't the first time that night he felt like an asshole.

Thankfully Mary and he did their best work together in crisis mode. His swift communication about where the stables were located and their quick conferral outside felt good, and right. The earlier incident of the night no longer mattered because here they were doing what they did best – together.

Marshall forced himself not to speculate as to where Mary stashed her guns in that dress.

When she ushered him into the stall, he expected a quick assessment of the situation, an extra weapon, a GPS chip, or possibly for her to hand him a grenade. All were more likely than what she did do.

"Follow my lead!" was proceeded with her lips on his. It wasn't fair, really. All the crises that night kept him from rebuilding those doors between conscious and subconscious. The tidal pool of hormones whipped into a tsunami. His brain shut off. Her sweet-smelling skin and the soft texture of her lips opened him to her, and he reached out wanting to get as close as he could to her heat.

Mary's arm to his trachea snapped him out of his lusty surrender. "What are you doing?"

"What the hell are you doing?" He was dizzy, breathless, metaphorically knocked off his feet. Mary was marching purposefully straight to her witness, leaving him to catch up and shut up.

He shoved aside confusion and humiliation as his brain rebooted. They were in a dangerous situation, it was Mary's witness and he needed to fall in line.

Mary then created so much chaos he wasn't sure where to aim his gun. He did think, "Attagirl!" when she managed to bring down the chief diamond smuggler face-first in horse manure.

"Need a hand?" he asked.

"Not now," Mary snapped. "Unless you wanna go after the other guy." The way she tilted her head he knew she was pissed at his performance.

A little bit of his earlier anger returned. "Despite my athletic prowess and desire to please you, I cannot outrun a horse." He holstered his gun, eager to get all lipstick and weirdness off his face.

They wrapped up the end game by calling Dershowitz. Gathering statements from witnesses and themselves took around two hours. Marshall hoped Mary forgot about the kiss incident by then, because he wanted to pretend it never happened.

Unfortunately for Marshall, one area Mary did not have issues was denial. She did not practice it. "So what's the deal with that kiss?"

"What kiss?" He pretended, very hard, he did not know of what she spoke.

"In the barn." So much for her pretending along with him that that didn't happen.

Fine. "You kissed me." He did not invite Mary to appear out of nowhere looking like a deviant fantasy version of herself, nor did he ask her to rub her lips over his overheated-from-the-sight-of-her skin.

"Nuh uh," she snapped back. "I was smearing lipstick on you. You acted like a guy who was ready to break himself off some. With two armed assassins standing fifteen feet away, you were all ready to throw down with your best friend."

Marshall's composure completely escaped his grasp for the thousandth time that night. "I'm a guy. It's what we do!" he snapped. Even he knew his actions were indefensible.

Then Dershowitz cowboyed on by, having caught the man that Marshall let escape.

He did a double take. The perpetrator was actually in a lasso. "How cool is that?"

"Where the hell's he get a lasso?" At last the subject changed.

Marshall sat behind the wheel of his car before taking off, just breathing and centering. Mary had a rising star baseball player boyfriend, and another potential suitor who was a well-dressed cowboy cop. Everyone in her world was cooler than him. As he drove home, Marshall revisited that dark place in every person's mind, the one located between seventh grade, old lady perfume and hell.

Marshall was grateful for the day off between the bachelorette party and the wedding. For that day, he did what any other single, unattached man would do: he spent some of his time watching porn, and then he read up on the works of Honore' de Balzac. He thought about his job in WITSEC and what it did to his life. So much of it was just Mary, Mary's needs and how he did everything he could for them, in a way he never did for earlier partners. This incident with kissing Mary was a wake up call. He had unfulfilled needs.

At the wedding Stan appeared at his elbow. "Actually, she looks gorgeous in that dress." Marshall nodded appreciatively along with his boss, both casting admiring looks her way.

Mary seemed more mellow standing outside the church. She gave both a diffident blush – and he saw a real smile on her face as she threw rice after the couple. He felt his heart flutter and stretch at the rare sight of a Mary Shannon smile.

Then he saw her pull out her cell phone, and could tell from the slightly strained expression that the call was from Raphael.

"I'll call you later," Mary said to Marshall before she ran off to talk to the bride.

"Alrighty-o," he answered. They wouldn't discuss Raphael, he knew that. They also wouldn't discuss the stable incident. She'd ask a favor, and he'd do it. Because he was Marshall, and she was Mary, and that's what they did.

He double checked that his cell phone was on. He would stay up all night if he had to, just waiting for her call.