Disclaimer: I don't own Numb3rs, alas, or the series would have gone in a significantly different direction.
A/N: This was written in response to the prompt:
Numb3rs, Charlie/Ian Edgerton, camping
Naturally Intersecting in Nature
They were on very different trajectories. Not directly opposing but closer to perpendicular than parallel. They came from different angles and headed in different directions.
Charlie was an academic who disliked violence and liked to know what he was getting into before he got into it. He wanted to understand the world and he math allowed him to do so.
Ian, on the other hand, was a government agent and a military veteran, who didn't need to understand the world in order to shape it in ways that he and his superiors considered best.
But, and this was the important part, they were on the same plane. They weren't skewed.
Charlie and Ian both knew good guys from bad guys, and they struggled to keep the good guys safe and the bad guys controlled.
And if they weren't skewed and they weren't parallel, then they were destined to intersect somewhere.
Camping and hiking outdoors was where they intersected. It was out in nature where Charlie saw patterns and processes and Ian saw tracks and paths, that they looked at each other and saw beauty.