Chapter 5: Hit between the eyes?
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except a pretty girl with brown hair and brown eyes. The people that DO own the rest are gods among men (and women).
Sorry for the gap – work + uni - lack of sleep = no recent postings!
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"Hey Flack!" said Rebecca, with false brightness.
Another cute outfit, thought Flack. He wondered if Rebecca had got as little sleep as he had, which was why he was here, waiting on her to come down, instead of enjoying his morning breakfast rictual at the local diner; decent coffee, eggs or something, plus a quick look at the paper.
But no, here he was, waiting for his neighbor, about to run to work with her through the park.
He told himself she was just encouraging good habits in him, making sure he didn't get the Twinkie stomach lots of good cops got when they weren't too much older than him.
No, it had nothing to do with wanting to see her again. Or that dream he'd had about her dancing last night.
Well, partly dancing, partly a one-on-one in an empty gym that had ended up way too personal. Hot summer mornings needed cold showers, he mused.
He smiled at Rebecca as she came down the steps.
"Race?" he asked.
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Rebecca set a fast pace, so fast Flack wondered if she was trying to set some sort of personal best. He kept pace easily – well when you had to chase down some of the toughest sons of b****es in NYC, you had to stay on your toes and Flack always got his man. Or woman, for that matter.
Aside from the odd banter or quick water break, the pair concentrated on their running, rather than conversation. Flack appreciated that Rebecca was an athlete – she obviously was on the track team at one point and he made a mental note to ask her about that, as well as why she was into such a bad-ass form of martial arts.
In no time at all, they were at the precinct, their entry into the building being noticed by quite a few people.
Stephanie, the blond receptionist, who had quite a thing for Flack lifted the phone and dialed a number.
"Detective Messer?" she said.
"Yeah?" the voice on the other end of the phone said.
"I want to change that date on the pool."
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The thing, thought Rebecca, about setting a fast pace on a run meant you had an excuse to focus and not make idle conversation. The other thing about a fast pace was supposed to be that you concentrated solely on putting one foot in front of the other and not about your morning's running partner helping massage a cramp or running you down or catching you or anything else liable to get your pulse raising even faster than a cardio work-out.
Unfortunately, Rebecca had found the previous night's dream running through her head as quick as she was running through the park. Rebecca did not want to admit that part of the pace she had set was her trying to get some distance on Flack, mentally and physically. It had not helped, his running beside her. She had almost been able to feel the heat from his body, not to mention his lovely scent.
Arriving at the precinct, she'd noticed quite a few exchanged glances at the sight of the two of them arriving together. When they'd gotten to the locker room, they had headed to the separate showers. As the water poured over her, Rebecca tried not to think about one handsome, fit cop doing the same thing she was in a stall not too far from where she was standing. And failed miserably. Wrapping a towel around her, shivering slightly from the blast of freezing water she had just been under after yanking the temperature control down some, she stepped into the locker room, only to take three paces back and swallow, her mouth going dry.
Suit be damned, she thought. And I thought his running gear left nothing to the imagination.
Nothing, as it turned out, was quite so distracting as the sight of Flack, wearing nothing more than a towel, grabbing a clean outfit from his locker, while drying off the last drops of water from his hair and torso.
And all the scars did was make him seem, well, more manly, thought Rebecca.
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The rest of the day had passed in a bit of a blur. Rebecca had had a video conference with her old colleagues from the Jeffersonian.
She'd had to put up with Danny and Adam engaging in some juvenile one-up-manship with Dr Hodgins and their current grad student, a young man Rebecca didn't recognize. Her good friend Angela, of course, had kept butting in to ask Rebecca how things were, if she had a new boyfriend and what her other colleagues were like, before she'd been called away by Dr Lance Sweets. Dr Brennan, of course, had not been there. She was out in the field with Agent Booth, as always. Now what was going on there? Wondered Rebecca. They had managed, eventually, to have a good discussion about the case in hand.
The conference call had ended with Hodgins promising to email the lab all the findings from the 3 cases in D.C. that seemed suspiciously like the one in New York. He'd also promised to get Cam, their boss, to call Mac and the ME's office to compare notes on the bodies themselves, although copies of the knife impressions and Hodgins' meticulous analysis would probably be of more help.
And they had temporarily put the case on hold, as they had done all the work they could.
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A couple of weeks went by. The hot weather continued and all of a sudden all the crazies came out to play and the lab was rushed off of its feet with cases. Rebecca occasionally ran into Flack at Sully's, but for the most part she was working long hours trying to deal with some of the case load and they seemed to be on opposite shifts, so she never saw him around the building. OK, she thought, if she was being really honest, she was avoiding him. Off the clock, if she wasn't exhausted, she was running. She just couldn't seem to keep that sexy Irish cop out of her mind, awake or not. Her dreams just kept on coming.
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Watching the Giants playing, Flack was trying to keep his mind on the sports action on the TV and not on the imaginary action he seemed to have playing in his head on a pretty constant basis about his neighbor.
Flack had been really trying, on the few occasions they had been anywhere near each other, not to look at any part of a certain new CSI's anatomy, either on a scene, in the precinct gym or in the lab. In fact, he'd caught himself beating a hasty retreat from the AV lab, Trace, the morgue or anywhere in fact that he might be caught demonstrating frank appreciation for the sight of her body bent over anything, leaning over anything, stretching…..
He had knocked up her door a couple of times, trying to figure out good excuses as to why he was at her door in the first place, but she hadn't been in.
He ran his hand through his hair, unable to concentrate. If he was honest, she was the first, last and every-damn-minute-in-between constant thought in his head, except when he managed to actually do some work. And judging from the state he was waking up in more mornings than not, whether he remembered his dreams or not, she was obviously in his every unconscious thought also.
Flack tried to tell himself that the hot New York summer weather was to blame for him needing so many cold showers.
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I know, I know, not much plot development here and I think I need to edit…not a good chapter all in all…I'm a little out of my comfort zone here. Things are going to move along soon, promise!