On his way home, Jay's attention had shifted from the positive and enjoyable time with Jess towards getting home to Erin. She would want to know about his evening of course, then there would be sex. He enjoyed sex with Erin of course. How could he not, with someone so passionate and beautiful. Even so, doing it multiple times a day every day was starting to give it something of a feeling of a job that needed to be done rather than a wonderful experience to enjoy. He felt bad for feeling that way, but he couldn't pretend he wasn't.

"Erin? I'm home!" he called out after letting himself into the apartment.

"I'm in the bedroom!" she called.

"Two minutes! Going to get myself a drink!"

Whenever Jay drank alcohol, he made sure to have a large glass of water before going to bed. It helped a lot with avoiding, or at least mitigating hangovers.

He downed the water and made his way to the bedroom. The door was closed, suggesting that Erin was comfortably tucked into bed.

That assumption was blown out of the water as soon as he opened the door. Erin was lying on her side on the bed, wearing a black leather bra and panties set and matching elbow length leather gloves. She had even put makeup on, not that her natural beauty required it. The sight before him took Jay's breath away as he walked into the room.

"I went shopping on my lunch break yesterday," she said, maintaining her sexy pose on the bed.

"I can see that," he said in obvious delight.

"We've been having so much sex, thought I'd spice things up a bit."

"Consider things spiced," he said, joining her on the bed, thinking better of saying that he had just been thinking some spice might be needed. He took his shirt off. "Those gloves are very sexy."

"Almost didn't buy them. You mentioned I have sexy hands, so I wasn't sure if these would make things better or worse for you."

"Better," he said definitively.

While they had been talking, she had unbuttoned his jeans. A hand slipped inside his boxers. "In that case, enjoy."

"Don't go too far with that, honey. We've got a baby to make."

"Oh, I'm just waking you up a little. Now stop talking and kiss me."

Jay did as he was told without hesitation.

The next morning, the first thing Jay saw when he woke up was Erin's discarded leather outfit on the bedroom floor. Reminding him of the previous night, it turned him on right away and made him wish she was still in bed with him. Sadly, she was up already, downstairs by the sound of it. At least that meant there would be coffee and toast waiting when he went downstairs.

With that in mind, he decided his morning shower could wait until after breakfast, got dressed and went downstairs. Erin was already settled at the table with her coffee and toast.

"Hey," he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

"How was your night? There's coffee and toast," Erin said.

"I think you know how my night was," he said, thinking back to the mind-blowing sex as he fixed himself a coffee.

She laughed. "Not that. I meant at Jess's place."

"Oh!" he said, making like he hadn't know what she meant all along. "It was good. She's starting to open up to me slowly. The grief is hitting her hard. I managed to calm her down when she got upset and we ended up having fun. I was telling her funny army stories and she was telling me gruesome crime scene cleaning stories. A few laughs did her a lot of good, as it does for anyone."

"It's reassuring to know you were able to help her. Opening up to you, even if it's a slow process, shows she trusts you. I hope she knows I'm only ever a phone call away too if she needs me."

"You should tell her that next time you talk to her," Jay encouraged her. He very much wanted Erin and Jess to have a relationship with each other, not just the one that existed via the mutual connection to him.

"I did have an idea for her actually," Erin recalled. "You know how Google does that weird thing where you start getting ads for things that relate to something you've searched for? Well, I searched crime scene cleaning a few days ago to find out more about it. Last night I got an ad for a new video game called Crime Scene Cleaner."

"People want to play a crime scene cleaning game?" Jay asked sceptically, joining her at the table with his coffee and toast.

"They must do because there is one. So, what I thought was because I know Jess likes to make money on YouTube, and I know people make money from videos of themselves playing video games, maybe Jess could do a series called 'A Crime Scene Cleaner Plays Crime Scene Cleaner'.

"That's a brilliant idea," Jay said, chuckling at the suggested title. "You should message or call her and tell her about it. Even if she doesn't want to follow up on it, I'm sure she'd appreciate you thinking of it for her."

Erin considered that. "Alright, I'll drop her a message. She could put those videos on that new channel she mentioned for her business, the one she wanted us to appear on. I'm quite looking forward to that, although being watched by who knows how many people is a bit unnerving when you think about it."

"Doesn't worry me to be honest. And you'll be fine, albeit as the eye candy in the video."

"Shut up," she said, laughing. "That's really not helping."

"Sorry. I won't call you eye candy again."

"You can call me your eye candy all you want. It's other people doing it that I'm not keen on."

Jay leaned forward and gave her a kiss. "Then I'll keep you all to myself."

A few days later, Jess and Kevin had been out for their first date. Kevin had booked them a table at an Indian restaurant, taking a bit of a gamble, which had paid off. Jess liked hot curry, he had learned, as did he.

Conversation had flowed quite comfortably, although it was something of a task to get her off the subject of work. She had apologised for that herself, explaining that so much of her life revolved around working that it was sometimes all she did in a week.

"We've got to change that," Kevin said, hinting at further dates to see what reaction he would get. He had already found out that she was quite straightforward, so the open approach was the best one to take.

"That's what Jay keeps telling me. You're both right, I do need to socialise more. The habit of constantly working is hard to break though. It's not likely to get easier once I have my own business to run."

Kevin smiled across the table at her after drinking some of his beer. "That's very impressive, what you're doing. I wish I had that kind of discipline with money and an idea to go with."

Jess gave him an encouraging look. "You've already got an idea to go with. It doesn't have to be a business of your own. For you it's making detective. You're already on an elite unit, Jay tells me. That's something to be proud of. Make detective, excel at that, then go for... What is the rank above detective?"

"Sergeant."

"So push yourself to make Sergeant, if you'd want it?"

"I would want it. I'd relish leading people one day. If not in Intelligence then somewhere else."

"Then do it. My mom drilled into me over and over when I was a kid, 'You are your only limitation.' It's very good advice because it's true."

"You're right," Kevin said thoughtfully. "Thanks for the motivation."

"You're welcome. I can tell what a strong and determined person you are. Or can be."

There was something about the way she said that and the way she was looking at him at the time. She likes me, he realised. He was already in a place where he felt an attraction to Jess that went beyond her obvious physical good looks. To find out that feeling was mutual, assuming he was correctly reading the signals, made him very happy indeed.

"Meeting someone as motivated as you has inspired me. Kind of an 'if Jess can do it, why can't I?' type of thing."

She smiled at him. "That's great. Makes me happy."

Not long later, it was time to take an Uber home. Kevin ordered it, entering Jess's place as the first stop.

"Hope I've not bored you too much?" she asked when they were nearing her house. "I know I struggle to make conversation that isn't about work. It's a big problem I've got to work on."

"You haven't bored me. Far from it," he assured her, and he meant it. Given the choice, he would have gone into her place and carried the night on. That hadn't been offered, unfortunately.

"So you'd like to go out together again?"

"Hell yeah," he replied, his enthusiasm taking over in the moment. "I mean..."

Jess put a hand on his knee and pecked him on the cheek. "Hell yeah is fine, Kev. I'll call you."

"I'll look forward to that. Thank you for tonight. I really enjoyed it."

"So did I," she said with a warm smile. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Jess," Kevin said as she got out of the car. Then he spoke to the driver. "Don't pull off yet. I want to make sure she gets in the house safely."

Jess unlocked her front door, then looked back towards the car. She correctly figured the reason it hadn't left yet, and it showed her the class of the man she had been out with. With a contented smile on her face, she waved towards the car and entered the house.

A/N: An enjoyable night for Jay and Erin, followed by one for Kevin and Jess. In this story I want to explore the multiple relationships and how they all intertwine with each other. Erin and Jess starting to get to know each other and Kevin dating her forms quite a web between our starring characters.