One plus

[detective_girly]

The room smelled of too many familiar things for Dani to focus at first. Smoke from cigarettes and joints mixed with sweat and booze. Then there was the mold and the dogs. Why did junkies always keep such well fed dogs? Probably all the food their owners forgot to consume in favor of the high. Only after she’d categorized those could she move on to the metallic tang of aluminum shavings in the air or the greasy taste of machine oil. None of it placed her in any useful way. She was trapped, bound, hidden, and when Roman returned there would be more pain. Hadn’t she moved beyond being trapped in a junkie’s paradise?


When she woke, she was in a hospital bed. The tape on the IV in her hand itched, but she had no urge to scratch at hit. Moving didn’t matter when someone was probably going to yell at her for it. Again. Getting her in a bed, just for a night they swore, had been the goal of all the men currently in her life. She’d gone, finally, when he mouthed the word ‘Please’ at her. He wouldn’t be allowed to be with her anyhow, not right away, too many questions to be answered for that. They’d won in the end, so it shouldn’t go too badly, but the questions still had to be asked. Having the FBI as back up had to help smooth things over.


Her mother was there, looking tired, despite Dani telling her to go home hours ago. With Jack Reese in the wind, she needed something to hang onto and Dani was it. Knowing the men, they welcomed the buffer between Dani and Internal Affairs. So long as the wife of one decorated officer and the mother of an injured one sat close, no one would come near. Dani closed her eyes again, hoping her wakefulness hadn’t been noticed. Within seconds, she was asleep again.


She couldn’t go home, although she was never entirely sure why. It wasn’t as though anyone would let her be alone. She refused, in clear, crude terms, to go with her mother. That meant she ended up at Tidwell’s. She had clothes there, a toothbrush, and he would make sure she took care of herself. No one asked her, outright, what she wanted. They knew, including her, that they weren’t ready to hear the answer. She didn’t completely understand the answer anyway. It was all captured in the heat of a fleeting touch and the overwhelming sense of gratitude in a look. Only gratitude wasn’t the right feeling. There was more to it than that. Or maybe they were grateful for different things?

He was her partner, even though that had taken time to sink in and mean something. He wasn’t her friend, exactly. They didn’t DO things together chat about meaningless trivia. He did, she listened with more and more indulgence as time went on. Her father, his past, their future—too many landmines laid between them. No matter what he said, she knew Jack Reese was at least partly responsible for Crews ending up in prison. Every step forward they took put her whole existence in danger. Not just her body, which the job could manage to endanger just fine, but her mother’s financial status. Then there was the tricky bit of making final, unforgivable lie, to any hope remaining from her childhood. Tidwell could sympathize with that, given how he revered his mother, but he’d never get the love/hate dynamic and how it could still hold such disappointment.

Crews could. His entire return to the police force was the same. He didn’t belong there except that if he hadn’t come back, no one would have ever believed him. Including, probably, him. Now they had each other, for better or worse. They hadn’t talked about the next step because they hadn’t talked. The unasked question hung there between them. He needed to know she was as committed to moving forward as she’d ever been. Partners took the next case when it came, no matter what. And this was the case they’d been working from the start, even when he hadn’t let her in on it.

“What you thinking about?” Tidwell’s gentle voice carried his own unspoken questions. Was she thinking dark things, wounded things, that might lead her to make bad choices. They would, just not the ones he might fear most. Or maybe she underestimated him again.

“Nothing.”