Particles of Light, Chapter 12: The Tao of Awkward
Title: Chapter 12- The Tao of Awkward
Rating: M
Dislaimer: I don't own anything, no infringement intended
Spoilers: As always, some light references to season 1
Notes: Cast your mind back to the first Chapter (or re-read it if that's your thing!) to enjoy this one fully. And, "BAC" is cop-speak for building a case. In other words, STAKEOUT!
Chapter 12
The Tao of Awkward
I think I thought I saw you try.
-REM, Losing My Religion
The day after the kiss was bad. But, not as bad as either Reese or Crews were preparing themselves for. It might have been worse, but they had already been through a few awkward things in their relatively brief tenure as partners. And, there was also the fact that each of them, in their own odd way had sort of been expecting the kiss, albeit in a completely non-expecting way. So, there was a slight leeway there, a tiny bit of grace that allowed them to slip back into cop mode, back into partner mode even though the kiss was still sort of stuck in the air between them like something from a Wachowski brothers’ film.
At their desks in the station, waiting for Davis to finish a phone conference, they straightened their already perfectly neat desks, eye contact duly avoided.
“Crews.” Charlie’s head snapped up and the hair on his arms bristled with slowly forming goose pimples when he heard his partner’s voice. He swallowed hard. Bright blue eyes met a charcoal stare that broke away as soon as it was recognized.
“Going to get coffee downstairs at that place where the coffee is better than…here.” Dani felt her mouth twitch and consciously exaggerated a sniff to make sure it wasn’t obvious anywhere but in her own head just how uncomfortable she was feeling. Go get your coffee. She turned to Crews briefly, avoiding eye contact. “So, you want some…or what?”
“I have OJ. Thanks.” Through his fear, he nodded to a thermos on his desk with fresh from the grove juice. He was sure she was getting the coffee simply to make a production of throwing a hot liquid onto him and watching him blister.
Reese stood still for a second, as if she were about to say something, then turned on her heels and marched out, quickly.
Alone with his thermos, Charlie stared at the back of her head as she waited for the elevator, glossy hair shining with every small movement. He was incredibly relieved she seemed to be acting even somewhat normally, considering how angry she’d been on the phone. She seemed like she was trying to push through it, just as much as he was. He thought of that old REM song from his early 20s and the melody played through his brain as he mouthed the words silently to himself. “I think I thought I saw you try.” Sighing, he took a big swig of the super-sweet pulpy juice, marveling at how trees he owned could produce something so sweet and good. The juice went down and he could feel a trickle of cold, acidic pulp trail down his esophagus, washing away some of the constriction he’d felt on his way to the station. I think I thought I saw you try, Dani. He smiled to himself.
Davis was just finishing her call and standing up, motioning to Charlie when Dani reappeared with a very large cup of coffee. The lid was displaced a bit with the most enormous dollop of whipped cream Charlie had ever seen. He marveled at it. Reese noticed. Under her breath, she said, “Fuckers put whipped cream on it…. On black coffee. Who does that?” She hissed and grimaced when she saw tiny chocolate sprinkles softly draped on the leftmost peak of the cream mountain. She hadn’t noticed it downstairs.
Charlie smiled and sniffed out a small laugh, leaning in a bit towards her, emboldened by her trying. “Those fuckers.”
Inside Davis’s office, Dani’s knees bounced up and down like a nervous kid on impromptu speech day. She was having trouble keeping her dark eyes focused on one object. Charlie was quite collected, and even was starting to look a bit pleased with himself and relaxed as he continued to sip his orange juice. The morning wasn’t going as badly as he’d expected. Reese was still his partner, she hadn’t tried to set him on fire. She was actually acting as if the whole thing hadn’t happened. Maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe it was a dream. A dream of those soft, sweet lips… He started in with that beaming smile, head tilted slightly back and to one side.
Davis did a slight double take at her detectives before glancing between them again, resting on the edge of her desk and folding her arms. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Both voices came in quick, terse unison, but Charlie’s word lasted slightly longer and as such, hung in the air a bit thicker than Dani’s.
Dani spoke first, clearly in her usual professional cop manner, arms folded across her chest. “Weeee,” the word was stretched out and low as if testing the waters. The rest of her sentence was hammered out quickly and in the style of a list, “…..found the vic’s girlfriend. Gives us the same name as the guy at the club. We check it out….find an address. But, he’s not lived there since 2003. Not listed with DMV. No insurance. No job. No social. Anderson and Ramos in ID are on it, and we should have….”
Charlie interrupted, “No credit history.” He gripped the thermos with one large hand, the other smoothed lint from his tie.
Reese glared at Charlie for a moment and then looked back at Davis and continued, “No credit history.”
“Okay, well. We’ll find him. If he exists, we’ll find him,” Davis noded confidently.
“Doesn’t all happen in one day like on TV, does it?” Charlie said, both women wondering if he even meant to ask the question to them or just to himself, as he smiled and smoothed his tie.
“No. No, it doesn’t.” Davis glared at him for a second before narrowing her eyes a bit. She turned back towards Dani.
“So, I have something new. BAC job. Santa Monica beach…south. Had a lot of complaints about drug dealers there over the years. So far, no eye witnesses, just calls from the same irritated citizens. But, now, we got info tells us money laundering, car parts and meth in specific. Need you guys to go down there tonight, apparently they only work Fridays. Nights between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. I need you to watch and do this BAC work so we can move on this. Okay?” Davis handed them maps, papers and a folder with all the related phone call reports.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Charlie and Dani got up to leave.
“Crews,” Davis turned towards Charlie, “If you need night vision binoculars, ask Temple. Dani, can you stay here a minute?” Davis used her eyes to dismiss Charlie, and he walked out of the office and back to his desk, all the while resisting a huge pull to crane his neck back and try to read his partner’s lips.
Dani stood, arms folded, and coffee in one hand. She fidgeted with the bottom of the paper cup, running a short nail along the perforated inside rim.
“What’s up, Dani?”
“Huh? Nothing. What do you mean? Everything’s fine.” Her heart beat a bit faster in her chest.
“You okay with Crews?”
What, you mean like I shoved my hand on my partner’s chest and he kissed me? And, I kissed back. Sort of. And, he said that thing about bubble gum ice cream. And, then I spun out about it all night long. That kind of “what’s up?” “Yep.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. You can go.” But, Davis still spoke as she turned towards the door, but this time with her back turned.
“Dani. When you crawl out of a hole, when you claw your way out of a hole, kicking and screaming for air, what is the one thing you do not do?”
“I don’t know, LT,” Dani laughed a bit nervously and spread one arm out as if sarcastically anticipating a joke, “what’s the one thing you don’t do?”
“The one thing you don’t do….The one thing you sure as shit do not do is the same thing that put you in there in the first place.”
She knows.
“Yes, ma’am.” Dani exited quickly. Davis never turned around.
________________
The day progressed slowly, and they didn’t eat lunch together. He ate with Bobby, she by herself. They left at 3:00 instead of whenever since they would be pulling a longer shift that night. Reese went home, ran, showered and watched the local news before making herself a sandwich for dinner. Crews went home, swam in the shady side of the pool while Ted did laps in the sun. They ordered pizza and hung out in front of the TV for a couple of hours until it was time to meet Reese at the beach.
“Charlie, you have an hour to get there. It will only take you 20 minutes, tops. Relax.”
Charlie, who was already at the front door, shouted back to Ted with an unnecessarily loud, childlike voice, “Yeah, I know….But, I gotta pick up something first, on the way. See ya.”
____________
Dani arrived at the far end of the beach parking lot about 10 minutes after 9, which was about 9 minutes after her partner had arrived. He was sitting on the hood of his car, in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt and some kind of soft fleece motorcycle jacket. There were three Styrofoam cups on the hood of the car and Dani briefly stopped in her tracks with a horrified thought that Bobby Stark was there, too, but she didn’t see him when she looked around. But, that could just mean he was peeing in the bushes, or something suitably…him.
She was only slightly relieved when Charlie jumped off the hood of the car and pushed two of the cups towards her. She saw that one had slightly melted bubble gum ice cream in it and the other was empty. “Spittoon.” He seemed pleased with himself.
Reese let out a little groan. Be good, Dani. This is him being nice to you. An olive branch. Take it.
“Thanks.” She handled the cups as if they had been dipped in the sewer.
“Oh, I got the binocs, the camera and…shit, I forgot a blanket to sit on. And, it’s kinda cold and foggy, too. Shit.” Charlie looked a bit lost.
Dani rolled her eyes slightly and marched back to her own car and opened the passenger door. Reaching into the foot well, she brought out two tattered oversized beach blankets, one with sun-faded blue stripes, the other green. Before she could close the door again, Charlie had rested his own ice cream on the top of her car and was throwing his shoes onto the floor.
“Crews. No.”
“Aw, c’mon Reese. Nobody wears their shoes on the beach if they don’t have to. Except, you, probably.” He smiled and reached back for his ice cream.
“Crews, what if we have to chase someone, or…just run? You can afford another pair.”
He looked at her like she had two heads. “That’s not the point. I wanna, you know, feel the sand between my toes. I like it. Feels good.”
“And, well,” his head bobbled a bit as his mouth covered a large spoonful of Mango Madness as he shoved it in. “I’m actually pretty good at running in bare feet, believe it or not. Wanna know why?”
“No. C’mon.” She locked her car and gathered up the blankets in her arms better for the long walk across the sand.
About fifteen minutes later, they were at the far end of the beach. They could still see the halo of lights around the parking lot lamps, but there was no real light other than moonlight where they set themselves up to watch. There was a slight rise of tar pit behind them that provided shelter and cover and they dug a bit of sand up to make themselves shorter than the horizon of sand. With the binoculars, they could see all the way back to the pier and as far as the curve of the coast in the other direction. It was cold enough that Reese was still working on the last bits of her ice cream.
“Had to call around about 15 different places ‘til I finally found one that had it.”
“What? Oh. Thanks.” She wanted to sound more grateful, more like a friend. But, it came out cold and kind of hollow. She was thankful when he kept talking as if he’d not noticed.
“Which flavor do you like best? I like purple. I tried it while I was there. Actually, I’m kinda sick. I had some of that and then the mango, too. Mango Madness. With real mango, Reese…” He nodded to his partner as if real mango in ice cream was the key to the universe.
“Purple inn’t a flavor.”
Crews looked her like he’d never seen her before and she just suddenly had appeared there on the sand next to him. “Purple IS a flavor. I mean, that’s not grape. That’s most definitely not grape. So, what else could it be but purple?”
“I….I have nothing to say to that. You may be right.”
Charlie’s lips folded and twisted into a huge grin and she bristled.
He looked around with the binoculars, but saw nothing and returned to his conversation.
“Maybe the green was good, too. That was lime?”
“Okay,” Reese turned to her partner. “Okay,” she said hands outstretched towards him a bit, “the purple one is purple flavored. The green one is lime flavored. See, THAT, I don’t get.”
Charlie smiled again. “I mean, that’s just kinda…obvious. The green tastes just like limes. The purple tastes like…”
“Purple. I know.”
“Purple.” Charlie folded his legs up close to his chest. Reese was right. His feet were freezing. He wrapped his long arms around his knees, hugging them even closer to himself. He put his head on the semi-flat surface of his knees, so that he was facing Reese. He looked at her lips. I wanted to see what your tongue would taste like after you ate bubble gum ice cream. We could go through all the 31 flavors. Last night was peppermint…. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to hit, but then realized he hadn’t said it out loud.
She didn’t turn towards him or even really acknowledge him for the longest time. Then, she took a sharp inhale and ran a tired hand over a tired brow, massaging her temple before she spoke.
“Okay. I give up. What did Mark Twain say about pineapples? Googled it. Couldn’t find it. I give up.”
“He said that a pineapple,” he’d opened his eyes and was looking at the sand, one hand having dropped absently drawing circles in the softness, “is just an apple who saw its opportunity and took it.”
Reese snorted out a laugh and shook her head.
She laughed. I made her laugh. Charlie’s stomach flipped and his legs felt like they were trembling, all in an instant as she laughed. Her wrinkled brow had softened and she looked incandescent.
“Is that so? And, how does an apple ‘see’ an opportunity?” Her voice was still light and she was smiling a little bit.
“Dunno. Maybe by looking around the bowl….”
Their conversation was interrupted by a sharp crack and they both instinctively stood up in cop posture, reaching hands near belts, but they quickly recognized it was a backfiring car, somewhere far above them on the hillside.
Charlie looked through the binoculars once more, though it was nearing midnight and he had a feeling they weren’t going to see anything significant that night. He saw a pair of figures far off in a heated struggle, and he started to rise up, the cop in him ready to go break up a fight before it turned into a murder. But, he caught a glimpse of a familiar movement and realized it was a couple having sex on the beach. He wasn’t that kind of cop anymore, so he sat back down. He smiled at the similarity between two opposite expressions of passion.
“Hey, Reese. Ever made love on the beach?”
The look she shot him could have cut glass. He quickly handed her the binoculars and nodded up the beach.
“Oh,” she looked through them and handed them back. “And….no.”
“I have. My ex wife and I…we used to come down to the beach when we were dating. I was still living at home and she had this obnoxious roommate who was this militant feminist who hated me. Her name was Reba Flurge. No, really. I think she hated everyone. But, mostly men. And, mostly me. And, also her parents for naming her that, probably. And, every time we’d try to make love in Jen….in my ex’s room, she’d bang on the ceiling with the broom and yell, “No means No!” Of course, we were engaged by this time, but that didn’t stop her, no. So, you know, we’d come to the beach…..”
“Does it ever stop?”
“What? The talking? Sometimes. Anyway, we’d come to the beach once in a while.” He looked out at the surf, the moonlight making shiny sequins of glitter dance over the water, as if it were lit from underneath.
“I mean, it’s nice. The sound of the water when you’re moving together, but the sand….that’s just bad.” He rolled his eyes and he laughed a nasally, whispery soft laugh. Cocking his head to the side, he raised an eyebrow and said, “I mean, there are places that juuuuuust shouldn’t be exfoliated……” His face reflected a horrifyingly uncomfortable memory. “So, all in all, overrated.” He took a deep breath.
“That was a breath. Good. More of those, and less words.”
He quieted down and resumed his head on knees position.
“I don’t think the bad guys are comin’ tonight, Reese.”
“Well, we have another half hour…”
“Okay.” He quietly shuffled his feet in place in the sand. “As cops. Another half hour as cops. On the beach.”
“Are you ever not a cop?” She turned and looked at him and his belly flipped and burned. She was looking right at him, eyes like they’d been drawn by some master with charcoal and pen.
“I’m always a cop.” He broke his gaze and looked across the ocean. “And, I’m never a cop.”
Dani shook her head and rolled her eyes a bit, rubbing her ankle which was a bit sore from her run earlier in the evening. It was quiet for a few minutes, which allowed Reese to think. She wanted to think of the job, of what they were doing there. She was still on duty and she needed to focus on that. And, if there had been something other than the blank sand and sea stretched out before them, she most definitely would have been able to focus on the job. But, her thoughts ran from meth runners to auto parts and chop shops, the pier and cotton candy and bubble gum ice cream. Eventually, she thought of her partner and his ex wife making love on the beach, showered with the dust of a million stars. In love, not a care in the world, their story stretched out in front of them for miles like that water. Unaware of what tidal wave was coming, of what would wrest them from each other’s arms. Forever. She wondered if any of that previous life was worth it, really worth it, compared to the pain they endured when they had to let it go. She wondered if he still loved her, even a little bit, because she imagined that if she were the ex, she’d still love him. How could you get that out of your mind, a thing like that? A man like this….Maybe it was better when he was talking.
“You didn’t do it right.”
“Wha…” Charlie slightly lifted his tired, heavy head.
“You have to be on a blanket. And, she’s gotta be on top. That way, no sand.”
“I never thou…Hey, you said you’d never made love on the beach.”
She turned away from him, just a little bit and fixed her eyes on the pier in the far distance. “No. I said I’d never made love on the beach.”
Charlie said nothing. He couldn’t believe she’d said it. He couldn’t believe they were here. That she was his partner. That they were on this beach. The beach he dreamed of, feet sinking into hard, wet sand, tide washing clean feet and skin and sin. Like a caged tiger dreams of air, of jungle, of blood. He wasn’t dead, wasn’t even dying in that moment. He wasn’t in Pelican Bay. He was here, with Reese.
Never made love on the beach, or never made love, Reese? He felt frozen, fixed in place as if even the tide wouldn’t move him. He couldn’t hear past those words that she’d just spoken to him.
And, now she was saying something else, but Charlie wasn’t listening. His heart beat so hard in his ears he thought it would deafen him. He was dizzy and lightheaded. And, then he was saying something, too. He heard his voice just like Dani’s. But, his voice was as silent, as quiet and calm as the ripples on the tide.
Just look at me, Dani. Just turn your face and look at me. That’s all you have to do.
“It’s fucking freezing out here….and for what? To listen to you ramble all night, apparently….”
Just turn your face and see me. Because, I think I see you. I see why you don’t make love. Why you don’t want to be seen. You want to wash away that daytime, reinvent yourself over and over in the night until you can’t fear that part of you anymore, until maybe one time you feel something new that destroys you and makes you whole again?
“…always a cop, and I’m never a cop, and….”
I’d make love to you every night. Every night, Dani. I’d hold your tiny little curved body so close to mine that you’d never even know where you started and ended. And, that’s what you want, isn’t it Dani? Not to know where you start and where you end? I’d wrap you up in something so warm and safe I don’t even have words for it.
“…..and, you know, purple isn’t grape, and….”
Well, if you wanted me to just fuck you, I could do that, too. If that’s what you needed, I could do that, too.
“….and limes tastes like green and beach sand is really glass and shed human skin cells and….”
If you would just look at me, I’d make love to you every night. My hands, my mouth would be everywhere. I’d touch you until all the shadows of your soul became sunlight and the sweat from my body dripped golden-hued hope into your pores as you lay beneath me, stretched so tight and hot around me.
“…and, of course NOW….”
It would only be you and I in the city, in this whole world. Every light in every street, every valley and canyon flickering its unwavering force, only for us.
And, when I would be inside of you, moving so slowly, I’d never have been to prison. I’d never have married Jennifer. I’d never have made love to anyone else. I’d be new. Or, maybe….maybe never have even been born. I’d exist only to be inside of you, hands grasping at hips, pushing and yielding and asking and taking. Mouth breathing in every whisper, every silent wish. Swallowing every savored doubt, reinventing every wronged memory. And, I could be anything you wanted, and so could you. Anyone you wanted for that moment. Whatever you needed, as long as you saw me there. It only works if you see me, Dani. You could slide down and lose yourself on me. Lose what you wanted, take back what you wanted. Rise up with all your wounds sewn shut, all the valleys and gaps flooded, all the scar tissue smooth and flat. Because you’d never have been broken.
“What?” Reese looked up at Charlie, dimly aware that he may have said something.
“I said…I said, it’s after one. We can go now.”
He stood up, brushed his pants and offered a sandy hand to Reese, which she avoided as she rose on her own. She walked across the sand quickly, the moonlight showing him golden strands of highlights he couldn’t see in the daylight, as he walked behind her.
And, Reese? You know what that is? That feeling when I’m inside you and you can’t go back, and you can’t go forward? And, you can’t look at me, and you can’t look away? And you can’t feel anything, and you feel everything? Every little hot ripple like you were made from tissue thin gold leaf and every thrust feels like a cramp of burden and fear and redemption and the crest of a new sun? You know what that is?
That’s Life. And, that’s Death.