lo:ci fic...
This is an interesting style for me... tell me what you think?
WARNING: B/A ahead
Title: And Still
Author: Divine Joker
E-Mail: divinejoker @ yahoo . ca
Spoilers: Anything and everything up to Privilege
Disclaimer: Money made by these characters goes to anyone but me, that’s fer sure. I don’t make nothing… from this, anyway.
Rating: M for the implications made.
A/N: I tend to have a habit of moving from fandom to fandom in sporadic and kind of nomadic movements. Now it is time for LO:CI, as indicated by the two fics and two vids in the last two weeks; whereas I had done nothing in the fandom but *watch* for the previous year… *sigh*
Lucky you.
[beginning]
It had started in the hospital the night after she had been hung up on a meat hook for twenty-four hours. The startled reflex to the sound of the curtain, the release of memories to the man who had been sitting with her at the time; nothing could have made that moment any more painful.
And still, he sat there, quietly absorbing the pain that washed off of her. She had almost drifted off in the middle of it all and then, gently, discreetly, his warm calloused fingers circled hers and held on tightly for a long moment. Her eyes teared up, drug-induced emotions overwhelming her tattered walls and seeping wetly down her cheek. He’d done everything he could and still he sat there.
It was just a hand, holding another hand and still it seemed to glue her world together.
[]
It happened again the afternoon they’d watched a desperate man kill himself. In the car, in the silence of the running engine and she’d asked him if he was all right. That was it, just four simple words, checking up on the mental health of her best friend.
He’d glanced at her, glanced away and then hesitantly, never looking from the passing buildings, his large hand spanned the distance from his thigh to the steering wheel, taking her hand in his and dropping them together to the console between them. This time it was her reassuring him with a tight grip about his hand, and still he sat silently, looking only at the world outside of their vehicle.
[]
Weeks passed before he could get himself the courage to touch her again. He hated the dependency that was growing; but he’d always been a tactile person and still was. She was quiet about his sudden blossoming need to *touch* her. She didn’t seem to think it out of place or even disturbing that his random and occasional touches had turned into a near constant pressure on her back, deliberate attempts to touch her as they traded papers across tables and the insistent need to make sure that she had everything she needed.
Bethany Harner’s obvious interest in him had sparked an intense few days where she could hardly enter the car without him opening the door for her and ushering her in. By the time the case had closed, he was back to his new normal self, but she was forced to wonder if Harner had scared him in some deep-seeded, emotionally unstable way.
And still he went home at night, stayed silent and showed up for work the next morning, physical and quiet.
[]
Thanksgiving had hardly ever inspired time for giving thanks, she remembered thinking, watching him leave the office at the end of it all. *She* had known where he was going, what he was going to be doing and what it was that had sparked his physical explosiveness. Their captain on the other hand was just about fed up with him. In all honesty there was little that she could have done to explain the situation to him and make him understand just what it was that was going on. Explaining that his mother was schizophrenic and dying of cancer after sacrificing three quarters of his life to helping her live through it all just didn’t seem to cover the basics.
She had worded some excuse to Ross, saying that she would talk to him, work with him and find out what it was that he wanted and get back to him the next day. That was to say that she would have to see him that evening when all she wanted to do was hide in her bed and sleep until sometime later in the week when her partner had sorted everything out for himself.
[]
Guilt had eaten through her resolve by the time she made it to her car in the garage. But even then, she could recognize it as something other than guilt, a deeper more solid understanding that she was the only person who did *really* understand why he was having such a hard time communicating his problems, issues and just the simple thoughts that were there everyday.
And so she found herself slowing her car by his building, unsurprised to see no lights in his apartment. The childish understanding that life disappeared in the dark coming to the fore, and still she found herself mounting the steps and entering the sickly lit foyer.
[]
By the time she’d reached his door, he’d turned on some lights; some foolhardy attempt to appear like he’d always had them on. It just meant that he’d been staring out the window, waiting for her to come.
She hated that she was that predictable.
And still she knocked, allowed her knuckles to rap against his heavy door three times and waited three breaths for him to open the door. He stared at her and she stared at him and in the end, he silently moved to the side and let her in.
She couldn’t have thought that his rooms would be in any shape other than what they normally were - he may have swiped his desk clean, but heaven forbid that he defile the sanctity of his home.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” He said softly.
“Captain’s pissed.” She informed him without preamble.
“So am I.”
“Yeah? So am I.” Elbow resting on her left arm, her right hand came up and covered her mouth, feebly trying to refrain from voicing anything else that she didn’t want to say.
He looked at her with no surprise and then, moved to stand in front of her. Staring at her intensely, keeping her focused on him, he reached out and took hold of her hand. His warm, heavy touch leaked along her nerves and up her arm, warming her deep into a spot that had long been simply *there.* She felt her angry resolve melting under his heated stare.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
His voice was so soft and so sincere that she didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in his words that said *what* he was sorry for, which she honestly, took to be for everything he had ever done in their entire relationship. She expected him to stop there and suddenly, he kept going.
“I’m sorry I’m so troublesome. I’m sorry for today. I’m sorry for yesterday. I’m sorry for the times I’m silent. I’m sorry for worrying you. I’m sor - “
Her free hand had somehow found a way to his lips and pressed, her eyes narrowing and her head shaking him into silence. “It’s enough.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. He laced their fingers and let himself swallow a smile that was touching the edges of his lips.
“Don’t think that because I’ve forgiven you that you’re off the hook, mister.”
He shook his head, still silenced by her fingers.
“I can’t take too much more of this martyrdom, you know.”
“It’s not - “
“It *is.* There is a lot going on in your life that makes it hard. I know.” She tugged him over t the couch with their still-laced fingers. “But there’re options. Take personal leave, family leave… Ross’ll give it to you in a heartbeat if only to have your sombre ass out of the squad for a week or two.”
His eyes fell to the floor in avoidance and she tugged on his hand, their only physical contact, to get him to look at her again. “We want you there, you know? But you’ve only been half there since your mom was diagnosed.”
“I don’t want to worry…” he faded away when she laughed cynically.
“To late for that, you idiot.” She watched him for a solid minute before she continued. “Do what *you* need for once. Don’t worry about us, we’re not going to fall apart while you put yourself back together.” She leaned into him and took his gaze. Once he did, she smiled and looked down to their attached hands. Her thumb traced the edge of his fingers, absorbing everything that she could. “*I* want you back to normal.”
He blinked and cocked his head to the side, seeming to process her words. Minutes passed and then, softly, “And this?” nodding to they’re hands.
She smiled, endeared by his hesitancy and his natural shyness when it came to her. “I kind of like this new part of you.”
“Me too.”
“You’ll talk to Ross?” She made sure.
He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to put…” he looked up at her and noticed the arched eyebrows, stopping mid-sentence. “Ok.”
[]
She’d left him later, without so much as a goodbye and had ridden home, feeling much more settled and confident. She knew that what he was going to be doing for his mother was much more important than that he was leaving her for an undisclosed amount of time; but the anticipation of him coming back whole and centered and… *Bobby* made the sacrifice worth it.
[]
It had been. Four weeks of him not coming in to sit across from her in the morning. Twenty-eight days of doing legwork for Logan and Wheeler. Six hundred and seventy-two hours of…
She hated to admit the thrill of thinking of… things that she shouldn’t have thought of. Just a simple touch, a soft look and the long moment of understanding; not voiced, not realized, not solidified but beautifully *there.*
The first time he’d called her, four days after he’d started his leave, it was nothing more than simple pleasantries; her work, his mother and nothing more.
And then, two night later a little longer.
By the end of the second week he was calling her every night to shoot the breeze; he talked of everything under the sun. His favourite books, his favourite music, his favourite memories and there, at the end, the statement that told her that he was coming back together.
“I miss work.”
The first time she heard it, she joked it off: “You miss hunting murderers and con-men?”
The second time, it seemed like he was saying something more.
The third time, she understood what was sitting under the word ‘work.’
And the fourth time, she swallowed her nervousness and answered, “I miss you, too.”
[]
“It’s nice to have you back,” Ross said, as he watched him shift through the squad room for the first time in four weeks.
And straight in to work.
When they finally made it to the car for the first time, she put the key into the ignition, turned on the car and then, took his hand.
“Hi.”
Physical contact aside, he smiled to her and nodded. “Hi.” He lifted her hand and laced their fingers together.
Before she slipped the car into gear, she looked at him and smiled. “You look good.”
His head tipped slightly and then he grinned shyly, “I feel good.”
“Yeah?” He thought for a moment and then nodded. “Good.”
[]
She drove him home that night, after a long time just talking through the basics of the case. They were them, again, for the first time in several short months; banter and thoughts and speculations flying between them like nothing more than air.
Just before he stepped out of the vehicle for the night, she took his hand and smiled at him. “I’m glad that you’re back.”
He watched her for an intense eternity and then, seeming to decide on something, leaned over the console while tugging her closer with their joined hands and kissed her with very little passion and a lot of affection.
“I am too.”
[]
She looked pretty, and still he couldn’t find himself voicing the words.
Six years together and nothing in his vocabulary could sufficiently transform, “You look pretty,” into something understandable. He didn’t have permission for that anyway.
What he could do was touch her. Physicality had everything over vocabulary anyway, he thought, reaching out to touch her hand as she waited at the door to the Harrington’s.
She could only smile at him and then, there in the company of everyone he didn’t know, he wanted to kiss her with such a keen intensity that he very nearly gave in.
It was becoming dangerous, but he had always been one to live on the edge.
[]
He drove her home that night and, so caught up in his need to forget about his wanting to kiss her, nearly missed the offer for coffee.
Knowing that it was a bad, bad idea, and him being a glutton for personal punishment followed her like the loyal man that he was. Deep in the middle of his chest he could feel a heavy weight distracting him from the visions of her and him and a lot of things that he had successfully suffocated for the first five years together.
Now though, with memories of her touch burned into the tactile dreams of his brain, visions of *Alex* danced roughshod over his mind with a lot of bad after effects.
But he was thrown, physically and mentally when, two feet over the threshold to her apartment, small hands grasped his coat and tugged him forward, into her and onto her and…
God.
And still he couldn’t find any words.
[]
She’d been mildly embarrassed when she’d finally released him, but nothing had even registered with him before he found his own hands reaching for her to return the favour. Small, cool hands curled around his neck and the lithe warm body slipped against his with ultimate intimacy. There was no awkwardness, no false starts, no reserve; just the two of them.
“So help me God, if you stop…”
Hands shook as they toured her body with overwhelming curiosity, and lips tested the contours of her face before he could find the syllables to say, “I couldn’t if I tried.”
So, he found that he lied when emotions ambushed him when she touched his face and his nerves betrayed him when he felt her breath against the soft cotton of his shirt and all control of his body slipped from him. He collapsed into a quivering shaking man who clung to the one solid rock in his life with his face buried into her stomach.
“Bobby?”
He blinked, brought back to himself by her voice and looked up to her looking down on him. Understanding lit her eyes, tenderness laced her touch and then, softly tracing the side of his face, desire was sparked at the small quirk of her mouth. Calm, joy and happiness washed over him in a soothing white wave.
And then… and still, he loved her.
[end]
WARNING: B/A ahead
Title: And Still
Author: Divine Joker
E-Mail: divinejoker @ yahoo . ca
Spoilers: Anything and everything up to Privilege
Disclaimer: Money made by these characters goes to anyone but me, that’s fer sure. I don’t make nothing… from this, anyway.
Rating: M for the implications made.
A/N: I tend to have a habit of moving from fandom to fandom in sporadic and kind of nomadic movements. Now it is time for LO:CI, as indicated by the two fics and two vids in the last two weeks; whereas I had done nothing in the fandom but *watch* for the previous year… *sigh*
Lucky you.
[beginning]
It had started in the hospital the night after she had been hung up on a meat hook for twenty-four hours. The startled reflex to the sound of the curtain, the release of memories to the man who had been sitting with her at the time; nothing could have made that moment any more painful.
And still, he sat there, quietly absorbing the pain that washed off of her. She had almost drifted off in the middle of it all and then, gently, discreetly, his warm calloused fingers circled hers and held on tightly for a long moment. Her eyes teared up, drug-induced emotions overwhelming her tattered walls and seeping wetly down her cheek. He’d done everything he could and still he sat there.
It was just a hand, holding another hand and still it seemed to glue her world together.
[]
It happened again the afternoon they’d watched a desperate man kill himself. In the car, in the silence of the running engine and she’d asked him if he was all right. That was it, just four simple words, checking up on the mental health of her best friend.
He’d glanced at her, glanced away and then hesitantly, never looking from the passing buildings, his large hand spanned the distance from his thigh to the steering wheel, taking her hand in his and dropping them together to the console between them. This time it was her reassuring him with a tight grip about his hand, and still he sat silently, looking only at the world outside of their vehicle.
[]
Weeks passed before he could get himself the courage to touch her again. He hated the dependency that was growing; but he’d always been a tactile person and still was. She was quiet about his sudden blossoming need to *touch* her. She didn’t seem to think it out of place or even disturbing that his random and occasional touches had turned into a near constant pressure on her back, deliberate attempts to touch her as they traded papers across tables and the insistent need to make sure that she had everything she needed.
Bethany Harner’s obvious interest in him had sparked an intense few days where she could hardly enter the car without him opening the door for her and ushering her in. By the time the case had closed, he was back to his new normal self, but she was forced to wonder if Harner had scared him in some deep-seeded, emotionally unstable way.
And still he went home at night, stayed silent and showed up for work the next morning, physical and quiet.
[]
Thanksgiving had hardly ever inspired time for giving thanks, she remembered thinking, watching him leave the office at the end of it all. *She* had known where he was going, what he was going to be doing and what it was that had sparked his physical explosiveness. Their captain on the other hand was just about fed up with him. In all honesty there was little that she could have done to explain the situation to him and make him understand just what it was that was going on. Explaining that his mother was schizophrenic and dying of cancer after sacrificing three quarters of his life to helping her live through it all just didn’t seem to cover the basics.
She had worded some excuse to Ross, saying that she would talk to him, work with him and find out what it was that he wanted and get back to him the next day. That was to say that she would have to see him that evening when all she wanted to do was hide in her bed and sleep until sometime later in the week when her partner had sorted everything out for himself.
[]
Guilt had eaten through her resolve by the time she made it to her car in the garage. But even then, she could recognize it as something other than guilt, a deeper more solid understanding that she was the only person who did *really* understand why he was having such a hard time communicating his problems, issues and just the simple thoughts that were there everyday.
And so she found herself slowing her car by his building, unsurprised to see no lights in his apartment. The childish understanding that life disappeared in the dark coming to the fore, and still she found herself mounting the steps and entering the sickly lit foyer.
[]
By the time she’d reached his door, he’d turned on some lights; some foolhardy attempt to appear like he’d always had them on. It just meant that he’d been staring out the window, waiting for her to come.
She hated that she was that predictable.
And still she knocked, allowed her knuckles to rap against his heavy door three times and waited three breaths for him to open the door. He stared at her and she stared at him and in the end, he silently moved to the side and let her in.
She couldn’t have thought that his rooms would be in any shape other than what they normally were - he may have swiped his desk clean, but heaven forbid that he defile the sanctity of his home.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” He said softly.
“Captain’s pissed.” She informed him without preamble.
“So am I.”
“Yeah? So am I.” Elbow resting on her left arm, her right hand came up and covered her mouth, feebly trying to refrain from voicing anything else that she didn’t want to say.
He looked at her with no surprise and then, moved to stand in front of her. Staring at her intensely, keeping her focused on him, he reached out and took hold of her hand. His warm, heavy touch leaked along her nerves and up her arm, warming her deep into a spot that had long been simply *there.* She felt her angry resolve melting under his heated stare.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
His voice was so soft and so sincere that she didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in his words that said *what* he was sorry for, which she honestly, took to be for everything he had ever done in their entire relationship. She expected him to stop there and suddenly, he kept going.
“I’m sorry I’m so troublesome. I’m sorry for today. I’m sorry for yesterday. I’m sorry for the times I’m silent. I’m sorry for worrying you. I’m sor - “
Her free hand had somehow found a way to his lips and pressed, her eyes narrowing and her head shaking him into silence. “It’s enough.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. He laced their fingers and let himself swallow a smile that was touching the edges of his lips.
“Don’t think that because I’ve forgiven you that you’re off the hook, mister.”
He shook his head, still silenced by her fingers.
“I can’t take too much more of this martyrdom, you know.”
“It’s not - “
“It *is.* There is a lot going on in your life that makes it hard. I know.” She tugged him over t the couch with their still-laced fingers. “But there’re options. Take personal leave, family leave… Ross’ll give it to you in a heartbeat if only to have your sombre ass out of the squad for a week or two.”
His eyes fell to the floor in avoidance and she tugged on his hand, their only physical contact, to get him to look at her again. “We want you there, you know? But you’ve only been half there since your mom was diagnosed.”
“I don’t want to worry…” he faded away when she laughed cynically.
“To late for that, you idiot.” She watched him for a solid minute before she continued. “Do what *you* need for once. Don’t worry about us, we’re not going to fall apart while you put yourself back together.” She leaned into him and took his gaze. Once he did, she smiled and looked down to their attached hands. Her thumb traced the edge of his fingers, absorbing everything that she could. “*I* want you back to normal.”
He blinked and cocked his head to the side, seeming to process her words. Minutes passed and then, softly, “And this?” nodding to they’re hands.
She smiled, endeared by his hesitancy and his natural shyness when it came to her. “I kind of like this new part of you.”
“Me too.”
“You’ll talk to Ross?” She made sure.
He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to put…” he looked up at her and noticed the arched eyebrows, stopping mid-sentence. “Ok.”
[]
She’d left him later, without so much as a goodbye and had ridden home, feeling much more settled and confident. She knew that what he was going to be doing for his mother was much more important than that he was leaving her for an undisclosed amount of time; but the anticipation of him coming back whole and centered and… *Bobby* made the sacrifice worth it.
[]
It had been. Four weeks of him not coming in to sit across from her in the morning. Twenty-eight days of doing legwork for Logan and Wheeler. Six hundred and seventy-two hours of…
She hated to admit the thrill of thinking of… things that she shouldn’t have thought of. Just a simple touch, a soft look and the long moment of understanding; not voiced, not realized, not solidified but beautifully *there.*
The first time he’d called her, four days after he’d started his leave, it was nothing more than simple pleasantries; her work, his mother and nothing more.
And then, two night later a little longer.
By the end of the second week he was calling her every night to shoot the breeze; he talked of everything under the sun. His favourite books, his favourite music, his favourite memories and there, at the end, the statement that told her that he was coming back together.
“I miss work.”
The first time she heard it, she joked it off: “You miss hunting murderers and con-men?”
The second time, it seemed like he was saying something more.
The third time, she understood what was sitting under the word ‘work.’
And the fourth time, she swallowed her nervousness and answered, “I miss you, too.”
[]
“It’s nice to have you back,” Ross said, as he watched him shift through the squad room for the first time in four weeks.
And straight in to work.
When they finally made it to the car for the first time, she put the key into the ignition, turned on the car and then, took his hand.
“Hi.”
Physical contact aside, he smiled to her and nodded. “Hi.” He lifted her hand and laced their fingers together.
Before she slipped the car into gear, she looked at him and smiled. “You look good.”
His head tipped slightly and then he grinned shyly, “I feel good.”
“Yeah?” He thought for a moment and then nodded. “Good.”
[]
She drove him home that night, after a long time just talking through the basics of the case. They were them, again, for the first time in several short months; banter and thoughts and speculations flying between them like nothing more than air.
Just before he stepped out of the vehicle for the night, she took his hand and smiled at him. “I’m glad that you’re back.”
He watched her for an intense eternity and then, seeming to decide on something, leaned over the console while tugging her closer with their joined hands and kissed her with very little passion and a lot of affection.
“I am too.”
[]
She looked pretty, and still he couldn’t find himself voicing the words.
Six years together and nothing in his vocabulary could sufficiently transform, “You look pretty,” into something understandable. He didn’t have permission for that anyway.
What he could do was touch her. Physicality had everything over vocabulary anyway, he thought, reaching out to touch her hand as she waited at the door to the Harrington’s.
She could only smile at him and then, there in the company of everyone he didn’t know, he wanted to kiss her with such a keen intensity that he very nearly gave in.
It was becoming dangerous, but he had always been one to live on the edge.
[]
He drove her home that night and, so caught up in his need to forget about his wanting to kiss her, nearly missed the offer for coffee.
Knowing that it was a bad, bad idea, and him being a glutton for personal punishment followed her like the loyal man that he was. Deep in the middle of his chest he could feel a heavy weight distracting him from the visions of her and him and a lot of things that he had successfully suffocated for the first five years together.
Now though, with memories of her touch burned into the tactile dreams of his brain, visions of *Alex* danced roughshod over his mind with a lot of bad after effects.
But he was thrown, physically and mentally when, two feet over the threshold to her apartment, small hands grasped his coat and tugged him forward, into her and onto her and…
God.
And still he couldn’t find any words.
[]
She’d been mildly embarrassed when she’d finally released him, but nothing had even registered with him before he found his own hands reaching for her to return the favour. Small, cool hands curled around his neck and the lithe warm body slipped against his with ultimate intimacy. There was no awkwardness, no false starts, no reserve; just the two of them.
“So help me God, if you stop…”
Hands shook as they toured her body with overwhelming curiosity, and lips tested the contours of her face before he could find the syllables to say, “I couldn’t if I tried.”
So, he found that he lied when emotions ambushed him when she touched his face and his nerves betrayed him when he felt her breath against the soft cotton of his shirt and all control of his body slipped from him. He collapsed into a quivering shaking man who clung to the one solid rock in his life with his face buried into her stomach.
“Bobby?”
He blinked, brought back to himself by her voice and looked up to her looking down on him. Understanding lit her eyes, tenderness laced her touch and then, softly tracing the side of his face, desire was sparked at the small quirk of her mouth. Calm, joy and happiness washed over him in a soothing white wave.
And then… and still, he loved her.
[end]