All I needed was a moment.

Reese here. Keep it under a minute, or I'm hanging up.

((Leave any and all RP/fanfic related messages here!))

Someday, in a place that's sunnier and more tangible than here, there might be an equation in place for when you plus another equals one. This isn't that place. She's too far away to equal half a person, and he's too present.

( Dani's drowning )

1) The fruit.

Dani, for reasons unlike Charlie's -- or, if she stops to think about the statistics, for reasons entirely too similar to Charlie's -- eats better than most. Fruit and vegetables, to get her vitamins. Dairy. A bit too much dairy, because she was lactose intolerant until her early teens, and still sometimes forgets that she'll be allowed to have milk next week, too. No meat, because the smell of it frying brings her back to Sunday afternoon barbeques at her Father's house. Steaks on the grill, along with corn on the cob and spare ribs, while Dani's mother sat in the kitchen, eating a light salad.

So Dani gets liking fruit. She does. What she does not get is why Crews so often tries to eat it in her car. It's gotten to the point where she has to have it cleaned at least once a week. Once, he brought in a personal watermelon (apparently, they don't just come in pineapples), and Dani made him walk along Sunset until he finished it.

This keeps up, and she's going to start billing him for the carpet cleaning.

2) The Zen

He says he needs something to center himself. Dani admits to not getting that. What she does not admit aloud is the reason why.

Dani doesn’t have enough inside of her to know that need. It’s all been used up.

He says he needs something to center himself, which is fine. But there are days, bad days, when his proverbs fall on tired ears. When he says them in such a way that both partners know it's bullshit.

When he doesn't sound Zen, it's an indicator that the day is really as unsalvageable as Dani thinks. She'd rather not have that indicator. Selfishly, she thinks she might rather have him sound tired all the time. That way she could go back to not knowing the difference between a bad day, and a day she will dream about. The nightmares come easier when the distinctions are made clear.

3) The fact that he finds her attractive.

Dani isn't blind, and neither are the idiots she so often comes across that don't understand what a badge means. The idiots who think they're saying something she's never heard before. Who think they're the first to look past the clothes. Underneath the clothes, in a way that makes her skin crawl. Makes her want to lash out and scratch their skin raw so that they know what it feels like. Whenever those idiots, between meeting her and being arrested, comment on Dani's looks, she sees Crews tilting his head to the side, the way he does on a particularly tough case. That head tilt means he's trying to look at things objectively. Trying to see the minute detail, and the bigger picture.

That head tilt means a great many things. But never does it mean he disagrees.

4) The fact that at some point, they will sleep together.

Still not blind.

Not blind to the fact that there are days, days when he has spoken very little, that she can see herself being attracted to Charlie Crews.

Not blind to the fact that she does see him as a partner, and trusts him implicitly.

Not blind to the fact that many partners have made this mistake before, and will again.

Not blind to the fact that it will be a mistake. It won't destroy them, and it won't end the partnership, but it will be a mistake. One of those things that happen sometimes, likely on a night when Charlie's sounded tired all day. They won't be able to talk about it for years, and even then, it will be in the context of ungenuine laughter, when they're trying to make it sound less serious than it will actually be.

5) His taste in music.

It's twelve years out of date. And while he pretty much has the best excuse on the planet as to why, there's only so many times Hootie and the Blowfish can be reasoned away by prison.

6) His suits.

She can tell he gets them specially made, and so can the rest of the force. It's a sign of his money; it's a sign that he's an outsider. Dani's an outsider too, but at least she doesn't dress the part.

7) That one wrong word, one bad situation, sends him right back into con mentality. He knows she notices. She notices-

8) The way his shoulders hunch up, like he's waiting to attack.

9) The way he looks paranoid, the way she used to look paranoid. He's always so damn ready to go back to prison.

And Dani hates that he has to think like that. She hates that he will never be able to see a world outside the definitions of a barbed wire gate. She hates that he thinks, and will always think, that he is living on borrow time.

But most of all, Dani hates that:

10) He might be right.

Because she knows how it works. If her father is after you...then he doesn't stop. Ever. And it's all she can do to pretend like Charlie pretends. They pretend that things will always be like this. That he will always annoy her, that she will always ask him to be silent, and that somewhere in the bickering they will manage to get their work done.

Things will change. He will become important to her. The day may come when all she wants to do is hear him talk (though even now, this sounds very unlikely). And they may not always work well together. Few people do.

Things change. Things always change. And if pressed to admit it, Dani hates that, too.