Life fic: The moment your eyes open
Title: The moment your eyes open
Pairing: Crews, Crews/Reese
Rating: PG
Summary: “I don’t really know where to start, Crews.” Life fic. 880 words. Post-ep for One.
(Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.)
-from variations on the word love, by margaret atwood
After all the chaos at the station with the LAPD, FBI, Tidwell, Bodner, Bobby and Seever, it’s just him and her. Like everyone - even Tidwell - sensed they needed a moment to themselves. There were questions. Hours and hours of questions. He might have rescued a detective but he still went off the books to go about it, and then there was what happened to Roman. Corruption in the FBI was too embarrassing to openly acknowledge, so they couldn’t just let him off the hook. Oh, there were questions.
Reese hadn’t escaped scrutiny either. He could see the hours in the embittered turn of her mouth as she approached him in the courtyard outside the station. Her steps were light and slow. Movements of someone unused to savouring their space.
“So I guess we have things to talk about,” she started as she neared. She stopped before she got too close.
Crews nodded, looking out over the bustling car park and linking his arms over the rails.
“I guess we have things,” he agreed.
Anyone else would have hurried home as soon as they were released - probably accepting a week of leave on top of that - but not Reese. She wanted to fight. To prove that what happened had not affected her.
After their desperate bid for connection in the orange grove, a slight shyness had settled between them in the interim. Their gazes hovered and slipped like two children tentatively approaching one another in the playground.
Reese gradually sidled up to him, leaning over the rail at his side. The wind tussled her hair and the sun furrowed out exhausted circles under her eyes. She craned her neck to look down at the officers traipsing in and out of the lower building. Despite everything, she seemed more at peace than he had ever seen her.
“I don’t really know where to start, Crews.”
“We have time.”
And they did. His zen might have annoyed her once, but she didn’t even feign irritation now. Instead his words seemed to settle on her shoulders and soothe the remaining tension.
At some point immersing himself in a case and working his mind over something that didn’t involve the people who framed him had ceased being his sole comfort in life. It had taken losing her to Roman to realise that Reese was the source of that comfort. Seeing her, every day. Her stalwart manner, her brisk impatience which eventually gave way to his playful nudging. The childish eye-roll she gave when she was annoyed with his zen; the quirk of her mouth when she was amused but she wasn’t going to show it; and the tone to her voice when she said his name, “Crews,” like it mattered and like she cared. It was a long time since he’d developed that kind of dependence on another person. Maybe that was why he’d ignored it for so long. When he got out he’d treated people like objects; disposable. Unnecessary. Because no suffering befalls the man who calls nothing his own. Women traipsed in and out of his life like faceless, nameless entities. And he let them. It tempered disappointment. When they slipped in past his defences, like Constance, like Jen, they only ended up proving his philosophy by letting him down.
But not Reese. Not Reese.
“I just…” Reese frowned with the difficulty of someone unused to expressing truths. She looked down at her hands; the lines etched in her palms, the dirt underneath her fingernails. “I want… I want to say thank you.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I do,” she insisted, exhaling sharply. “I just… do.”
He understood. Why it was so important for her to acknowledge the trust extending out between them, fragile and new. Instead of shying from it as she once might, she seemed scared and determined to reach out and claim it. She knew what he was willing to do for her now. He knew it too.
“Okay,” he said simply.
Just breathe.
“Okay.”
And before he could react, she reached forward and clasped his hand - like she was ripping a bandaid off, almost - fulfilling the contact they had missed before. Warmth coursed through his fingers and he bent his head and examined their hands with prolonged interest. The contrast of pale skin against soft brown. It fascinated him, her affection. The way little things had fascinated him when he emerged from prison, small things other people dismissed as trivialities. They didn’t pause long enough to zero in on lurking intricacies the way he did. She held on so tight he could see the bones flexing and her skin going taut.
A smile pulled at his lips.
And when Reese smiled back, it softened her whole face, and it reminded him of the orange grove and the dust kicking up around him; the pungent scent of green and leaves intermingling with the burn of departing tyres; heat prickling through the fabric of his suit; and knowing he was free.
They both were.
Pairing: Crews, Crews/Reese
Rating: PG
Summary: “I don’t really know where to start, Crews.” Life fic. 880 words. Post-ep for One.
(Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.)
-from variations on the word love, by margaret atwood
After all the chaos at the station with the LAPD, FBI, Tidwell, Bodner, Bobby and Seever, it’s just him and her. Like everyone - even Tidwell - sensed they needed a moment to themselves. There were questions. Hours and hours of questions. He might have rescued a detective but he still went off the books to go about it, and then there was what happened to Roman. Corruption in the FBI was too embarrassing to openly acknowledge, so they couldn’t just let him off the hook. Oh, there were questions.
Reese hadn’t escaped scrutiny either. He could see the hours in the embittered turn of her mouth as she approached him in the courtyard outside the station. Her steps were light and slow. Movements of someone unused to savouring their space.
“So I guess we have things to talk about,” she started as she neared. She stopped before she got too close.
Crews nodded, looking out over the bustling car park and linking his arms over the rails.
“I guess we have things,” he agreed.
Anyone else would have hurried home as soon as they were released - probably accepting a week of leave on top of that - but not Reese. She wanted to fight. To prove that what happened had not affected her.
After their desperate bid for connection in the orange grove, a slight shyness had settled between them in the interim. Their gazes hovered and slipped like two children tentatively approaching one another in the playground.
Reese gradually sidled up to him, leaning over the rail at his side. The wind tussled her hair and the sun furrowed out exhausted circles under her eyes. She craned her neck to look down at the officers traipsing in and out of the lower building. Despite everything, she seemed more at peace than he had ever seen her.
“I don’t really know where to start, Crews.”
“We have time.”
And they did. His zen might have annoyed her once, but she didn’t even feign irritation now. Instead his words seemed to settle on her shoulders and soothe the remaining tension.
At some point immersing himself in a case and working his mind over something that didn’t involve the people who framed him had ceased being his sole comfort in life. It had taken losing her to Roman to realise that Reese was the source of that comfort. Seeing her, every day. Her stalwart manner, her brisk impatience which eventually gave way to his playful nudging. The childish eye-roll she gave when she was annoyed with his zen; the quirk of her mouth when she was amused but she wasn’t going to show it; and the tone to her voice when she said his name, “Crews,” like it mattered and like she cared. It was a long time since he’d developed that kind of dependence on another person. Maybe that was why he’d ignored it for so long. When he got out he’d treated people like objects; disposable. Unnecessary. Because no suffering befalls the man who calls nothing his own. Women traipsed in and out of his life like faceless, nameless entities. And he let them. It tempered disappointment. When they slipped in past his defences, like Constance, like Jen, they only ended up proving his philosophy by letting him down.
But not Reese. Not Reese.
“I just…” Reese frowned with the difficulty of someone unused to expressing truths. She looked down at her hands; the lines etched in her palms, the dirt underneath her fingernails. “I want… I want to say thank you.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I do,” she insisted, exhaling sharply. “I just… do.”
He understood. Why it was so important for her to acknowledge the trust extending out between them, fragile and new. Instead of shying from it as she once might, she seemed scared and determined to reach out and claim it. She knew what he was willing to do for her now. He knew it too.
“Okay,” he said simply.
Just breathe.
“Okay.”
And before he could react, she reached forward and clasped his hand - like she was ripping a bandaid off, almost - fulfilling the contact they had missed before. Warmth coursed through his fingers and he bent his head and examined their hands with prolonged interest. The contrast of pale skin against soft brown. It fascinated him, her affection. The way little things had fascinated him when he emerged from prison, small things other people dismissed as trivialities. They didn’t pause long enough to zero in on lurking intricacies the way he did. She held on so tight he could see the bones flexing and her skin going taut.
A smile pulled at his lips.
And when Reese smiled back, it softened her whole face, and it reminded him of the orange grove and the dust kicking up around him; the pungent scent of green and leaves intermingling with the burn of departing tyres; heat prickling through the fabric of his suit; and knowing he was free.
They both were.