Falling Down on the Job

Disclaimered to Wolf & Co.   I saw an ancient challenge on a dueSouth archive which triggered the muse. First line challenge, followed here to the letter.
Copyright July 2006 Cassatt

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in love with him....

Ed Green was standing immediately inside the threshold of the EADA's office, only half-listening to his partner discuss specifics of their most recent homicide with the office's occupant, the words in his head an echo from the evening before. From a conversation with a good friend who had been telling Ed about a guy he worked with, closely; a guy who was starting to look different to him, in unexpected ways. Like the fact that suddenly this guy's scent was driving Ed's friend a little crazy, and suddenly the guy's clothes complimented his coloring, and suddenly the quirk of his mouth was enough to make his friend forget where he was. Where they both were: at work.

Ed was skeptical that something like that could happen so quickly, like his friend was describing. One day there was nothing much but professional respect and camaraderie, and the next there were contemplations of intimacy and adoration. Imaginings of all things loving and intense. It didn't happen like that to Ed's way of thinking. You hooked up with a guy you met, somewhere, and maybe you hit it off and maybe you didn't, and maybe you had sex that night, if you were horny enough to overlook those niggling things that you really didn't like in him. Maybe you put off sex one or two times until you felt more at ease, when those niggling things no longer bothered you, or you found some way to determine that they were irrelevant. Mostly because by then you were far too horny to even want to put him off any longer. It was only hooking up, after all.

Joe Fontana's voice was louder than the minute before, bringing Ed's attention back where it belonged. Joe had a point to make, apparently, about the paucity of evidence and the fact that he and Ed had managed to find two witnesses who were willing to testify. Knowing that the reason they were willing might not be the most dependable of reasons, Ed was about to interject his own opinion into the discussion when Jack McCoy looked in his direction. Across the desk, table and four feet of floor their eyes met.

"Detective, are you leaving or staying?" McCoy said with a lift of his eyebrows.

"I, uh...," Ed said, pausing, "...staying," he finished, momentarily confused by the tilt of McCoy's head, the small sparkle he thought he saw in the other man's eyes. He was very familiar with McCoy's dry sense of humor, and could recognize it, and definitely enjoyed it, so the fact that it was causing him to feel confused... confused him. Chuffing silently in disgust, he came further into the room, pulling off his coat and sitting across the table from Joe.

"--I don't think my partner would disagree with me about these witnesses, Mr. McCoy," Joe said. He looked at Ed, pointedly.

Ed tried to think of a way to answer that and still tell the truth, as he saw it. This was one of the things that he sincerely did not appreciate about working with Fontana; though the man's instincts were often excellent, he had no compunction about stretching things to make the job easier. At least easier in his own mind, which was very often not easier in Ed's mind. Besides, he had worked too hard to clean up his rep, to earn some respect as a good Homicide detective, not merely a statistically successful one. McCoy leaned back in his chair and fixed Ed with a glance; he could see it out of the corner of his eye. Ed cleared his throat.

McCoy said, "Detective? Are they good witnesses?"

"Well," Ed said, "their stories are worth checking out, I'm just not sure why they came forward." He shrugged, ignoring the heated glare coming from across the table.

"Okay, why do you think they came forward?" McCoy leaned toward him, and his rolled up shirt sleeves rode higher, the desk light reflecting off the gold face of his watch, its dark leather band standing out against his pale skin. The muscles of his wrist and forearm flexed as he picked up a pen with his left hand and absently stood it on its end, slid his finger and thumb down, flipped it, and rhythmically repeated the action.

Ed watched McCoy's hand, mesmerized. It was a strong hand, and would probably form a good grip in any number of circumstances, and the more he thought about it, he concluded that was a proper assessment since the man always gave a good hand shake. Soul shake, too, and the fact that they had even started doing that years ago, so naturally, as if they were brothers sittin' at a bar, tossing down--

"Hey, Ed," Joe said, kicking his foot under the table.

Ed looked at him. "Yeah?"

"You got somethin' you want to add? Maybe explain a little further about what you mean by their reasons for telling us the truth?"

"Well...." He tried to grasp onto something that would get him out of this discussion. Partner loyalty versus the truth was too often the rub with Fontana, and Ed had thought he'd learned that lesson already with Lennie, way back, years before. One would think that once a lesson is learned for chrissakes it wouldn't have to be faced again. Wasn't that the karmic axiom his friend kept harpin' on? Learn once and move on? How come that never actually worked in real life?

"Ed." Joe kicked him again.

"Yeah," Ed said, "their reasons for telling the truth. It's just that they might be wanting to put down their friend for some ulterior motive. The usual bullshit. I couldn't tell by listening to them whether they were on the level. That's all." He shot a little glare at Joe for effect.

"Huh," McCoy said. Ed looked at him. "Your instincts are well-honed. To be trusted." McCoy cocked his head, pressing his lips together. "What was different this time?"

Ed kept looking at him because he couldn't honestly believe what he had just heard. His instincts were well-honed? McCoy had actually said that, in front of his partner? And how come he had never noticed the way McCoy's skin changed hue, like that? That wash of pink that swept across his cheeks? Ed watched it burn for a moment before fading. Would it be hot to the touch? Ed's heart skipped a beat as he imagined gently stroking two fingers down the curve of that cheek, into the hollow of a crease which had deepened over the years he had known McCoy. Would it be soft? Would McCoy close his eyes to feel it? Ed focused, his heart beat skittering against his ribs. "What was different this time?"

"Yes," McCoy said, his voice low.

Ed tried a deep breath, but his chest wasn't moving enough. "Nothing," he lied. Everything. Joe Fontana's smirk Ed had seen in his peripheral vision, there on the sidewalk in front of the bodega. "I didn't believe them."

McCoy smiled a small smile, and if Ed hadn't been watching him so carefully he might have missed it. He didn't know what it signified. "Okay," McCoy said. "Find me some corroboration. Enough so I can make sure this guy gets remand." He set down the pen he was still holding, never losing eye contact with Ed.

Fontana let out an obviously disgusted sigh. "I don't think--"

"Corroboration, Detective," McCoy said sharply. The smile was nowhere in sight, and the quick blaze in his eyes was directed Joe's way, and Ed felt nothing to see it other than a spark of gratitude that it had not been shot at Ed in a number of years. McCoy turned to him. "And when you've got something you're sure of, let me know."

Ed nodded and was rewarded with another of those small smiles. As the three of them stood to end the meeting, McCoy held out his hand for a soul shake, but this time there was a trace of something behind his stance, pinging all of Ed's well-honed instincts, telling him the other man was putting more than simple casual enthusiasm behind the lingering hand contact. It might have been the feel of McCoy's fingertips brushing his palm; it might have been the way he was peering so intently into Ed's eyes; it might have been nothing more than an overactive imagination which had tossed Ed into some strange alternate universe where his pulse was suddenly thrumming, quickening in the pit of his stomach. Fading the rest of the room to black.

What would it be like, Ed wondered, to have Jack's intensity focused solely on him? That concentration? Would the man be a romantic? A pragmatist? Would he love to watch a movie from the back of the theater so hands could be held, fingers sucked slowly, kisses stolen when nobody was watching? Would ten minutes with Jack in the privacy of his apartment feel like an hour? Or a second? Would his mouth be hungry for Ed's... and what would he taste like? Would his lithe body fit Ed's as if they were meant to be together?

Ed and Fontana walked to the elevators, and though Joe was muttering an almost nonstop monologue about the additional work, Ed ignored him. He expected whatever he had experienced in 1012 to disappear, as if some spell had been woven that shattered once the threshold was again crossed. But even as the elevator took them back down to the streets of Manhattan, Ed's mind was stuck on the tenth floor. He thought about that last small smile that Jack had flashed him. He wondered how many of them he had missed over time, because he was suddenly all too aware that he would not miss any in the future. At some point he would do his best to dazzle the man with a smile of his own, and maybe ask him to dinner, and maybe find some way to make his interest known with no ambiguity, and maybe even move in for a kiss at the end of the evening. And maybe, just maybe, he would learn precisely, and completely, what it would be like to be in love with Jack McCoy.

Fin

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