Title: connections.
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, crossover
Word Count: 6,300
Characters/Pairings: Dani Reese, Matt Flannery (Matt Flannery/Charlie Crews)
Summary: Dani meets Matt Flannery for the first time when she’s in the middle of a hostage negotiation, two months after she graduates from the police academy. Crossover between the shows Life and Standoff.
Disclaimer: I do not own a single thing.

Author’s note: This actually isn’t part of my big old Matt/Charlie AU series, just for the record.



Dani meets Matt Flannery for the first time when she's in the middle of a hostage situation, two months after she graduates from the police academy.

To be more specific, Dani meets Matt Flannery while her partner, one of the good old boys who's a year away from his twenty and just loves to needle her about her last name, is being held hostage by two gangbangers with more tattoos on their bodies than brains in their heads.

Dani doesn't like her partner, and doesn't really respect him--she respects his experience, which isn't the same thing--but none of that matters. He's her partner, and he's in trouble, and she is supposed to back him up. That is the rule.

So when the FBI gets called in, Dani insists on listening in to the negotiations. She expects to be ignored, or treated like an annoyance, but it actually doesn't go down like that.

She's welcomed into the tiny van politely, and offered a seat and some coffee, and the lead negotiator, a guy named Flannery, actually smiles at her for a moment before he gets back to the business of saving her partner's life.

*

As worried as Dani is--she can't help but pay attention to what Flannery's doing. After a while, she starts to see it, see the different approaches he's taking, the way he turns a phrase, modulates his voice, all in the name of getting what he wants, getting the perps to give him what he wants.

Three hours in, she decides to say something. As Flannery takes a drink from a water bottle, Dani clears her throat and says, feeling somewhat awkward, "You're good at this." It's just an observation, but if he tries to take it as her hitting on him or something--

But Flannery just looks at her and shrugs. "Wouldn't be here if I wasn't," he says mildly, and it's not patronizing or cocky, just a statement of fact, because he is good, and he knows it, and proves it to her when he gets her partner out of the standoff alive and well, with the gangbangers in custody.

*

The second time she sees Matt Flannery, it's in a cop bar. Her partner's invited him over for drinks, he and his buddies and his wife all want to say thank you, show their appreciation. Somehow they found out that Flannery was former LAPD, and that his mother was LAPD too, which makes him practically a long-lost relative as far as they're all concerned.

An hour in, Flannery settles into the stool next to hers at the counter, ordering a glass of whiskey. "Haven't seen much of you tonight," he observes. Dani shoots him a sideways glance and waits for the rest of it. Except Flannery's just looking back at her, no obvious leer on his face, and he's waiting for a response, so Dani eventually gives him one. "Not much for parties."

Flannery nods at that. "I hear you. Just spent the last eight hours talking a jumper off the roof of a building. My voice is shot to hell—“and now that he mentioned it, Dani could hear the ragged edge in his voice, the faint rasp that colored his words, "—and I've been stuck wearing Kevlar all day."

"So why are you here?"

He shrugs. "Seemed rude to just cancel.” He holds up his beer bottle and smiles. “Besides, free drinks—who can say no to that?”

She and Flannery end up playing a couple rounds of pool—he wins the first, she wins the second, and by the end of the night, Dani’s got a napkin tucked into her pocket with Matt Flannery’s phone number on it.

*

After that, it becomes a semi-regular thing. They go out, usually to a bar, but sometimes to a diner, and trade work stories. Matt’s always armed with at least one doozy of a tale, but Dani’s acquiring some of her own the longer she is on the force.

Dani might not see or hear from Matt for weeks, and then one day he’ll call her up and say, “Reese, you feel like going out?” Or sometimes she’ll call him and ask, “Hey, you free?”

They sit on opposite sides of a booth and talk for hours at a time, and it’s nice, it really is. To be able to sit with someone and just talk, no pressure, no expectations. Matt’s never made a move on her, and if there was ever a time when Dani considered going there, she doesn’t now.

It’s nice, that’s all. And it’s fun, hearing Matt tell her about his partner Cheryl, or Frank from Tactical, who’s apparently made it his mission in life to annoy the hell out of Matt. And Dani gets to tell Matt about the crazy calls she gets sent out on, the days where the city feels so surreal that it’s like she’s stepped into the rabbit hole.

It’s not a regular thing, Dani’s not calling him every day or even every week—but it’s a pattern, it’s a routine.

Then Dani gets tapped for an undercover gig, and things slowly start to change.

*

Matt listens, his face concerned, while Dani tells him what she can about the assignment, and then he says, “Be careful, alright?”

Dani raises an eyebrow. “What, you think I can’t handle it?”

Matt smiles, but there’s still some reluctance in it. “Nah, it’s just—I don’t know. Going undercover can really mess with your head, that’s all. God knows I was never good at it.” And yeah, Dani can see that—Matt is very much himself at all times, he’s not the sort of guy who can inhabit a role for a long period of time, not without losing it.

Dani wonders if that’ll be her, if she’ll lose it, if she’ll fuck up—and she has to shake herself out of this. She’ll be fine. It’s the job. “I’ll be all right,” Dani says calmly, and wonders for a minute just who it is she’s trying to convince.

But thank God, Matt smiles at her easily. “No doubt about that, Reese.”

So Dani takes the gig with Narcotics, and goes undercover as something she’s not, and gets in deeper and deeper, until she becomes the person she’s pretending to be.

*

Dani walks into the room meant for visitors and stops dead. “Oh, no,” she says, blank, because seriously—what the hell is this?

Matt Flannery turns around, wearing that ever-present black leather jacket, hands on his hips and stares at her for a long moment, before finally saying, “Reese…what the hell?”

Dani swallows against the tightness in her throat. “What are you doing here, Flannery?”

“I hadn’t heard from you in months and when I called, your phone was disconnected,” Matt responds, glancing around the place. It’s a nice place, not too shabby. Of course, it’s on the department’s dime, considering that all those times she got high and fucked up, it was all on the job, for the sake of the job—

She pulls herself out of that to realize that Matt’s staring at her with naked worry in his eyes, in his face. “Reese—“ he begins, then starts again. “Dani, what happened?”

It’s the same question everyone’s been asking, all in their own special ways—the counselors, the department shrink, Davis, her father, her mother—and the answer’s the same every time. “I fucked up,” Dani says harshly. “I fucked up and now I’m here in rehab. Anything else you want to ask me?”

And Matt’s still staring at her, his eyes wide—and if he presses harder God only knows what’s going to come out of her mouth, because she never wanted him to see her like this, she never wanted anyone to see her like this.

But then he takes a breath, and he says, his voice heavy, “Come on, let’s sit.” She doesn’t move, and he says, “You don’t—you can just listen to me bitch about work. Alright, Dani?”

A big part of her wants to say no, wants to get him out of here, push him out of here so she can be alone, so she can get back to the process of putting herself back into something close to functional.

“Yeah,” Dani says, clearing her throat. “Yeah, okay.”

True to his word, Matt doesn’t ask her any questions. He just tells her about his latest cases, about his new partner Emily Lehman. He’s still looking at her anxiously, but at least he’s not asking her how she’s feeling or how she’s doing or if she still wants to get high, and she doesn’t have to pretend that the real answers are something other than not good and yes, always, all the time.

When it’s time for him to leave, Dani doesn’t tell him not to come back again, and so he shows up a few more times during her stay in the facility. He doesn’t ask any questions and he still looks at her anxiously, but he also calls her ‘Dani’ now instead of ‘Reese’.

On Matt’s third visit, she starts using ‘Matt’ instead of ‘Flannery’. After about thirty minutes into the visit, she gets used to it.

*

She gets out of rehab and keeps trying to put herself together. She sees Matt occasionally, but it’s harder, weirdly enough, to deal with him on the outside. Besides, he’s in the middle of a new relationship with his partner—Dani holds her tongue on that, but he seems really happy and it’s none of her business—and he doesn’t have as much time as he used to.

When they do see each other, it’s always at the diner now, never at a bar, and they have pancakes instead of beers. They still talk about work, but this time it’s mostly Matt talking and her sitting still and listening, to stories of Cheryl and Lia and Frank, of Emily, a woman that Dani’s never met but someone who Matt clearly adores.

All things considered, it’s not so bad. Could be worse, at any rate. Dani wonders if it’s a bad thing, that she has to remind herself of that all the time.

*

“They’re partnering you up with Charlie Crews?” Matt’s eyebrows are halfway up to his hairline as he’s looking at her. “Jesus, who did you piss off?”

“Just about everybody,” Dani says calmly, and it doesn’t even sting that much to admit.

Matt winces a little bit—he’s more careful around her now, ever since she walked out of rehab, always avoiding the subjects that they’ve both agreed to declare taboo. “Right, okay, but still…damn. Can’t imagine what it’s like at your station these days.”

Dani shrugs. “Mostly it’s just a lot of people shooting me weird looks and talking about stuff they don’t actually know that much about.” In other words, pretty much the same as ever, at least when it comes to her.

Matt’s shaking his head. “Wow. You know, I remember when he went on trial—felt like every cop in the city was talking about it. The rogue cop who killed an entire family, including an eight year-old kid? You couldn’t pay people to shut up about it.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Dani says. “And everyone thought he’d done it.”

“Was open and shut,” Matt confirms. “Well, until the DNA tests came back, anyway. Christ, twelve years.” He shakes his head again, then looks at her sharply. “You going to be all right?”

“He’s got a gun and a badge and my boss is telling me he’s my new partner,” Dani says. “That’s all I need to know.”

Except not, because it really would have been nice to at least been given some kind of heads-up about the special brand of crazy that is Charlie Crews.

*

“Alright, Dani,” Matt says as the waitress walks away with their orders. “Spill. What’s he like?”

Dani looks at Matt for a second, and considers.

Five minutes later, Matt’s clearly biting his cheek to keep the laughter from spilling out, and Dani’s worked herself up to a full-blown rant.

“The universe is insecure?” she repeats once more in disbelief. “Who says that? Who comes up with that?”

“Guys who are into Zen, I suppose,” Matt says, finally giving up the ghost to grin at her openly. When she glares, Matt just laughs and says, “Dani, you’ve got to see the humor in this. And besides, you’ve got to admit that it’s a good line.”

Dani waves that off. “That’s not the point. The point is that this guy leaves me scrambling, half the stuff he says makes absolutely no sense…but he’s good at the job anyway. He’s good at the job and he knows how to crack a suspect to get them talking and—“ She falls silent and says, “And I don’t know. He had my back with that crackhead, so.”

Matt’s smile fades a bit, but it's still there. “Then that’s the important part, right?”

And yeah, it is.

*

Before long, Dani’s the one who has the most stories to tell at their semi-regular meetings. The subject of Charlie Crews is always good for something to talk about—whether it has to do with fruit or Zen or just the strange things he does.

Matt always gets a kick out of it, and seems content to listen to Dani talk—so it takes a while for Dani to notice that he’s been unusually quiet on the subject of his job lately. She lets it go—not exactly like they ever run out of things to talk about, at any rate.

But then one evening, Matt comes into the diner five minutes late and he looks exhausted—he’s been looking more and more tired lately, but he looks particularly so tonight. Dani waits and doesn’t say anything, just keeps talking about her latest case.

Finally, Matt sets down his cup of coffee and says, heavily, "Emily and I are breaking up." Dani blinks and says nothing. Partially because she doesn't know what to say, and more because she knows that Matt doesn't want to really hear anything from her right this second. There are other people in his life he can go to for that kind of thing, after all.

Matt lets out a long breath, and finally meet her gaze, and prods, "You were saying about Crews?" It takes a second for Dani to realize what he's getting at. "Right. Yeah, anyway, he's standing in front of the suspect, holding a bag of grapes—white, seedless—and he starts talking, and…” She goes on telling the story, and as she does, Matt’s entire body seems to relax as she does.

The rest of the night, they fill up by talking about work, and Emily’s name isn’t mentioned again.

*

But the next time she sees Matt, Dani can’t help but ask, awkwardly, how things are going lately. Matt just shrugs—he’s still looking subdued, and sketches out the troubles with his latest case. Dani blinks at the mentions of Emily throughout the story—they’re still working together? Really?

“So, wait, you two are still partners?” Dani asks slowly once Matt’s finished.

Matt nods wearily. “Yeah, for now at least. We’re—we’re a good team, and we’re trying to be adult and mature and responsible about all this.”

Dani looks at him warily and asks, “And how’s that going?”

“It’s fucking agony,” Matt says, the exhaustion and strain obvious. He leans back against his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing. “I’m sorry, it’s—it hasn’t been a good week.”

“Rough case?” Dani asks gently.

“Yeah,” Matt confirms, “—but, I don’t know. Pretending everything’s all right in front of everyone, hesitating over everything you say all the damn time—“ His mouth quirks upward for a moment. “Ah, never mind, I knew what I was getting into. What about you?”

“Oh, the usual. Weird case, Crews acting insane. Normal week, really.”

Matt offers her a faint, but real smile in response to that.

*

“Alright, I got good news and bad,” Tidwell tells them. “What do you want to hear first?”

“Bad,” Dani says promptly, not waiting for Charlie to come up with a response.

Tidwell’s eyebrows go up. “Really? Because I had a whole thing planned out, I was going to sweet talk you with the good news, then maneuver on into the bad—“ Dani’s staring at him, not breaking her gaze, just waiting for him to get to the point. And finally he does, clamping his mouth shut for a moment and then saying, “Yeah, okay, so your suspect is currently holding his ex-wife hostage and threatening to kill her.”

There’s a second while Dani and Charlie, who’s right behind her, just stare at him. Finally, behind her, Charlie asks, “Well, what’s the good news?”

“We know where the suspect is,” Tidwell offers cheerfully. “Of course, he’s holding a gun to somebody’s head after he’s already killed two people, but what can you do? Anyway, the FBI's already sent out a team, got a lead negotiator out there—"

"Who is it?” Dani asks, although she’s already got a feeling about this.

“Some guy—Matt something, I don’t know—“

“Matt Flannery?” Dani pushes, because if it’s Matt, if she and Matt are actually going to be working on a negotiation again—well. All of Charlie’s talk about patterns and everything being connected, it must have rubbed off on her a little bit.

Tidwell’s looking at her with surprise, as is Charlie. “Yeah, wait—you know the guy?”

“Yeah, back when I was in uniform he got my partner out of a jam,” Dani explains quickly. Charlie’s looking at her curiously, and she sends him a quelling glance—not that that ever works. She turns back to Tidwell and prods, “Anything else we need to know about?”

Of course, once they’re in the car on their way to the scene, Charlie presses. He wouldn’t be Crews if he didn’t push it. “Matt Flannery?” he repeats.

Dani sets her teeth. “That’s his name.”

“How long have you known him?”

“I met him two months after I left the academy,” Dani says, giving in. There are times where you’ve got to pick your battles with Crews, this is one of them. Although why she’s feeling defensive, she doesn’t even know—it’s not like Matt’s an ex or something, thank God. He’s a guy she happens to hang out with sometimes. That’s it.

“Think he can handle Allerton?” Charlie asks next, and good, this question’s actually about the case and not about Dani’s social life.

“Yeah,” Dani says sincerely, taking a left turn. “He’s good at his job, I’ve seen him work.” She’s also heard him talk about his work for years now, she knows what Matt can do. “He can get Allerton to surrender.”

“Hmm,” Charlie says thoughtfully, and Dani bites her tongue and doesn’t ask him what he means by that, if anything.

*

They arrive at the scene—a modest one-story house in what must be a relatively quiet neighborhood when it isn’t crawling with SWAT, TV camera crews, and police cars everywhere.

It doesn’t take Dani long to spot Matt—he’s in the center of the action, standing under a small tent wearing a headseat and Kevlar over a blue t-shirt. “C’mon,” Dani says to Charlie and makes her way towards him.

Matt looks up as they approach, a corner of his mouth quirking up. “Dani, hey. They said you’d be coming by.” He’s grinning at her now, and Dani smiles back.

“Yeah, here we are,” Dani says, glad to see him but still feeling a little strange—and so she turns to Charlie, who’s standing next to her. “Matt, this is my partner, Charlie Crews. Crews, this is Matt Flannery.”

Matt doesn’t hesitate to reach out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dani’s told me a lot.”

“Has she?” Charlie asks, glancing at her, his head tilted and his eyebrows up, and Dani groans inwardly—now Crews is really never going to let this go. But his attention quickly goes back to Matt as he takes Matt’s hand, and Charlie’s got that particular look on his face when he’s sizing up somebody, getting the measure of them. “It’s nice to meet you as well,” Charlie says, and—well, it sounds sincere, at any rate.

Dani realizes that, for some crazy reason, she wants this—the first meeting between Charlie and Matt—she wants it to go well. Or at least for it not to turn into a complete disaster, and what the hell is that about? Why should she care what Charlie thinks of Matt, or vice versa?

Dani clears her throat. “So, what’s Allerton doing in there?”

“Besides holding a terrified woman hostage?” Matt asks. “Not sure—we can’t get a visual inside.” He jerks his head towards where the tent where all the action seems to be centered around. “Come on, we’ll get you two set up.”

*

Matt introduces them as “our two guests from the LAPD, Detectives Reese and Crews.” Charlie’s the one who gets the double-takes, but he takes them in stride. Dani meets some new faces and sees some familiar ones, but there’s one in particular that stands out.

“Dani, this is my partner, Emily Lehman. Emily, this is Dani Reese and her partner, Charlie Crews.” Lehman’s pretty—beautiful in fact, with a dimple in one cheek that flashes when she smiles at them in greeting.

“Nice to meet you,” Dani says politely, shaking her hand.

“Likewise,” Lehman says. She shakes Charlie’s hand as well, and starts explaining that Matt’s the primary on this negotiation, while she’s the secondary negotiator, and that they’ll be setting her and Crews up with headsets so they can listen in.

They get settled in quickly enough. Dani clips the headset to her ear, and watches and listens as Matt settles in and begins to talk.

*

Two hours into the negotiation, and it’s going as well as can be expected at this stage, given that their perp’s a gun wielding psycho and a murderer twice over—Matt’s actually making headway regardless. She and Charlie are offering what they can, background, insights they got into Allenton’s personality during their unsuccessful interviews.

All in all, the situation is going well. Whatever’s going on with Matt and Emily Lehman, they’re keeping it out of the negotiation, which isn’t surprising—Dani hadn’t been lying when she’d told Charlie that Matt was good at his job. The only hint that something’s up is that while Lehman and Matt are always talking to each other, they rarely look at each other.

During a lull in the negotiations, Charlie asks casually, looking between her and Matt, “So how long have you two known each other?”

Matt shrugs. “A while, I guess. It’s been, what, five or six years?”

“Six,” Dani confirms without thinking about it.

Charlie’s eyes widen a little bit, and across from him, Lehman’s eyebrows have shot up. “That’s a long time,” Charlie points out, and he’s right. Six years they’ve known each other, and they’re still talking to each other, still hanging out. It’s weird thinking about it, realizing that this weird thing with Matt is one of the longest relationships she’s had, platonic or otherwise.

She looks at Matt, and she can see that he’s coming to the same conclusion, and he’s just as surprised about it as she is. “Yeah,” Matt says in a wondering tone. “I guess it is.” Then he shakes it off and smiles at her, a quick uplifting of his mouth, before he leaves to talk with his boss Cheryl. Lehman excuses herself as well—Dani’s not sure, but she looks a little upset.

“We’re going to be here for a while,” Charlie muses out loud. “Your friend Matt’s good at his job, but we’re going to be here for a while.”

“What’s your point, Crews?” Dani asks.

“My point is that we could use some food. Don’t you think we could use some food?”

Dani blinks, but he’s got a point. “All right. You wanna see if we can order some pizza or something?”

“No need,” Charlie says cheerfully, getting out of his chair. “I’ve already got some stuff in the car.”


*

“You really weren’t kidding about the fruit,” Matt mutters in an undertone as Charlie walks back to the tent, carrying his bag of oranges.

Dani looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “What, did you think I was?”

“No, of course not,” Matt says. “It’s just—you really weren’t kidding about the fruit.”

Charlie sets himself down and opens the bag, blithely ignoring everyone’s stares. He looks over at Matt and Dani and Lehman and lifts it up slightly, offering, “You’re more than welcome to one if you want.”

Lehman shakes her head, and Dani’s not interested either—she’s already gotten her recommended daily Vitamin C intake, thank you—but Matt hesitates for a moment, then says, “What the hell. Why not?”

He sits down next to Charlie and starts peeling an orange, and Dani blinks at him for a minute, but then sits down next to him and watches Matt and Charlie eat oranges.

Matt eats them with relish, while Charlie eats more slowly—Dani figures maybe he’s savoring them, or after all this time, oranges have finally lost their novelty. She doubts it’s the latter, and after a second, Dani realizes the reason that he’s eating slowly is because he’s watching Matt eat.

This unsettles her a little bit, although Dani still can’t pinpoint why.

“These are really good oranges,” Matt tells Charlie, going for another slice. “They come from your grove?”

Charlie turns to her, his eyebrow going up as he says, “You really have been talking about me.” He sounds delighted by it, and Dani doesn’t know why—the whole point of her talking about Charlie to Matt is so she can complain about him.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she says, making sure to glower just a little bit. Charlie just beams at her, and then turns to Matt and starts telling him about his grove and the time that his car got destroyed by a tractor, and even though it’s a story that Dani’s already told Matt—because really, you can’t not tell a story like that—Matt’s grinning and laughing in all the right places, and then he’s telling Charlie about the time that he had to shoot up his own Mustang and how it got blown up soon after, and Dani shares a bewildered look with Lehman, because seriously, how can there be two men in the city of Los Angeles who have had to shoot at their own cars?

But then Lehman’s gaze shifts over to Matt and her expression goes from bewildered and amused to something more…wistful, maybe.

But before Dani can think about that—not that she particularly wants to—the phone’s ringing again and they’re back to business.

But during this round of negotiations—Charlie’s eyes are on Matt’s face the entire time, and Dani can’t read his expression at all.

She doesn’t think about it.

*

Four more hours in, and they’ve got Allerton in custody. He’d walked out of the house, unarmed, hands above his head, following Matt’s instructions to the letter.

“Nice work, Flannery,” Dani tells him, grinning.

Matt shrugs elaborately and smiles back. “Eh, all in a day’s work.”

She and Charlie deal with putting Allerton officially into their custody, and once Allerton’s safely tucked in the back of their car with a uniform watching him, Dani glances at Charlie to say something—

—but Charlie’s not looking at her. Charlie’s head is turned back towards the front of the house, where Matt’s standing and talking to two guys from the FBI tactical team.

Dani looks at Charlie, and then looks back at Matt, Matt whose hair is shining in the sunlight, and is right now laughing at something one of the SWAT guys is saying, his teeth flashing and his eyes crinkling up. She looks at Matt, and for the first time, gets what Charlie was seeing when he was looking at Matt, what all those looks today have meant. She hadn’t gotten it until now; just because she’s never looked at Matt that way, never let herself think of Matt like that.

Dani takes a second to process all this, then she stands in front of Charlie and says, very firmly, "No." She means it too; she absolutely means it, except Dani isn’t exactly sure at the moment how much that’s even worth, how much that matters when Charlie’s looking at Matt like he’s the most delicious fruit ever.

Goddammit. She had a bad feeling about this from the beginning, she just knew that something would go weird here, having Charlie and Matt finally meet, and now Charlie’s blinking down at her, and says innocently, “Reese? What do you mean, no? What are you saying no to?”

Dani’s brain short-circuits for a minute, while a thousand responses leap to her mind, starting with, since when are you into guys? and ending with, I don’t care if you’re into guys, just don’t be into this guy, because you have the attention span of a two year-old and he’s going through a lot, and he doesn’t need that kind of mess right now and I sure as hell don’t need it either.

But before she can relay any of that to Charlie, Matt’s walking over to them and saying to Dani, “Hey, I’ve got to get back and fill out the usual paperwork, but you wanna meet up at the diner after work?” Before Dani can respond, Matt turns to Charlie and says, “You’re more than welcome to join us, if you want.”

And of course, of course Charlie says, with a big grin, “I’d love to join you. You don’t mind, do you, Reese?”

And what else can Dani do but paste a smile on her face and say, “Of course not.”

Matt makes his goodbyes and heads back to the tent, and Dani glares at Charlie and just shakes her head when he says, “What? Reese, really, what is it?”

*

It’s worse at the diner. Of course it’s worse at the diner, because it’s all so bizarre—getting into the booth and having Charlie sitting next to her, knowing that all she has to do is look over to the side and Charlie’ll be looking at Matt, at nothing else but Matt.

And it doesn’t help that Matt’s in fine form tonight. He’s in a good mood, he’s relaxed, he’s charming—Dani hasn’t thought of Matt like that in ages, if she ever really did, but still. Even she can see it now, and if she’s noticing, there’s not a chance in hell that Charlie isn’t noticing it too.

But then Matt excuses himself to take a call, sliding out of the booth and walking off to a quiet corner of the diner, and Dani is not watching Charlie checking Matt out as he walks away, she’s not, she is not.

Dani manages to wait just until Matt’s out of earshot and then she twists in her seat to glare at Charlie and hiss, “Quit it.”

“Quit what?”

“Quit looking at him like he’s fruit,” Dani snaps back, and she doesn’t care if it sounds ridiculous—hell, this entire thing is ridiculous, so of course she’s going to sound ridiculous when she’s talking about it. “He’s not fruit, Crews.”

Charlie’s blinking at her, wide-eyed, wearing an expression of elaborate innocence. “I never said he was fruit. I’ve been accused of a lot of things, Reese, but I generally don’t mistake people for fruit. And it’s a good thing too, because I’ve gotta say, I’ve never been the sort to go in for cannibalism, accidental or otherwise.”

Dani stares at him, and not for the first time, considers just hitting Charlie Crews just once on the head. It’d make her feel so much better.

But out of the corner of her eye, she sees Matt hang up his cell and start making his way back to them, and then he’s sliding back into his seat and smiling at them warmly.

Charlie, of course, is smiling back.

Dani just groans to herself and takes another bite of her pancakes, knowing that whatever this is, it’s not going away any time soon.

*

It keeps going beyond that. Charlie somehow managed to get Matt’s number when she wasn’t looking, and now he’s taken to calling Matt up occasionally. Dani’s fairly sure that nothing’s actually happened yet, but well—it’s pretty much only a matter of time.

But other than that, it’s not so bad at first. Most of the time, Dani can actually put it out of her head, the fact that her partner wants to jump Matt’s bones—and Christ, the fact that she even has to think about it annoys her.

Sometimes, though, it really is okay, the three of them sitting in that diner, Charlie next to her and Matt sitting across the booth from both of them. Talking about suspects and how much they all hate filling out paperwork. Well, Matt and Dani hate it; Charlie just thinks it’s an exercise in patience or something like that.

And yeah, it’s always the three of them. Charlie never makes a move to get Matt alone, he seems perfectly content to just sit there and eat pancakes at an unreasonable hour and just look at Matt, without ever actually making a single move for anything more.

Dani doesn’t get it, she doesn’t get why Charlie isn’t saying anything, because there’s no way that her warning was enough to get him to back off—after all, it’s not like he ever listens to her, why the hell would he start now?

*

Dani finally gives in on a Friday. They’re wrapping up their latest case, and Dani’s neck-deep in the mountains of paperwork she’s been putting off. Charlie, of course, has already wrapped things up on his end, and they’ve got plans to meet up with Matt at the diner.

“You ready to go?” Charlie says, putting on his jacket. Dani’s almost ready to say yes, say the hell with paperwork, she’ll just get caught up this weekend—it’s not like she has any plans after all—when she hesitates, just for a moment.

She glances up at Charlie, and thinks about the way he looks at Matt, and how Matt is one of the few people she’s met who is honestly able to take Charlie’s quirks in stride for the most part. She’s thinking this as she looks at him, and Charlie’s tilting his head and asking her, “Reese? Are you ready?”

Dani looks at him, and says after a moment, “Actually, I’ve got all this paperwork to catch up on. You go ahead, meet up with Matt.” She puts a faint stress on the words, and Charlie’s not dumb, he catches her meaning pretty much immediately—he’s always seen Matt with Dani, with her playing the chaperone.

“Are you sure, Reese?” Charlie asks, and Dani doesn’t actually roll her eyes, but it’s a near thing.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Dani says. “Go ahead, I’m not close to being done with this stuff, and besides, Matt’s waiting.”

“Yeah,” Charlie says slowly. “Yeah, thanks.”

She waits until he’s a few feet away, but she can’t resist in the end. “He’s still not fruit, Crews.”

Charlie’s response is prompt, tossed over his shoulder. “Never thought he was.”

Dani smirks to herself and just gets back to her paperwork.


*

She doesn’t hear from either Matt or Charlie all weekend, but by Monday Dani knows what happened. Matt calls her around ten-thirty Monday morning, asks her if she’s free for lunch, and Dani is not imagining the faintly guilty, furtive tone to his voice.

Still, she says yes, and meets him at the diner.

Dani slides into the booth and immediately says to Matt, “I do not want to hear the details.” Matt flushes, and if Dani needed any extra proof, well, there it is.

Not that Dani needs any extra proof, not with Charlie coming in this morning, looking smugger than Dani’s ever seen him before, a smile on his face like the entire world had opened up to him—or like he’d been having incredibly good sex all weekend. Given the bite marks near his ear, high enough that his shirt collar couldn’t cover it, Dani went going for the latter.

And judging from the marks on Matt’s neck, she was pretty well justified in that.

Matt’s looking at her, his cheeks still a little pink, waiting for whatever she’s about to say. Dani looks at him and says, very seriously, “I don’t need to know. Okay?”

Matt nods, and he gets it, thank God. But then, he usually does.

Dani nods back and says after a moment, “Wanna hear about this new case we’ve got?”

“Sure,” Matt says easily, and so Dani gets started on telling another work story, just like she’s done a million times before, just like she will in the future. And if, at some point, some personal stuff gets worked in amid the retelling of her latest case—well, that’s pretty much par for the course with them anyway. And if Matt’s smiling a bit more than usual as Dani's talking, Dani’ll let that slide, and she won't tell Matt that it's nice to see him looking happy. Even if she's thinking it in her head.

End.