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Author: vegawriters
Series: Finding Babylon
Fandom: Silk Stalkings
Spoilers: 01x03 - S.O.B.
Pairing: Chris/Rita (UST); Chris/Melissa Cassidy; Rita/Mark Dennison
Rating: Teen
Prompt: #5 – Discussions
A/N: This is part of the series written with syrenslure. The link to the table can be found here.
Disclaimer: No one owns Chris and Rita – except for Chris and Rita. But, technically, it’s the SJC Camp that gets the money from them, not me.
Summary: I wonder how conversations will be between the two of us after he’s aired his heart and soul to Dr. Melissa’s listeners.
When I was a little girl, my father told me that there was nothing more important than communication. Relationships flourished with conversation, with open discussion about who does what and where emotions lie. As an adult who spends her days and nights immersed in a world that is nothing but conversation, I find that I crave the quiet of silent communication that I have with Chris. There is a special support that comes from the simple squeeze of his fingers or the look in his eyes when he says something heart felt.
Discussions. Hutchinson is on his way out the door. He isn’t happy that Tom passed his night shift over to me, but he’ll be over it by the time he gets home to his wife. Poor guy. He works late – not to avoid Carla (I’ve never met her but I get the feeling he’s head over heels in love with her) but to avoid Carla’s mother, who moved in with them last year. I envy him though – a wife he adores, two grown children who are both on the force in Detroit, and a six-month-old grandchild. His discussion with the world is bluster and bully – but it’s clear to me after working with him for almost a year that he’s really nothing more than a teddy bear with a badge.
Discussions take so many forms. From the simple “Call me at my desk if I’m needed” to the much more complex, “Rita, you have a brain aneurysm,” they are all filled with nuances that are meant to be discerned and considered and broken down into tiny fragments of little pieces. Every word has multiple meanings. “Call me at my desk” really means that I want to be alone in the bullpen tonight and don’t bother me face-to-face unless it’s a dire emergency. “Rita you have a brain aneurysm” is pretty straight forward, but when it’s your boyfriend of eight months giving you the diagnosis, the nuances are a little different.
Mark still feels guilty about being the one who diagnosed me. That conversation was (naturally) worse than the one where he broke it off with me. “Rita, I love you, but …” gets old and familiar after a while. Usually, they’re blaming the job or Chris. For once, it was nice to have a different excuse for running. Of course, it doesn’t make me feel any better. The honesty was refreshing, though. It’s bad enough he’s my doctor; he doesn’t know if he could handle it if he was there when (he didn’t say if) the blood bubble burst in my head.
Next time I go in for an exam, I’ll thank him for adding to my fears about falling in love.
The discussion that takes place when you tell your partner and best friend that there’s a strong chance you could die on him at any moment is one that is meant to be held in a dark room with only one candle burning and with his arms tightly around you. “Chris … we need to talk …” has never been the same for either of us.
I have discussions every day. There’s the one I just had with Tom. He’s scheduled to cover night shift tonight but “something came up” and so he caught me on my way out the door. I’m going to hit my overtime allowance this weekend when I pick up my own night shifts, but it’s okay. I’ll end up with a couple of nights where I can leave early and doubles don’t kill me. Actually, the silence of the station is exactly what I need to do my paperwork. If I take it home, I’ll end up staring blankly at the radio while I listen to Chris’ disembodied voice float over across the airwaves. Being here gives me a sense of security. It’s much easier to bury the Chris-Emotions behind mounds of files filled with grizzly pictures of gruesome deaths.
Yes, Chris-Emotions. Those nasty, niggling feelings that crop up whenever I’m within one hundred square miles of him. Those emotions that have been there since the first day we shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Those emotions turn my insides into that of a gushing schoolgirl. Emotions that most of the time I can keep in check because he’s my best friend and my confidant and I’m not going to screw up the best relationship I’ve ever had in my life with sex. Even though there are nights when all I want to do is drag him into interrogation room three, push him onto the table, and have my way with him.
Sex shouldn’t screw things up, you know. But it always does.
I wonder if he ever fantasizes about what exactly I’m wearing under my skirt.
Stop it, Rita.
It’s not like I’m in love with him. He’s just everything I want in a guy. He’s smart and he’s sexy and even though he’s from a cave, he respects the women he’s with. There’s something to be said for his brand of chivalry.
He’s a great kisser.
But yes, in my head, alone, when there’s no one around and there’s a safety net of work-related distractions, I’ll admit there are Chris-Emotions. After all, I was the idiot who had to start that conversation with him about racing him to the nearest motel. What did I have to go and do that for? Vulnerability does not become me.
I wonder how conversations will be between the two of us after he’s aired his heart and soul to Dr. Melissa’s listeners.
Is he going to say the same things to her and the world that he says to me? It’s selfish, I’ll admit it, but I don’t know if I can handle something like that. What he says to me is special, secret, meant just for the two of us. I don’t know if I want to share him with Palm Beach.
But the truth is, I’m a masochist. So, I’m going to sit here and eat my takeout and do my paperwork and listen to what he has to say and know that the whole time he’s talking to her, he’s also flirting with her. I don’t know why, but tonight, it’s bugging me.
I often have discussions with him that he doesn’t realize we’re having. Long after he’s left my place for the night and I’m curled up in bed, begging my brain to just shut off so that I can sleep, he comes to me, wraps his arms around me, and we talk. We talk about love and life and kids. He lets me vent about how unfair it is that to be considered professional, my skirts need to be longer and my blouses bigger, but to get anything out of a suspect I need to dress like a hooker. In my head, he understands the pressures I feel – being the first woman in our precinct, hell, in a three-county radius, to earn her gold shield is a lot to live up to.
These are conversations we have already but the ones in my head are much more intimate. They are conversations between lovers.
My mother told me once that if I could find a best friend, that I should hold onto him or her for the rest of my life, no matter what else, because best friends lasted longer than boyfriends. Best friends, she told me, are the salt of the earth. It was the moon and the tide working together – that was how important they were. I was twelve at the time, scared, shaking in my boots about this brand new family and not wanting to bond with her because I knew that the minute I did, social services would cart me off to another house and family. Fifteen years later, I finally understand what she was telling me.
There are some things Chris and I don’t talk about. Not yet anyway. It’ll take time before I’m ready to tell him about what it was like to be bounced from foster home to foster home. I don’t know if he’ll understand it or not, but right now the wound is still seeping. Foster care isn’t always stories of Punky Brewster and Webster. Tom and Sue were great, but it took a lot of tries to get me to them and by the time I showed up on their doorstep, I was an angry, troubled kid with an attitude. Anyway, it’s not like he’s an open book about his family. All I know is that his parents are out of state and his dad is a lawyer. That’s all I need to know right now. He’ll tell me when he’s ready.
I wonder if he’ll talk about it tonight.
It’s almost ten. The bullpen is empty. It’s just me, the takeout from Mo Fat’s, and the radio. I wonder if the one-sided conversations are going to end after this, or if his interview will only make his voice stronger in my head. None of it matters in the end, anyway. He’ll communicate tonight and tomorrow walk through the door and we’ll have yet another series of discussions about a case file and where to eat for lunch and whether or not the Dolphins are going to have any kind of a chance this year. At the end of the day, we’ll talk about grabbing dinner alone or together. If it’s together, we’ll end up back at one of our places and talk until we’re falling asleep. Either way, at the end of the night, we’ll be asleep in different beds on opposite ends of town. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. We’re best friends and soul mates, not lovers, and that’s for the best.
“… and this is Dr. Melissa, and my special guest tonight is Homicide Detective Chris Lorenzo.”
Suddenly, I can feel the giggle rising up in my throat. Tomorrow night I’ll end up eating alone.
He’ll have a hot date with Dr. Melissa. We’ll talk about it. Both before and after.
And really, that’s for the best. Don’t you think?