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Title: Best Day Of My Life (9/23)
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters that might strike you as familiar.
Summary: That it had all started that one day, that was plain to see. But love has never been simple, and with her it certainly wouldn't get any easier. (CaRWash)
Chapter summary: Some things you should forget, some you should've remembered.
Spoilers: Some, but if I told you know from what episode my question in A/N would be worthless :P
Song: Jesse McCartney - Why Don't You Kiss Her?
A/N: My newest multichap, inspired entirely on Jesse McCartney's both current (3rd one's coming up) albums.
Bonus points for who can guess the episode the sorting is mentioned in. No cheating!
Oh I'm so afraid to make that first move
Just a touch and we could cross the line
And every time she's near, I wanna never let her go
Confess to her what my heart knows
Hold her close
Why don't you kiss her?
Why don't you tell her?
Why don't you let her see
the feelings that you hide?
'Cause she'll never know
if you never show
the way you feel inside
He broke their case that afternoon. He broke their case, and rekindled their ability to communicate. As soon as she had recovered from the fact that he had actually called out her name and spoken to her, he explained to her what he'd found, and as she listened, she realized that this was the piece of evidence they needed.
"Good job, Ryan."
The smile on his face was so genuine it made her want to say it again, just to keep that smile on his face. He looked so much more Ryan, when he was smiling. It was like Ryan and his smile could not be seen as two separate things. If Ryan wasn't smiling, he wasn't fully Ryan. It made sense in some way.
"Thanks Cal."
Her heart made a back flip in her chest. They were talking. They were actually talking. And not only were they talking, he called her Cal. She watched as he grabbed the pictures together, but then started sorting them. By file number, she saw when she focused on them, and in the back of her mind she remembered how she'd once told him she usually organized by file number, instead of by date, which was what he had been doing when she entered.
"Didn't you…didn't you sort by date?" She asked, making a thoughtful face, trying to make sure her thoughts were right.
He looked up at her. "Yeah, I used to. But you sort by file number and I figured that if we'd be working together a lot, since you're my mentor, it'd be better if I did it by file number as well. I can't help but organize things, so it seemed like a better idea to sort it the way you want it to instead of sorting it my way and then have you re-sort it."
Calleigh looked at him in astonishment. "You adjusted your way of sorting so that it wouldn't collide with mine?"
"I just didn't want you to get mad at me for sorting it the wrong way so, yeah; I guess you could say that."
Her eyes wide, Calleigh realized that for a person with OCD, changing your routine would be a terribly hard thing to do.
"You needn't have done that."
He shrugged. "I wanted to. In the end, I think it's actually a lot more functional in court."
Calleigh smiled. She then remembered something else he just mentioned.
"I am your mentor?"
"Well, not in the most literal meaning I guess, but I never stopped thinking of you as my mentor, even when we didn't work as many cases together anymore. You are the person I learnt most from here."
"I'll take that as a compliment, and thank you. I'm convinced you don't need a mentor anymore, though."
"Everyone needs a mentor now and then."
She pondered that. In rare cases, she looked over her shoulder as well, wanting to find someone there to tell her what to do. Most times, she would find no one there, and she knew she had to find out on her own. She'd turn back to find other people looking over their shoulders to her, wanting her to tell them what to do, and she'd learn them how to find out on their own, as well.
"I guess that's true. No one's perfect, no one can do everything on their own all the time. We all need someone to turn to at some point."
"Who do you turn to?"
"Honestly?" She asked, and he nodded, looking eager to hear her answer. To hear his name, perhaps?
"Myself."
His eyes widened in confusion. "Yourself?"
"You know me; I don't much like to talk about myself, or admit I can't do something. I'll always try to figure it out on my own."
"So…you think I should do more on my own?"
"I didn't say my method was automatically the right one. I think it can't hurt to ask, I just know that I, personally, won't."
He nodded to himself in understanding, and looked down at the floor. Maybe he should've turned to himself more, as well. He knew it never hurt to ask, that she'd always answer his questions, but maybe if he hadn't depended on her this much, he'd never have fallen in love with her. On the other hand, he knew that wasn't true, because he fell in love with her the second she walked into his college class to give her seminar.
"Don't you ever get sick and tired of having to do everything on your own?" He asked, looking into her eyes.
"Of course. But then I remember why I'm doing this, why I wanted this job."
"Because the satisfaction you get from locking a killer away is overwhelming." Ryan muttered.
"What?"
Calleigh looked at him, her features overtaken by a confused look.
"The satisfaction you get from locking a killer away is overwhelming." He repeated.
She blinked. "Those are not your words."
"No, they're yours. That what you said to me, the day you gave the seminar. At Starbucks."
She tilted her head slightly and eyed him as if she'd never seen him before. Flashes of memory seemed to pass by her eyes in rapid velocity; she closed her eyes for just a second as the last piece of the puzzle fitted smoothly into the last remaining hole.
"Calleigh. Calleigh Duquesne."
"I'm Ryan Wolfe."
"I'll try to remember that. Nice meeting you Ryan."
"Same here, Calleigh."
"Oh my Lord."
"What? Calleigh, are you alright?"
He walked around the table and just as he was about to reach out his hand to her, she turned her head and looked at him.
"That was you."
He nodded.
"Of course. Why didn't I make the connection before? Your name should've rung a bell inside my head; your face should seem familiar somehow. The desperation to prove yourself, even the fact that you're from Boston didn't tip me off."
"It's okay. You probably do multiple classes in a semester like that, different cities, different faces. I can't be the only guy you randomly ran in to after giving your lecture."
"Well, that's true, but with this amount of similarities you'd think I'd have at least gotten some clue. Gosh."
She covered her face with her hand, rubbed her face and slowly removed it.
"I feel old."
She laughed and he shyly joined her. He didn't say that he thought she definitely wasn't old in his eyes, that she looked beautiful no matter what her age was, and that he didn't care that she hadn't remembered him. The first two, he didn't say because he was afraid to, the latter he didn't say because it was a lie.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and just put on a brave face for her. Didn't think she noticed the minor tremble in his lips, didn't notice the slight narrowing of her eyes.
"Do you want to do the interrogation together?" She asked.
"You can do it."
"You broke the case. You don't want to wrap it up yourself?"
"I'm fine. I mean it's fine."
Ryan stumbled over his words, and turned red. "Really, you do it."
Calleigh eyed him suspiciously but nodded, grabbing her files and his stack of photos together and holding them in front of her chest, similar to the way she'd held her files the day of the seminar. He didn't know if it was the coincidence that caused it, but he suddenly felt just as nervous as that day, while he normally felt calm and collected around her.
She left the room and he sat in silence until he realized that he was holding in his breath. He breathed out slowly, and pushed his chair backwards as he stood up.
Good God, this woman was going to be the death of him.
