A/N: The funny thing is, I drew the cover photo art long before I even thought about this story. I just drew a picture, seriously liked it...and then I was trying super hard to figure out an idea to go with it. I mean, whenever I imagine a disagreement between Vinnie and Balthazar fighting I always see Balthazar as the one who walks away in anger. In what situation would Vinnie Dakota be the one to leave? Only a single idea came to my mind, and it's actually one that I really loved, so I just had to write it.

Oh, also, I'm trying to write this relationship as a bromance, which, in my mind, perfectly toes the line between a platonic and romantic relationship. Hopefully I wrote this right, and if I did than the status of their relationship should be up to interpretation. Read it as you will (though I admit, at times the line between romantic and platonic probably gets crossed.)

It was an unusually quiet day for the time traveling pistacchio protectors. There weren't any exploding pistacchio carts. No domesticated herds of llamas had eaten their supplies. They weren't even currently on an assignment that would probably backfire in some horrible way. It was just a quiet, normal day, and Vinnie Dakota planned on taking advantage of that for as long as he could.

*Bam!*

The sound of books being slammed on the table that he was resting his feet on cruelly brought Vinnie back to reality. He raised and eyebrow and looked up to meet his partner's eyes. Cavendish looked annoyed about something...so what else was new?

"What did I do this time?" Vinnie asked almost boredly. He wasn't the least bit intimidated by his partner's glare.

"Nothing." Cavendish said irritably. "That's the problem. "You're not doing anything. Couldn't you at least try to make yourself productive?"

"It's our day off." Vinnie countered.

"It is not." Cavendish snapped. "You know very well that we have an assignment tonight."

"Yeah, to-night, not to-day." Vinnie smirked slightly. Technically, we have the day off."

Cavendish scowled and pushed Vinnie's legs off of the kitchen table. "That may be so, but that is no excuse to do absolutely nothing."

"I don't think you understand the concept of a 'day off'." Vinnie said, which only served to irritate Cavendish even more.

"I understand the concept perfectly well, thank you very much." Cavendish huffed bitterly. "But just because we aren't currently on an assignment does not mean that there's nothing else that needs to be done."

"Yeah?" Vinnie grabbed a chip from a nearby bag and tossed it into his mouth. "Like what?"

Cavendish gestured his arms to their entire apartment. "Like cleaning this place up, for once. It's filthy."

Vinnie looked around the place. To him it didn't really look that bad. Maybe there was an odd sock here or there, and the dishes were still out from breakfast, but he wouldn't exactly say that it was filthy. "You know I'm not good with these things. Besides, you seem to have it covered."

Cavendish crossed his arms. "I'm sure even you could handle organizing the file cabinet."

Vinnie frowned. "The cabinet? No way!" As time travelers that did top secret work for the government, they had a ton of official papers and documents. Because Cavendish was always stressing about throwing away something important he kept all of it. He hadn't had time to organize things though. As it was all of the papers were just shoved into the cabinet and that was it.

"Why do I gotta do it?" Vinnie asked. If it was up to him they wouldn't have kept a quarter of those documents around. He didn't really think any of them were necessary. Most of them were just old reports of previous missions. None of them were things that he even wanted to looked at. They were too boring.

"Because someone must." Cavendish sighed, and it was clear that he was getting tired of this discussion. "If you do this one job for me than afterwards we can go get chili dogs."

Those magic words sealed the deal. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously." Cavendish grabbed Vinnie's arm and pulled him to his feet. He shoved him towards the front room. "Now go on."

"Yeah, fine." Vinnie shoved his hands in his pockets and went to the stupid cabinet. He just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. Vinnie opened up the first drawer of the file cabinet and frowned when he saw how messed up it was. Geeze, for somebody who liked organization so much he could seriously make a big mess. Vinnie sighed and just pulled the entire drawer out and dumped it on the ground.

Most of the papers were just strays and came fluttering out. At the very bottom of the drawer though there was a thick manila envelope that thumped down to the ground. Vinnie frowned curiously. Even though Cavendish said that all of these papers were important this was the only thing that actually looked like it.

He put down the drawer and knelt down. Vinnie picked up the envelope and looked it over. His eyes widened when on the opposite side he saw a large red 'Denied' stamped on it. He recognized the stamp as the one that the time agency used. The question was, what exactly had been denied?

Vinnie looked over his shoulder, just to double check that his partner wasn't watching him, waiting to scold him for not doing his job. Cavendish wasn't there, he hadn't left the kitchen. Vinnie turned back to the envelope and quickly opened it. He pulled the stack up papers out of the envelope and glanced with eager curiosity over the first page. Vinnie froze when his eyes fell on five words that stuck out to him like sore thumbs.

'Request for a new partner'.

...What?

Sure that he had read that wrong, or maybe just misunderstood it, Vinnie read through the whole document. All seven pages of it. Even though he wasn't much of a reader, and he regretted even finding the stupid envelope by the time he had finished with half of the first page, he couldn't stop reading. Even after he had read through the whole thing Vinnie just stared at it while an empty feeling came to his chest.

"Dakota, what on earth are you doing over there?" Vinnie flinched at the sound of his partner's voice. He didn't have to turn around to know that Cavendish was standing in the doorway, a displeased expression on his face. Vinnie only knew that because Cavendish was always displeased and annoyed by something...by him.

"...Dakota, what are you doing?" Cavendish repeated the question, though it sounded more curious and concerned than angry and annoyed this time.

Vinnie wanted to lie. He wanted to say that it wasn't anything and just ignore the fact that something was wrong. At the same time though a stronger part of him desperately needed to hear what his partner had to say.

Without turning around Vinnie held up the documents from a few week's previously...yeah, that recent. "What's this?" Vinnie wanted to hear it from his partner. He also really didn't want to. He felt Cavendish snag the papers out of his hand. Almost immediately there was a short gasp of surprise, but also of guilt.

"Where did you get this?" Vinnie closed his eyes in defeat at Cavendish's question. For him that was enough confirmation that this was real. Cavendish really had wanted to work with somebody, anybody else.

"It was at the bottom of the filing cabinet." Vinnie got to his feet and finally turned to face his partner. "What I want to know is what it was doing there?" Vinnie made to snatch back the papers, but Cavendish held them out of his reach.

"You weren't meant to see it." Cavendish said, as if all of this was Vinnie's fault. The younger man clenched his fists. Of course Cavendish would make this seem like this was all Vinnie's fault. He thought that everything was his fault. The empty numbness that Vinnie had felt after seeing the request papers turned to anger.

"You're the one who told me to clean out the file cabinet." Vinnie said shortly. "Trust me, I didn't go looking for it."

"No, I suppose not." Cavendish frowned slightly. He probably just wasn't used to seeing Vinnie get angry about anything. "I had forgotten that I had put it there in the first place." He muttered to himself. Surprisingly, this did nothing to make Vinnie feel better or calm him down.

"Why did you send it in in the first place?" Vinnie asked in a quieter, colder tone. Cavendish visibly tensed at the question. A slight flush came over his cheeks.

"Well, you see, I just…" Cavendish cleared his throat and shook his head. He straightened his back as the usual serious expression came over his face. "Honestly, why are we even discussing this? It really doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" Vinnie shouted. The apartment fell silent after his outburst. Cavendish stared at his companion with wide, shock filled eyes. He had never seen him shout like that before. Ever. Vinnie crossed his arms defensively over his chest and refused to make eye contact with Cavendish. "It matters that you think that all of our failed missions were my fault." He said in a near whisper.

Cavendish sighed and began to approach him. Vinnie turned away from him. Cavendish frowned. "Dakota, you must know that I don't think that way anymore." Vinnie flinched slightly at his last word. Cavendish had just said that he had thought that everything had been his fault. That wasn't much better.

"Yeah? And what changed?" Vinnie asked, feeling genuinely curious. He had read all of Cavendish's complaints about him, and from what he could tell nothing had changed. Vinnie was still the same person that he had been. He still did the things that Cavendish had apparently despised.

"My attitude, I suppose." Cavendish said. "I was the one with the problem, not you. Once I realized that I learned how to looked past your supposed flaws. I was finally able to see you."

Vinnie frowned. The were nice words and all, but right now that was all they were. Words. He lifted his head and met Cavendish's eyes. "Yeah, but did you change because you wanted to? Or because you knew that you were stuck with me?"

Cavendish opened his mouth to answer but closed it soon after when he found that he couldn't answer entirely honestly. "...I'm not entirely sure." He admitted after a moment.

Vinnie shook his head. "That's what I thought." He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked right past Cavendish towards the front door. A hand at his arm stopped him.

"Where do you think you're going?" Cavendish asked. Vinnie could hear concern as well as a scolding tone in his voice. The thing was, he didn't know which tone was Cavendish's real feelings, and which one was just the cover. "We have a mission tonight."

"That's still a few hours away." Vinnie said. "I'll probably be back by then. I just need some air." And space.

"And if you're not?" Cavendish raised an eyebrow.

Vinnie frowned and glared slightly at his partner. Was he just concerned about the mission? "Do it yourself. We both know that's what you'd prefer anyways." Vinnie yanked his arm out of his partner's grip and ran out before he could be stopped again. And also before he lost his nerve.

"Dakota? Dakota!" Cavendish cried out, but Vinnie just kept running. He didn't even look back. He had to escape for a little bit, and he knew that he wouldn't go through with it if he turned around now.

"Vinnie!" The young man bit his lip and blinked back tears. He blocked out the sound of his partner's voice. Upon doing so Vinnie felt the tears fall as he realized that he was ignoring his partner, he wasn't listening to him, which, according to the request, was actually a major reason why Cavendish had wanted a new partner.

Vinnie was also running away from his responsibilities, being disrespectful (if running out wasn't a sign of disrespect, Vinnie didn't know what was) and taking something that wasn't all that important way too seriously. He just seemed to be doing everything wrong that Cavendish hated about him, and he hadn't even noticed that he was doing it.

Maybe Cavendish really did deserve to have a different partner. As much as he hated to admit it, Vinnie was starting to think that Cavendish should have somebody else as a partner. Anybody else would probably be better than him.

A/N: I really wasn't planning on doing this, but I think I'm going to split this into two chapters. I have two reasons for this. The first one being that I don't like leaving a chapter for a story until I've finished it and I want to write something else right now. The second is that the next part will probably be in Cavendish's point of view, and I think it's much neater to switch P.O.V. in a new chapter instead of in the middle of one. That's just my personal opinion, and it's not even how I feel all the time. It just is right now. I should have the second chapter up fairly soon though.