The In-Between Time

By Morganperidot

1.

"John, did you hear me?"

John looked at Natalie and saw the serious look in her eyes, and he was brought back to the current moment of the two of them standing there in the crime scene, her dressed in her forensic tech jacket and jeans, and him in his basic black shirt, jacket, and pants. Gone from his mind were the images he had been dwelling on of the two of them entangled together on his bed, the scent of her shampoo filling his nostrils as he buried his face in her luxurious red hair, kissed her neck, and slid his hands over the curves of her body. He knew that was all gone for good now. She was with Brody; the two of them were a couple. Natalie was no longer his, and she never would be again. "No," John said quietly in response to her question, looking away from her and trying to focus on something else that would ground him reality.

"If me being your forensic tech isn't working for you, I can ask for a transfer…"

"No, it's fine," John said. But then, realizing the selfishness of his quick response, he looked back at her. Even with her hair pulled back and that look of concern on her face she was still so beautiful, and it hurt to look at her and know he couldn't touch her, not then, not later, not ever. It would be the smart thing not to work with her, to keep the passion that raged inside him at that moment locked away, but he couldn't do that, he couldn't make the choice to be without her entirely. If he couldn't be with her personally he would at least be professionally. "Unless that's what you want," he said.

"No," Natalie replied. "But…"

"It's fine," John repeated, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jackets so she wouldn't see his fingers twitch like an addict going cold turkey from his drug. He looked away again. It was too difficult to look at her and still fight the need to pull her to him. It didn't matter that he understood that she was with another man; that understanding was all in his mind. His heart and the rest of his body told him he needed her, and he knew they always would.

"You're sure?" Natalie asked.

"Yes," John said. "Tell me what you found on the way back to the station." He headed toward the door, and heard her following a moment later. The clever ideas she told him about the case meshed with his own; they worked too well together for him to give that up. He would get past the rest of it, the personal part, or at least hold it at bay when she was with him. That was what he told himself, although he knew even at the surface that it was a damn lie.

2.

Natalie worked late in the forensics lab tying up the loose ends on the theories that she and John had discussed. She heard nothing more from him while she worked, and when she dropped by his office on her way out of the police station, it was dark and he was gone. It was clear he had chosen to avoid her rather than pursue any more of the awkwardness they had shared earlier in the day. Natalie sighed and made her decision quickly. She would transfer to another case and another investigator – like she had transferred to another lover and father for Liam. She shook that thought out her head and took out her car keys. It was hardly that simple where Brody was concerned. It wasn't like she had made a decision to replace John with Brody; John had taken himself out of the equation because Brody was the father of her son. John didn't want to be with the mother of another man's child or pretend Liam was his, so the best thing for all involved had been for her to try to make things work with Brody.

And Natalie was – trying that is. She was trying to look at Brody as the future – hers and Liam's. Brody was a cornerstone of their family, and the three of them were building that future together. She liked Brody, and she found that she could sometimes lose herself in her friendship with him. But that was all it really was – a friendship with benefits, one that did nothing to fill the emptiness in her soul that always found its way back to haunting her. What she saw most in Brody was the absence of John: John's eyes, his smile, his voice, his warm body next to hers. There was no substitute for John, and there never would be.

So Natalie had tried to hang on to working with John, thinking that maybe they could find an equilibrium at which they could work together. But today had simply proved again that was not to be, and she knew she had to recognize it. John had shown that he wasn't going to be the one to make steps toward fixing this situation, so Natalie knew she would have to do it herself. She would have to let go of him completely.

That thought sent a little ache through her heart where she knew it would always be broken. She sighed again and looked briefly at John's office. She was eager to get home to Liam, but she knew this had to be handled today, face to face, so she could start things fresh in the morning. She would tell John tonight, and that would be the end of it – the end of them – for good.

3.

In his apartment John turned on some music and sat on the sofa, closing his eyes and trying to empty his mind of the images that fought so hard to drag him down. He could feel the depression threatening to close in on him and crush him, and he was only barely holding it off. And his desire to fight was weakening with every sip of beer and tick of the clock.

After all, there was no longer any purpose to that fight. John knew he was a good cop, and the work he did was important. But he also knew that there were other good cops who could do the same. His job wasn't enough to dispel the heavy darkness in his heart. The light that had brightened that cave – the two lights now – were gone forever. They belonged to someone else, another man, who would be holding the baby who should have been John's child and the woman who should have been John's wife. John had lost Natalie numerous times; she had married other men, and he had moved on with other women. Yet none of those circumstance had left him feeling so utterly destroyed. There had always been the possibility of reconciliation then, even if he hadn't thought he would ever want it. Now though, now there was Liam – Brody's child, not John's – who would forever keep him and Natalie apart. And it was that fact above all, the fact that the child who he still loved was the eternal wedge between them, that tore him apart in a way that could never be properly mended.

John heard the knocking on the door, but he ignored it. He didn't want to move or talk to anyone. It persisted though, and the mechanisms inside of him still functioned enough to recognize urgency. He opened his eyes and stood up, waiting a moment longer to see if the knocking would stop. When it didn't, he went to the door and opened it.

He almost laughed when he saw Natalie standing there in a bright blue low-cut blouse like some cruel trick of fate conjured to deepen his torment. "Why are you here?" he asked.

"We need to talk," she said. After a pause she added, "Are you OK?"

"Tired," John said, straightening his wrinkled black shirt a bit, as though that was what she was referring to. "Can we do this in the morning?" he asked.

"No," Natalie said. "May I come in?"

John smiled then, though entirely humorlessly. The irony of the situation, of her asking if she could come into the place where they had not so long ago brought home their child, where they had slept together, ate together, lived together – that irony wasn't lost on him. "Yes," he said softly.

Once inside he saw her stop and look at the empty beer bottles he had lined up on a table. He didn't explain, just closed the door and waited. Part of him wanted to ask if Liam was OK, but he silenced that. It wasn't his business anymore.

Natalie looked at him. "This isn't working," she said.

"What?" John asked quietly, seeing metaphorically in his mind the several feet of space between them as a giant chasm. He wanted this over and her gone; he didn't want to feel the passion stirring inside of him again, the need to touch what he couldn't, to be reminded of what was no longer his.

"The two of us doing cases together," Natalie said. "I can tell that it's upsetting you, and I don't want to be the cause of that anymore. I'm going to put in the transfer tomorrow. It's the right thing to do."

"No," John said quietly, surprising both of them with the sudden certainty of his reply.

Natalie hesitated for a moment, but then she said, "I'm just a distraction to you, and…"

"Why did you come here?" John asked. The social fabric he had functioned within was crumbling around him. He couldn't pretend; he didn't even want to. It was too late for all of that. "You could have called," he said. "You could have sent a text."

He saw hurt blossom in Natalie's eyes, and he shoved his twitching fingers painfully into his pants pockets. "So I was right about this," she said. "We can't talk much less work together." She stepped past him toward the door.

"What did you expect?" John asked, and he heard his pain twisting around the question like barbed wire.

She looked at him. "I thought maybe you were past the anger," Natalie said. "I thought we could at least function together in…"

"This isn't anger," John said. He needed to get it out now, all of it, the poison in his blood that was eating away at him. Maybe if he said it out loud it would go away.

"Then what is it, John?" Natalie asked. Her eyes were glistening now. He knew he should stop; he knew that stopping was the only road he could take that wouldn't explode everything between them. But there was no them anymore, and he couldn't stop anyway. He knew he had to say it.

John looked away and slid a hand through his hair and let out the breath he had been holding. "Love," he said finally.

There was a long moment of silence during which he wouldn't have been surprised if the entire building collapsed. But instead nothing happened at all. John turned and looked at Natalie and saw the single tear that had slid down her cheek. "What?" she said.

John froze for a moment as he held her gaze, not sure whether he should step forward into the path of the oncoming train or fall back into the bottomless pit. As a Fed and a cop he knew it was best to do whatever kept you alive the longest. In this situation, though, it was probably the smartest thing to do what ended the situation the quickest, and that, he assumed, was to tell the truth. "I still love you," he said. "And I still love Liam. I don't want you to disappear from my life…"

"You told me it was over…"

"It is over," John said. "You have a child with Brody…"

"You still love me?" Natalie said as though she hadn't heard the mention of her current lover, and John was surprised to see her pain change to fury. "You still love Liam? How can you say these things to me now?"

John's tried to respond, but nothing gelled into coherent thoughts. "You're with Brody," he said finally.

"I wanted to be with you!" Natalie said.

"Liam…"

"I wanted to raise him with you," Natalie said. "I wanted a family with you. And now after you pushed me away and I settled for Brody, destroying my relationship with Jessica even more, now you tell me that you still love us. Damn you." She stormed over to the door.

"Don't go to him," John said.

"You are the one who pushed me at him!" Natalie said. "You pushed me into bed with him; you made this choice."

"No," John said, but she pulled the door open, and he moved quickly, slamming it shut with her still inside between him and the door. "You're not going to go from me to him," he said.

4.

Natalie could barely breathe between her own hot anger and him pressing her against the door. The sensation of his body against hers after so long was scattering her thoughts. "Move," she said, trying to push back against him, but he was like a wall.

"No," John said again, and his hands touched her, making her body tremble. "Stay," he said.

"Liam needs me…"

"I need you," John said. He released her briefly and spun her around so her back was against the door. "Answer one question for me, and I'll let you go."

He had taken a step back but he still held her wrists firmly to the door. Natalie wasn't resisting him; she had no desire to. Her desires were instead making themselves well known elsewhere. "OK," she said.

John pressed against her, and brought his soft lips to her ear. Natalie closed her eyes and relaxed against the door. This all felt like a dream or a lapse into insanity – had she died in the car or lost her mind? None of this could be happening. It couldn't be real, his body, his lips, her John… "Brody or me?" he whispered into her ear, sending shivers through her body.

There were a million interpretations Natalie could give to the question being asked in those three words, but there was only one answer to all of them. "You," she said. John moved back a bit and looked in her eyes; she held his gaze. "Let go," she said, and he released her wrists. The moment her hands were free she dug them into his hair and brought his head forward until their lips could mash together in a brutal, sloppy kiss. She wrapped one of her legs around him like a cobra, crushing him to her. "Now," she said.

John didn't say anything else; he just took her hand and led her the short distance to the bedroom, where they undid buttons and zippers, and pulled off clothes. Natalie admired the familiar beauty of his body, eager to feel it respond to her touch. There were so many questions that would need answers, but that was for later. Now was for reconnecting, she and John, and Natalie smiled as they tumbled onto the bed together.