#Lanie Pariesh

[pollylynn]

Title: . . .  But Verify WC: 900

“I don’t really enjoy being proved right.” —Stan Holliwell, Den of Thieves (2 x 21)

Tom Demming is not a dirty cop. This is a thing she knows. Now she knows it. Because she has damned near dislocated his shoulder getting to know it, and at least one of his thumbs may never be the same, because it was something she needed to know. But she does know now: Tom Demming is not a dirty cop. 

And it’s fine. Her somewhat violent path to enlightenment is absolutely fine. He is laughing about it. They are laughing about the fact that she can and will go from low-key flirting to assuming that he is not only a dirty cop, but a probable torturer an murderer in the time it takes the average Manhattan day trader to order his third quadruple-shot espresso before sun-up. They’re chuckling shoulder-to-shoulder about the complete lack of daylight between her flirting and enhanced interrogation. 

It’s more than fine, it’s nice, isn’t it? Tom Demming, Squeaky Clean Cop, does not take it personally that his torture-free, non-murderer status was something she needed to know—that she needed to establish through evidence. And why would he? Dirty or Clean, he is a cop, and he understands that cops do not have the luxury of being Monica Finches or Carol Thorntons, with their clear, steady gazes and their unwavering belief in the goodness of their men. Cops understand that trust is another word for foolishness, and it’s nice that Demming—a good cop—gets it. 

Except that neither Monica Finch nor Carol Thornton turned out to be foolish, exactly. Paul Finch seems to have been practically cryptozoological: the rare con who actually went straight. More than that, Paul Finch seems to have been the rare human who felt a sense of debt so deeply, he’d risk his marriage, his freedom, and in the end, his life to repay the man who’d once cut his kid brother a break. 

And Ike Thornton . . . well, it’s somehow not much consolation that her Torturer and Murderer Until Proven Otherwise take wasn’t just hers alone. It’s not much consolation that it was based on legitimate evidence, entirely sound logic, and Cop Sense with a proven track record. How can it be consolation when Esposito’s faith was never shaken? More importantly, how can she let herself off the hook that way when it was Esposito’s unwavering belief that had them digging deeper, exposing Holliwell, bagging Victor Racine? 

But, still, it’s fine, right? Esposito, as good a cop as they make them. would never hold it against her. And Demming, with his easy laugh and slightly gawky shoulder bump is not holding any grudges, and that can’t be entirely attributable to the mood boost he must be getting from going from New Guy to Guy Who Helped Bag Victor Racine before the ink on his transfer papers is dry. 

The thought stiffens her spine. She goes from easy laughter to avoiding eye contact—the bad kind, not the low-key flirty kind—in seconds. Demming doesn’t really notice. Or if he does, he soldiers on. Maybe he writes it off to one of ten thousand awkward moments that come with the early stages of the low-key flirtation. 

But the cynical idea that he’s given her a free pass on the Dirty Cop thing because he’s already gotten something out of their paths crossing has her in its clutches in more ways than one. She hates the thought on its own merits. She hates that it occurred to her, even in passing. It’s beyond healthy Cop Sense, isn’t it? It’s not a newsflash that she has trust issues—that she has had trust issues since before they let her put on the badge. But this verges on paranoid, and with Demming’s easy grin flashing her way as he makes more than passable small talk just so that he can keep hanging around, she wonders not at all metaphorically what her damage is. 

But she’s not so consumed with that eternal question that she’s unaware that she genuinely  kind of wonders if it’s true. She kind of wonders if he really “likes the weird ones,” or he heard the clipped version of her last name when she answered her phone at the gym and jumped on the case so he could take another crack at “steadying her bag.” Worse still, she genuinely wonders if really had any interest in that, or if he’d simply spotted an opportunity to connect a fairly rinky dink robbery to a buzz-worthy homicide-with-a-side-of-torture, even if he lucked into the Victor Racine long game. She wonders exactly how much of Tom Demming’s story to believe, and she hates every single one of those thoughts. 

She hears the voice of Richard Castle in her head. Demming is still talking. He’s still clearly doing the math on the timing of the next socially acceptable shoulder bump, and she is wondering about his New Yorker subscription, his potential double life as a yoga studio creeper, and what he’s compensating for with his underprivileged kids basketball angle. 

She is gritting her teeth when she should be flashing a smile. She is white-knuckling the edge of the table when she should be doing her own shoulder-bump math. She is wondering what she really knows about Tom Demming and she’s internally cursing Richard Castle’s name. 

It is the very opposite of consolation that she’s not at all alone in her trust issues. She wasn’t looking for company. 

A/N: I guess my "schtick" for this series is lame apologies about the long time between stories; for a variety of reasons, I have been walking outdoors far more than dreadmilling. I need to get back to dreadmilling. I will do my best to get into some kind of a groove here. In the mean time, thank you to those of you who read.

images via homeofthenutty