83Totally making up some of these interactions. Don't judge me!
also, if you dropped me a review before this chapter was fixed, thank you very much. your reviews saved me a bit of anguish :D
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Before they'd called her outside to see the raccoon, Alex had been watching from behind her curtains and listening to their whispered plan. The stun guns seemed a little overkill, but Wes was nothing if not efficient.
The two boys had huddled inside the bushes, where Wes had been waiting for nearly half an hour for his backup. He'd hooted or whistled or something ridiculous, like the raccoon would know it was being stalked. Maybe it was all men who were like this, like her mother had said, but Wes had never exhibited these slightly childish tendencies like arguing, rock paper scissors settlements, and scouting a raccoon like it was a military mission. Travis brought all of these things out of him. Maybe that was why she and Wes didn't work out. He couldn't have fun with her.
Regardless, Travis had totally just slapped Wes's ass after they caught that raccoon. The one time she'd pinched his tight little bottom he'd given her a look that would melt the polar icecaps, but he just turned and high-fived the black man. Her inner crazy that all girls had was getting a little riled up, so she shoved it down with a hefty dose of logic.
Travis was holding up his phone, was he going to take a picture of it? This was ridiculous. Oh wait, no. He was pointing it at himself, probably using that mirror app he had or something. He was wincing and rubbing at a spot underneath his jaw line on the upper part of his neck. Stepping closer, Wes actually voluntarily touched him and tilted his head back. She could hear them talking through the screen.
"How did you manage to get scratched? We didn't even go near the damn thing!"
"Stop touching it! It stings. Probably a thorn from the bush or something."
"I don't cultivate thorn bushes."
"They probably grew thorns just to be contrary to you, Princess. Will you just kiss it and make it better already?"
Surprisingly, Wes huffed, looked around quickly, and leaned in to give it a loud smack of a kiss that made Travis laugh and howl at once. It was a disturbing sound.
"Oh man Wes, I that's how you kiss all the ladies I don't know why you don't have a line outside your door!"
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After the first incident, she'd been watching their interactions more and more closely. She began to notice a pattern to Wes's visits. He came over when the two of them had had a fight or he was upset about something that usually involved Travis in one way or another.
She found him out back trying to fix the light. After an argument, Travis soon showed up and she went inside to observe as they talked. They shared some too softly spoken words while Wes slowly packed up his tools. The visit ended when the darker man took her ex's hand—he'd never let her hold his hand ever—and led him back out the gate to the waiting car.
Travis opened the passenger door and pushed Wes inside, getting in the driver's seat with minimal fuss from Wes. Then she could clearly see him put his hand on Wes's knee before driving off.
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Miraculously, it had been almost a month since she'd seen hide or hair of Wes. She and Travis had had coffee the other day though and talked about some things. Things like how she'd noticed how handsy Travis and he were.
He'd laughed and accused her of being jealous. She'd been slipping her number into the bill folder for the waiter to have when he'd said this, which is how she'd ended up with coffee up her nose after she snorted.
When she got home from that encounter, she'd pulled out a photo album. After Wes had quit law she'd taken up scrapbooking for a short while to relieve some of the stress. There was an entire book dedicated to the police academy and then his rise to detective, and finally his partnership with Travis. Countless pictures of them together filled the second half of the book.
Her favorites included one where he'd actually gotten Wes to smile for the camera. Her ex-husband had never seemed to understand how photogenic he was and hated the device with a passion. They were outside the precinct, probably a week or so after they'd become partners. Travis was sitting on one of the stone banisters at the bottom of the stairs and Wes was standing there next to him, both with large smiles. Travis's arm was around his waist and hugging him close—if she weren't the one to take the picture, she'd have thought that they were a couple. If you looked really closely at the picture, you could see Wes's slightly blurry hand sitting on the back of Travis's neck. It was a cute picture.
Another one that should have opened her eyes to their interactions was one she had to sneak. Three years into their partnership and they were still really good friends, but Wes had never been one for cuddling or not sleeping in his own bed. Travis had come over for dinner—Wes had begged her to lie and tell him that she'd made the chicken parmesan—and then they'd sat on the couch to discuss their current case. They'd also had a very long, very tiring marathon of Monk on the television. She'd come back down the stairs at about 2:30 to ask about where they were to find Adrian in an alleyway filled with trash, blind and not caring, and her two favorite police officers passed out on the couch in a pile. It seemed like they'd had a fight about sleeping arrangements, though.
Travis's leg was trapped on the top part of the couch and his other leg was resting on the floor, bent at the knee. His entire upper body was sprawled over his end of the small three seat couch. Wes was in the same boat, only both of his legs were pushed up onto Travis's end and his feet were tucked under his partner's shoulders. She remembered having to leave the room to laugh in the kitchen and get the camera. Luckily the flash hadn't awoken them.
Alex sighed and shut the books. She couldn't think of a way to gently prod them in the right direction. If they had it their way, she knew, they'd spend the rest of their lives arguing and throwing each other through windows. It was probably foreplay to them, she snorted.
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A few weeks later she'd been called in to the hospital. Wes had told her that removing her from his contacts list was coming soon, right after buying a house. Alex knew she'd be on the back burner for a while until he was out of that hotel. Apparently Wes had been shot at and a couple bullets had grazed him. Nothing life threatening, they assured her in the lobby, but head wounds did tend to bleed a lot…
Two slightly deep grazes on his right arm, one on his side, and one across his temple. What the hell had they been doing in the middle of a barrage of bullets anyway? Alex came up on his hospital room and peered in the door before going in.
Wes was just lying on the bed looking more sour than normal, probably because Travis was currently flapping his arms everywhere and shouting partial sentences at him. Just as Alex was about to go in to stop the yelling, it cut itself off. She peeked back around the corner and saw a dozing Wes on the bed. His eyes were only halfway shut but it was clear he had already checked out. His partner had come to stand next to the hospital bed.
Travis glanced up and she had to duck behind the frame of the door so he wouldn't see her. When she looked back at him, he was running a hand through Wes's thin strands of hair, brushing them off of his forehead and then looping around his ear. His hand ended up holding the blonde's head steady at the base of his skull and top of his neck, splayed fingers on the back of his head and his thumb running over his jaw.
"I'll see you tomorrow, partner," he said quietly, then kissed Wes on the forehead as the blonde's eyes finally shut with an answer muttered so softly she couldn't hear it. Before Travis could back away from him, she was tip-toe prancing down the hall and around the corner with a big grin on her face.
Perhaps one of the two weren't oblivious after all.