The Way You ARe

[intheheart]

Title: The Way You Are
Rating: PG.
Summary: Felipe learns something, makes a friend, and ends up in trouble, did he but know it.
Date: 2028
Notes: Set just after Part Two, references events in Part One.


Much as he usually enjoyed his partner's company, Felipe had never been more grateful that Zack had called in sick.

It wasn't like he was doing anything especially strenuous today. He had to testify (District of Columbia v. Rushton, in the case of the murder of Will Rushton), so someone else had been given his beat. Zack, had he not been sick, would probably have been on escort-duty, making sure that nobody got killed on the way to or from the courthouse. But with Zack out, Felipe got to do his job too: namely, escorting the lovely Dr. Summer Kendall for her own testimony.

Zack could be a total idiot sometimes, he thought, as Dr. Kendall came up the stairs, her heels click-clacking against the tile floor. Just because someone was rude to you, didn't mean you were rude back. Especially when you'd provoked them, which Zack being the nosy bastard he was had probably happened. Even more especially when said someone was good-looking and you had a reasonable shot.

And Dr. Kendall was gorgeous. She did look rather young for her position-- didn't doctors have to go to some ridiculous amount of school?-- but that just meant she was smart, which was another turn-on. He'd always had a thing for redheads; loved tangling his hands in thick, glossy hair, loved kissing his way over porcelain skin (freckled or not, he wasn't choosy). A beautiful redhead who could talk rings around him, to boot... he grinned, and stepped forward.

"Dr. Kendall? I'm Officer Felipe Claro. We met at a scene not too long ago?"

She looked up at him and blinked-- blue eyes, which surprised him since he'd pictured them as green. "I don't... oh!" It clicked, visibly, and she smiled at him, wide and beautiful. "Yes, I remember. I don't have time to talk, though. I have to testify."

"I know," he said, and gave her a little half-bow. "I also have to testify, in the same case as it happens, and have been detailed to escort you safely to and from the courthouse. Black and white's outside, if you'd step this way."

She hesitated, gripping the strap of the messenger bag that hung over her shoulder. "I don't... is it just you?"

Felipe interpreted that as "is Officer Ryan here," and smiled reassuringly at her. "Alas, my malingering partner has called out sick, leaving me to perform all of his duties. Slacker."

Another smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, but she suppressed it. He couldn't imagine why. She had a beautiful smile, all joy-- it transformed her face. "You said your car is out front?"

"Yep." He nipped smartly ahead to pull the door open for her, and again on the stairs to get the patrol car's door open. "Ma'am."

Dr. Kendall giggled. "You don't have to treat me like a lady," she told him. "I'm perfectly capable of opening doors."

"Then by all means, open them yourself," Felipe said, grinning.

"I didn't say I minded."

He laughed at that, drew a rather shy smile from her in response, and decided that he was going to be Dr. Kendall's friend, regardless of what other things might occur. "Then, my lady, I will open all the doors for you that I can find."

She didn't answer that, only smiled again and slipped into her seat, graceful as a shadow. Felipe jogged around the patrol car, narrowly missed getting hit by a taxi, shook his fist after the guy and got in, sliding the key into the ignition with a snick. Dr. Kendall, he saw, had already buckled herself in and settled her bag on her lap, and was now staring out the window with a distant expression.

Clearly previous escort duties had been conducted mostly in silence. Well, she was about to learn different.

"So," Felipe said, starting the car. "I hear tell you're in your clinical fellowship year?"

Dr. Kendall gave him a startled glance, but nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"What is that? I thought you have to be done with all your learning to work for the cops."

She shrugged one shoulder, and settled her bag a little differently on her lap. "You never stop learning," she said, "and I should think you would know that, Officer."

A fair point. He made a careless gesture of acknowledgment, and pulled out of his parking space. "With your formal learning, then."

She tilted her head to the side, one red curl slipping from her bun to lie down the side of her neck. "I have," she said. "I passed the boards this spring, so I'm AAFP-certified. The fellowship is... ah... it's a kind of apprenticeship, I suppose. It means I'm allowed to practice in my specialty, but I'm supposed to have supervision while I do." She shrugged again. "Of course, it's very hard to make terrible mistakes in pathology, and we have too many cases coming in here, so that particular requirement is really more honored in the breech."

Felipe thought about that for a moment, then said, "Define terrible mistake."

That got him a smile. "Anything that kills a patient in your care."

"Ah," he said, and grinned back at her. "And since your patients are already dead..."

"Like I said, very difficult," she said. "Although there was one time in my residency when we got sent someone who wasn't quite dead yet. That was..." She trailed off, then finished, "Bad."

The thought alone made him shudder as he braked for a light. "Jesus God, yes. Did you catch it before the dude went into the freezer, at least?"

"No," Dr. Kendall said, and left it at that.

It was, Felipe decided, high time for a change of subject. "I never understood you medical types," he said. "So much school, so much student debt, for Chrissakes. What is it, eight years of higher education?"

"Thirteen," she said, almost apologetically. "About."

He twisted sideways in his seat and looked her up and down, in the least creepy manner he could manage. "You cannot be thirty," he said. "You just can't. You don't look a day over twenty-four."

"I'll be twenty-nine July 23rd," she said, but a pleased little smile was tugging at the corner of her mouth. "As it happens, I graduated from high school a year early, and I was one of the youngest in my class anyway, so I was seventeen in my freshman year of college."

Felipe could do the math on that easily enough. "Still doesn't make you... Jesus, twenty-eight?"

"You can't be much older than me," she said.

"Thirty-one," he said. "A vast difference, I think you'll find, that grants me much more wisdom than you can possibly have attained."

She giggled. "You're being sarcastic."

Interestingly, her tone and inflections made that more of a question than a statement. Felipe answered it. "Of course. You've got to be smarter than me to make it through thirteen years of med school. Jesus."

Dr. Kendall tilted her head the other way, and that loose spiral of hair swung sideways, brushing her collarbone. "Four years," she said. "Four years of undergraduate, four years of medical school, four years of residency, and now I'm in my fellowship year. This spring I'll be allowed to practice on my own, but that's just a formality, really. I have all the necessary licenses already."

"Why pathology?" he asked.

"Why homicide?" she countered.

Clever girl, he thought, or maybe just one who paid a lot of attention to gossip, but he stuck to the truth. "I'm not homicide yet."

"You're going to be," she said. "Lydia says--" She broke off, then, and blushed a bright red high on her cheeks.

Felipe grinned at the road. "Lydia says what?"

Dr. Kendall shook her head, and pressed her hands against her cheeks. "I’m sorry, that was rude," she said. "I shouldn't have been listening to gossip."

"It's only gossip if you pass it on," he said, and turned just enough to shoot a grin at her. "You haven't been talking about me, have you?"

She shook her head again. "No, of course not."

"Then it's all right," he said, covering for his bruised ego. "What does Lydia say?"

Dr. Kendall took her hands away from her cheeks, slowly. "That you want to be a homicide detective," she said. "That you're going to take the exam as soon as they'll let you. That, um, Officer Ryan would rather be..." She reddened again. "I don't think I can repeat that."

"Hung, drawn, and quartered?" he guessed. "Well, that's all true. Zack hates dead people. Me, I like solving mysteries, and it's more fun when the stakes are higher, don't you think?"

The flush that flared in her cheeks this time was angry, and she sat bolt upright in her seat. "Excuse me, Officer," she said, crisply. "I don't think it's fun at all."

Oops. Sore spot, obviously. Felipe backed down. "My apologies," he said. "That was flippant."

She relaxed a little, though the color did not subside. "Yes," she said.

"To answer your question a little less flippantly--" he paused for a left, and barely kept himself from flipping off the impatient asshole behind him who immediately started honking-- "I do like solving mysteries, but I believe in solving the important ones first. Not that things being stolen isn't important, but that a human life is the most important of all, and when that's been taken, we should find the perpetrator as quickly and safely as possible. That's why homicide."

He made the left, and was a little evilly pleased to find that the impatient asshole did not make it through the intersection before the lights changed. Sadly, said asshole wasn't quite brave enough to run the red, not with a cop right there.

"I see," Dr. Kendall said, and readjusted the lie of her bag again. "As for your question... I... I don't mind the dead. I like knowing that I can do something for them."

Felipe glanced at her again, this time curiously. "You'd rather work with the dead than with live people? After all those years of school? It doesn't seem like a very good payoff to me."

"I loved school," she said, sounding mildly offended. "And you're the one who wants to work homicide."

He laughed again. "Ouch. Bullseye."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"You didn't do anything," he said, quickly. "It was a joke." Oh, now he saw what Zack meant, although he thought it was a little less malicious than Zack insisted.

"Oh," she said, quietly, and looked out the window again.

Just when he thought that he'd killed the conversation entirely, and was casting about for another subject that would hopefully make her think better of him, she spoke again. "That's why the dead, you see. They don't judge."

Felipe blinked. That was a funny choice of words... "How do you mean, judge?"

"I have Asperger's syndrome," she said.

He stared at the road for a moment, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he asked, "Which means...?"

"Oh!" She started. "I'm sorry. It's an autism spectrum disorder. It means... I have a hard time, with people. I don't understand things. Like the joke, just now, I didn't understand that at all. I liked school, because there were rules, but this..." She trailed off, then rubbed her forehead. "I'm sorry. You didn't need to know that."

"On the contrary," Felipe said, thinking, Zack, you asshole. "It helps." He hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase it, and then decided that given what she'd just said, dancing around the question could only hurt. "Does it help you understand if people are blunt?"

Dr. Kendall's eyebrows went up, but she nodded. "Yes, usually. If you say what you mean and don’t hint. I don't understand hinting very well."

"Okay," he said. "No hints. Dr. Kendall, I would very much like to be your friend. Would you like to get a cup of coffee after we testify? My treat. No strings."

Her eyes widened, giving her the look of a startled deer. "You... what? Really?"

"Really," he said. "You're obviously smart, you seem very nice and funny, and of course-- this is a joke-- you are extremely good-looking and I always like that in my friends. Zack is an exception."

She giggled, but said, "That was an obvious joke. You didn't need to tell me."

"Little bit patronizing?" he asked. "Fair enough. Stomp on my foot next time I do that."

"All right," she said, and crossed her hands atop her bag. "Then to answer your question, I would like to get a cup of coffee, except generally I prefer tea. And you can call me Summer, if you like."

"I do like," Felipe said, wondering how many foot-stomps he'd just let himself in for. "It's a date, then. Not literally."

Unless, of course, she wanted it to be. But that could wait.

For now, he'd enjoy her company, see how things fell out. At the worst, he'd made a new friend. At best...

Well, he'd wait and see.