ℬriar

The man’s wet, ocean eyes flit between your face and the food in your lap. A rogue brown curl fell over his forehead as he nodded down towards you. “What’s, uh… What’s that?”

“My mortal enemy,” you answered gravelly, before turning away. “It’s a Pear Mille-Feuille… I thought maybe I could finally get it right before we closed…”

Carmy blinked owlishly at your profile. “…Well, did you?”

“Nope…” you answered through a heavy sigh, popping your lips together. “The pastry’s too soft. But somehow the pears are still overdone, so… I can’t win.”

Carmy looked it over with an inquisitive eye — the thin gold layers of puff pastry, all stacked neatly atop one another; pears poached to the perfect amber color; thick cream piped with a near impossible precision. It looked like something straight out of a magazine. And, if Carmy had to guess by how hard you were on yourself about the whole thing, it’s entirely likely you’d been published in one before.

“Well, it looks good, at least.”

“That’s only ‘cause you’re standing six feet away.”

Carmy scoffed a quiet laugh and found his breath coming more easily to him. “Here,” he offered, shoes scraping the worn pavement as he approached you. “Let me try it.”

Your head snapped in his direction. Your wide eyes raised to follow his form as he loomed suddenly over you, black blazer rippling in the cool, late-summer breeze. The night air filled suddenly with the scent of him — deep cologne, cigarette smoke, and nicotine gum.

“Wh…What?” you stammered.

“Sometimes you just need a fresh perspective, is all. Like, uh… A new pallet, you know?”

Carmy reached a tattooed hand in your direction, leaving little room for argument. You got the feeling that he must run a restaurant of his own as you passed him the ceramic plate, fingers trembling. You watched anxiously as he took the fork in his large hand and cut himself a slice of the pastry.

He shoveled it into his mouth — an explosion of butter, vanilla, pear, and caramel — the near-perfect balance of elegant and comforting. Just refined enough not to impose too much on itself. 

His cheek jut softly out as he chewed. He nodded to himself until the words caught up to him. “Yeah, this is… incredible, Chef,” he said through the mouthful, laughing slightly through his nose. The sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

You didn’t believe him, not entirely, but the line in your taut shoulders relaxed slightly at his praise anyway. Sometimes, feeding others felt like a leap of faith. Sometimes, feeding someone felt like handing over a piece of yourself to them, and hoping they found something worth keeping.

—

Months later, Carmy realizes that there are only two kinds of things a person holds onto in this world — things they can’t bear to lose, and things they never meant to keep.

Mikey belongs perpetually in the first category. And, ever since you started working here, he’s begun to realize that you belong in the second. Maybe that’s why he felt himself on the verge of a panic attack for the third time today, ‘cause he was spending his evening excavating his brother’s office like an archeological dig, and found himself surrounded by both at once.

This office had belonged to Mikey, and would be the last thing that ever truly did.

Carmy thinks, knows, that’s why he put off cleaning it out for so long — like keeping it exactly the way his brother left it would preserve his ghost there in some way. This place was practically his tomb, made of four concrete walls faded to the color of old dishwater, an ancient desk so cluttered you can barely see its surface, and a bunch of dented filing cabinets that haven’t been organized in at least three presidential administrations.

They’re all half empty now, organized in boxes with Mikey’s frantic scrawl left on every crumpled receipt, invoice, and payroll record. Soon this office would match the rest of the place — clean, sleek, erased — and what’s left of his brother would be gone.

Carmy slouches against the cool brick with his arms propped on his bent knees, holding the last of Mikey’s things in a tattooed hand. A prescription pill bottle with the label scratched off, which he found while grave-digging through the cabinet drawers. He clutches it tight in his fist, holding the remnants of addiction as if it were his brother’s hand.

The grey, mildew-and-coffee-scented abyss of his grief is abated only by the sound of your laughter, which bounces off the concrete walls and finds him like the rays of milky-orange sunlight filtering through the stained window above his head, which turns his wild curls a more golden shade of brown.

His heavy ocean eyes lift and find you instantly — the way they always seemed to do — and his features flood with horror when he finds you with his sketchbook in your hands.

“What’s all this?” you wonder with a quiet laugh, beneath the subtle thwipping of the pages as you flick through them with your thumb.

Inside are random lists, phone numbers, and mock-ups for the restaurant, all in Carmy’s scrawled handwriting. Then you stumble upon a series of sloppy portraits — some of them of the others in the kitchen; most of them of you, like he was trying to capture you just right.

They feel like memories in some way, moments stolen when no one else was looking. They’re slightly messy, as if drawn by a loose and absentminded hand. It’s quite strange, looking at yourself from another person’s perspective. But even still, you don’t think you’ve ever looked so pretty, so alive, than on these pages of smudged ink.

“I didn’t know you could draw.”

Carmy shrugs lazily with his pink mouth softly jutted, feigning an air of indifference despite the red tint speckling across his cheeks.

“I can’t,” he mumbles through a huff as he stands to full height again, bracing himself on the cleared-out desk beside him. He tucks the pill bottle into the front pocket of his slacks and clears his throat when he feels his pulse skipping there. “N-Not really.”

“Well, I beg to differ,” you scoff and turn another page.

Another scribbled portrait of you sits in the center, drawn in blue ink this time. You’ve got the eraser end of a pencil in your mouth and another sitting behind your ear, concentrating on coming up with a new dessert menu. You were captured quite beautifully, even in your subtle frustration. “I didn’t think I was capable of looking this good until now.”

“You look good all the time,” he dismisses quietly, curls swaying when he shakes his head at you.

He grimaces at himself right after the words spill from his lips, face flaring hotter when the expression on your face shifts slightly in response to them. He lacks the courage to meet your eyes as he looms before you, smelling of stale cologne and sweat from days of renovation.

“What do you, uh— What do you usually draw?” you stammer and pass the sketchbook back to him.

“I don’t know…” Carmy mutters. “Whatever’s, you know, on my mind, I guess—”

Your heart lurches in your chest, both at his words and at the office door slamming suddenly open across the room. Your heads snap to the side in tandem to find Richie towering in the narrow doorway. “Cousin, I swear to god, I’m about to fuckin’ lose it, man—”

“You’re so dramatic, Richie, jeez…” Sydney sighs as she walks past him and further into the newly renovated kitchen, to busy herself with actual work.

Carmy hangs his head and closes his eyes, digging his thumb and forefinger into the sockets in a quiet frustration. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t come to me with any problems while I was in here—”

“I know that,” Richie shrugs. “It’s not a problem.

“—I don’t have time for this shit right now, Rich.”

“Well, it’s not a fuckin’ problem, Carm! What do you want me to say?” the older man repeats, louder now.

“It’s literally a problem,” Syd monotones from somewhere further inside the kitchen.

“Well, Ms. Know-It-All over here wants less tables in the dining room— says it’ll fuckin’… make it more systematic or whatever, I don’t know,” Richie rambles, gesturing wildly with his hands. “But I told her we’re opening a restaurant here. Not a library. More seats means more customers, which means more money— Which we’re slowly running out of, might I add!”

He turns over his shoulder to yell into the kitchen. You wince when his voice bounces off the bare concrete walls.

“Yeah, Syd’s right,” Carmy nods.

“Thank you!” the girl calls distantly.

Richie blinks slowly in offense. “…What?”

“Syd’s right—”

“No, I heard you—”

“Then why’d you say what—?”

“‘Cause you’re fucking with me,” Richie scoffs an emotionless, half-delirious laugh.

“I’m trying to be efficient here, Rich—”

“You’re all fucking with me—”

“We can turn over tables quicker if there’s less of them,” Carmy explains, much more calmly in response, though there’s a sudden bite behind his words that you don’t miss. He keeps one hand propped on his waist while his other gestures with the sketchbook between his fingers. “Which means more customers, which means more money, which… we are running out of…”

Richie laughs like it’s funny. “Well, that’s real funny, Carm, ‘cause I bet if I brought Claire-Bear in here, and she agreed with me — which she would, by the way — you’d change your mind like that—”

Carmy flinches when the man lifts his hand to snap in his face. He swats him away with a little more aggression than probably necessary. “Get your hand out of my face— What are you twelve?”

“Yeah, you’re mad ‘cause you know I’m right.”

Your head tilts to the side like an intrigued puppy at the foreign name, which you haven’t yet become acquainted with in your weeks working here. Your wide eyes dart between the two men in front of you. Your smile trembles slightly at the edges.

“Who’s… Who’s Claire-Bear?”

Carmy’s head snaps in your direction. His mouth parts, but nothing comes out for an embarrassing fraction of a second, as if he wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. Bringing her up in front of you feels wrong in a way he can’t explain.

“She’s uh… She’s— She’s no one,” Carmy stammers.

“Oh, please,” Richie scoffs, dark blue eyes flitting in your direction. “She’s his girlfriend.”

Your stomach sinks, even despite Carmy’s arguing.

“For the last time, she’s not my fucking girlfriend. Richie—”

“Well, not for lack of tryin’, cousin—”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Carmy repeats, this time only to you. There’s a solemn look in his light eyes, like he’s trying to make sure you really hear him. “She’s, you know, an old friend. A family friend. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Richie laughs. “I bet Claire-Bear would love to hear that.”

“Fuck off, Richie,” Carmy spits.

“Oh, there you are.” A softer, deeper, more foreign voice breaks through the boyish bickering in an instant. Luca appears in the doorway behind Richie — golden locks pushed over his forehead, physically built beneath his white undershirt, looking a lot less plagued by the chaos of the kitchen than the rest of them. His pink lips quirk into a smile at the sight of you. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you— I need an expert opinion on this lemon-blueberry trifle I’m trying out.”

“Yeah, put this girl out of her misery. Please,” Richie scoffs drily, then turns back to you with a warm, sympathetic hand on your shoulder. “I apologize for my cousin, Sunshine. I did warn you he could be a bit of an asshole—”

“Richie.”

“It’s… okay,” you murmur with a sheepish laugh, before glancing over at Carmy beneath your lashes in a sheepish look. “Are you… okay in here?”

Carmy’s expression shifts slightly, like he’s about to say the exact opposite of what he really means. He feels his chest stinging with a pinch of misplaced jealousy — because he knows you spent time in Copenhagen with Luca some years back, and the idea of someone knowing parts of you that he doesn’t feels a little like a punch to the stomach.

“Yeah,” he nods anyway, slightly strangled, like his body’s trying to keep him from saying the words. “Yeah, I got the rest of it. Go ahead.”

You flash the boy a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes as you go. Carmy watches you trail behind Luca out of the office and back towards the dessert station. Richie watches Carmy watch you.

“So about the tables—”

“Enough about the fucking tables, Richie!”

II. ORANGE BLOSSOM HONEY.

There were only two times in your entire life that you swore you’d never bake again: first, when you got your first scathing review that sent you on a downward spiral for longer than you’d like to admit, and second, when Ever closed down for good.

There was still joy in it, somewhere deep down, you just couldn’t find it anymore. Honestly, you had trouble finding it most days in most anything. Which is probably why Luca told you to give The Bear a shot in the first place.

“I’ll tell him you’re stopping by, alright?” he’d told you over the phone that evening. “Just talk to Carmy. See the place out. And if you hate it, I will personally fly myself across the Atlantic so you can say ‘I told you so’ to my face.”

“That sounds very expensive, Lu.”

“Well, it’d be worth every penny.”

So there you were, weaving through a restaurant that seemed more abandoned than not — as though someone had taken a perfectly good kitchen and detonated a small explosive in the center of it. Walls had been torn down. Floors were covered in sawdust. Extension cords snaked across the room like vines. The smell of drywall and fresh paint grew stronger the further you went.

For a moment, you worried that no one was inside waiting for you, and that you had accidentally committed a breaking and entering — until you spotted a curly-haired stranger hunched over a metal counter in the not-quite kitchen, scribbling at a notepad with his pen.

He glanced up at the sound of your footsteps, dark curls hanging over his eyes. A mixture of surprise and confusion flashed in his gaze, brows raising and lowering again.

You lifted a hand in an awkward wave. “Hi…”

“Hey…”

“I’m sorry. I let myself in— I… I tried to knock, but I guess you couldn’t… hear me…” You trailed off with a wavering smile, scratching anxiously at the back of your neck. “Uh, Luca was supposed to call you, I think...”

Realization flooded the sharp edges of Carmy’s face.

“Oh. Right,” he nodded. “Yeah, for the, uh...”

“Yeah…”

Carmy swallowed hard, tapping his pen along his palm, no more anxious than you are now. “Well, uh, I— I hope he warned you that we don’t have much of a kitchen yet...”

“Yeah…” you answered with a breathless laugh, eyes wandering across the spray-painted tarps hanging as makeshift walls as you strolled further inside. “I just… I thought he was exaggerating a little bit.”

A short laugh escaped him then as he rounded the counter in front of him. “Yeah, this is— basically a construction zone more than a kitchen at this point, so… Sorry in advance.”

“Well, if we’re sharing apologies, I’m sorry for not bringing a résumé,” you confessed sheepishly, struggling to meet the man’s gaze when he stood before you. The scent of paint and sawdust clung heavily to his navy sweatshirt. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want me working here.”

“C’mon. I know your résumé,” Carmy scoffed. “I’ve actually eaten your food before, remember?”

“The desert I was crying over at Ever, you mean?”

His lip twitched into a soft smile before he turned away, too shy to say this to your face:“Well, in my opinion, something that perfect is worth crying over.”

You grinned at the back of him, wider than you realized. “You’re still sparing my feelings after all this time…”

Carmy planted himself on the right wing end of the soon-to-be kitchen and turned to face you again. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but… This is gonna be our dessert station. Hopefully. If this entire place doesn’t cave in—”

‘Ours,’ he said, as if it were already yours in some way, too.

“—That’s a joke. Sorta,” he said, scratching at the back of his wild curls. He glanced up at you once more. “Have you tried making it again since we met?” he wondered suddenly. “You know that… pear… mill-fill thing?”

A giggle sputtered from your lips before you could stop it. Your hand flew to your mouth, as if you were trying to put it inside.

Carmy grinned shyly at having earned the pretty sound, despite his mild embarrassment. He fidgeted with the pen in his tattooed hands and gave you a sheepish look in response. “Help me out here…”

“It’s French,” you told him. “It’s mee-fwee.”

His brows lowered with a visible hesitation. “Mee… foy…”

“Close enough,” you laughed with a shake of your head. “And, to answer your question, no. I haven’t made it again. And I probably never will— I’m too fragile for another defeat.”

The grin that tugged at the corner of Carmy’s mouth then was brief, but no less genuine. “You will,” he said, like some kind of an oath, with so much conviction you couldn’t help but believe him.

—

“You seem happier here.”

Luca’s observation comes suddenly. His English-deep voice cuts through the soft quiet of the empty restaurant, renovated to near completion now. The two of you lie supine on the cool hardwood, the tops of your heads nearly brushing, as you put together Carmy’s newest splurge — which his uncle called “expensive, ergonomic, fuckin’ hippie tables.” You screw each bolt in by hand. You can feel your fingers threatening to cramp around the screwdriver clutched between them.

“Happier than Copenhagen, I mean,” he continues.

You scoff. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure any version of me is happier than I was in Copenhagen…”

“Oh, c’mon…” Luca lilts lowly. “I wasn’t that bad company, was I?”

“You know it wasn’t about you…” you mumble.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I know…”

It was the fault of that goddamn critic, and the devastating review he left that seemed to compliment everything but your work alone.“The pear mille-feuille reads less like a dessert and more like a young chef begging for validation,” the publication read. “For all its technical accomplishment, the pastry never once feels human. It is difficult to imagine, dear reader, a pastry with so much insecurity baked into each of its layers.”

Your world seemed to shrink after that. The singular paragraph of disapproval lodged itself somewhere deep within your psyche, along with all the cynicism and sorrow that built a home inside you, too. Every other failed recipe somehow led back to it, and every success thereafter felt purely accidental — until, eventually, baking stopped being fun and started being the one thing most capable of hurting you.

It hollowed you from the inside out. You worked the kitchen like a ghost returning to its haunt. You wanted to quit, in virtually every sense of the word, and it was Chef Andrea who convinced you to stay — by sending you four thousand miles away to Copenhagen, that is, to remember a world without critics and service and non-stop perfection; to remember what it felt like to exist without constantly needing to prove yourself.

It was there that you met Luca, who taught you what it meant to approach food with curiosity again. And it was here now, in the bones of The Bear, that reminded you how to love the work again — the simple joy of making something with your bare hands and sharing it with the people who mattered most.

“I’m just glad you didn’t stop cooking…” Luca continues with a quiet grunt in the back of his throat as he slides out from under the table. “And I’m glad Chef Andrea sent you over to my neck of the woods.”

“Let me?” you scoff, tilting your head back against the floor to look at the boy upside down. “She practically forced me on that plane.”

“Best thing she ever did,” the boy croons with an air of sarcasm to mask his sincerity. He rises to full height and dusts his palms off on his slacks. “I’m headed out for the night… Need a ride?”

“I think I’m gonna stay here for a while…” you sigh.

“Suit yourself,” he huffs and walks away. “Just don’t overdo it.”

“Or what?”

“Or I will be very upset with you,” he deadpans with faux-solemnity.

“Oh, the horror!” you call to his disappearing figure, right before the door shuts behind him.

Silence returns when he’s gone. Your chest deflates with a heavy sigh, a held breath you didn’t know you were keeping, as you return to your work — twisting the screwdriver in your fist and reveling in the burn in your wrist, the only thing keeping you from thinking.

About that critic. About Copenhagen. About Carmy’s sketchbook, about Carmy and the girl called Claire-Bear.

You rise onto your elbows with a huff when you’re done, stretching out the aching tendons in your neck. You vaguely hear the kitchen door swishing open and shut again before a sudden voice calls out. “Oh, hey—”

The sound of Carmy’s voice startles you for a reason you can’t name. You sit further up on instinct and slam your head against the table with a whack that jostles one of the screws.

“Ow...” you whimper.

“Shit—” Carmy rushes to your side, catching the wooden top when it wavers. His long, tattooed fingers curl around the edge of it to keep its weight from falling back on you. He ducks his head to look at you, features twisting with a sympathetic grimace as you rub at your aching forehead. “Sorry… Didn’t mean to scare you…”

“You didn’t scare me…” you assure him weakly.

His mouth lifts into an amused half-smile. “No?”

You shrug, lips jutted in feigned apathy despite the newfound pounding in your skull. “Not even a little bit...”

Carmy’s grin widens, but he makes no further argument. He just crouches down in front of you and keeps the tabletop steady while you lie back to realign its leg. You spend the next minute or so screwing the loose bolts back into the blanched oak, hands going clammy around the screwdriver at the proximity between you now. The air grows considerably warmer accordingly, filled with the familiar scent of him — of cologne, garlic, and cigarette smoke. You have to keep reminding yourself to breathe.

“You, uh— You never told me,” Carmy starts suddenly, as if he’d been sitting on the words for some time and only now got the courage to say them. He swipes at his nose with the back of his free hand and mumbles shyly behind his fingers.“About, you know, why you almost didn’t come here… Why you went to Copenhagen...”

Your breath hitches faintly in throat. You hope he doesn’t notice. The screw twisting itself back into the pale wood above you becomes the most interesting thing in the room. “It never came up…” you answer quietly. “It was stupid anyway…”

“No, what the asshole critic said was stupid.”

You turn your head against the floor to flash him a playful look, hiding behind the veil of your sarcasm. “There you go again…”

“There I go again?” he echoes.

“Sparing my feelings.”

“No, I— I’m serious.” Carmy stammers with a breathless laugh. “And I know I’m right because I’ve had your stuff before.”

“Yeah,” you scoff and turn away again. “That stupid fucking pear dish that I still can’t get right.”

“No, it was, uh…” Carmy trails off and shakes his head, going distant with recollection. He rests the elbow of his free arm on his bent knee and drops his wild head into his palm. He digs his thumb and forefinger into his eyes as he struggles to recall the name. “It was, uh… It was the— the Bordeaux, I think?”

He lifts his head to glance down at you once more. Your arms fall to your lap, eyes narrowing in confusion as your lip twitches into a shock half-smile. “The Canalé de Bordeaux?” you repeat with much more ease.

“Yeah,” Carmy nods, brown curls swaying. “It was right before I took over here— when I was, you know, eating everywhere I could, trying to learn as much as I could, and I…” His mouth lifts into a distant smile; his eyes glaze over at the memory. “I didn’t even place it until you made it for the kitchen the other day… Don’t think I would’ve noticed otherwise…”

“That was… God, that was forever ago,” you say with a laugh of disbelief, rising back up onto your eblows. “I’m surprised you remember it now.”

“I remember everything,” Carmy shrugs.

“That sounds… terrifying,” you scoff.

“It is. Sometimes,” he jokes with a breathy chuckle. “But, I don’t know… Now I’m starting to think it’s not so bad…”

His light eyes lock with yours. You lose your breath almost instantly, chest aching as your lungs struggle to find it again. You feel like the distance between you has vanished in a blink; each of your breaths feels like inhaling him in some way. You feel like you can taste him, almost, and your mouth waters at the thought alone, parting for his on instinct.

With your heavy eyes settled on his glassy ones, you catch the soft blue of his irises flick down to your lips. You think he might kiss you. You want so desperately for him to kiss you. And you hate how badly you need it.

“I-I don’t think this is a good idea,” you hear yourself blurt.

Carmy’s brows lower in confusion as you scramble suddenly out from under the table. You rise to full height on shaky legs and place several feet of distance between the two of you, crossing your arms over your chest in a feeble attempt to soothe your racing heart.

Carmy rises slowly from his crouched position, blinking the lingering haze from his eyes. “Wha… What are you talking about?” he stammers with his hands splayed in front of him, approaching you again the way someone would a stray puppy.

“Because of, you know… Because of… Claire.” You whisper the name like it’s a curse of some kind.

The confusion etched on his features only deepens further. “Claire?” he echoes, face screwed. “Wh—What does Claire have to do with this? Claire is— Claire is nobody—”

“Does she know that?” you press, brows raised.

“Yes!” he answers without missing a beat. “Because nothing ever happened between us! Because nothing will ever happen between us! Because I— I’m not into her that way!”

“That… way?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, tattooed biceps straining against the sleeves of his undershirt as he rests his hands on his hips. “You know, the— The way I’m into…”

He trails off when he catches himself. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. His unwavering stare bores into yours as he weighs the words in his head, wondering briefly if he should say them aloud. His wild curls sway as he shakes his head to himself. “You know what. Fuck it. The way I’m— The way I’m into you.”

Your chest warms at his words. So furiously, it feels someone has taken a white-hot blade and pierced your sternum with it. You can feel the heart flaring in your face, too, as your mouth curls into a wide, slightly apprehensive smile.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Carmy nods firmly, though something in his gaze seems distantly surprised by his own forwardness. He scratches at the back of his curls and looks down at the table just beside you. “Are you, uh— Are we you good here?”

You nod rapidly until the words to speak catch up to you. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Good,” he hums. “Do you… Do you need a ride, or…?”

You hesitate on instinct, nose scrunching sheepishly. “If it’s not too far out of your way…”

Carmy scoffs like it’s funny. “You’re never too far out of my way,” he says and turns on the heel of his sneaker to walk away, as if he hadn’t just taken all the breath from your lungs right with him.

III. ALMOND PRALINE.

Your hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

You pressed your back hard into the rough brick behind you, letting it snag against your chef whites in a feeble attempt to ground yourself. You tipped your head back for further assistance, and fought every instinct that told you to beat your skull against the concrete as your heart thrummed wildly in your throat — as though it were trying to burst through the delicate tendon there altogether.

Adrenaline soared through your veins. The starry night air refused to pierce through your burning skin, face burning red-hot while your fingers turned to ice.

You had survived a million dinner services much harder than this one, The Bear’s very first. You had survived Carmy’s anger, Richie’s shouting, and the entire kitchen learning how to operate itself. But it was the food critic that nearly killed you — the man who came in older than you remembered, greyer, and a little skinnier than you recall.

It took you a long moment to remember to breathe as you watched Fak seat him through the kitchen window. “I need you back at your station, Chef,” you heard Carmy telling you from the expo, though his voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. “Back at your station, Chef! Now!”

You listened, but your body seemed to work on autopilot. You broke out the baking sheet, the jelly roll pan, and the perforated pastry tray without thinking. You patted out the puff pastry and fired the pears like it was muscle memory to you. You had Richie deliver it to the man, on the house, and tried to expel the rest of it from your mind.

You forgot how to be human thereafter, hardly more useful than a fumbling ball of panic. Carmy told you to get out of the kitchen when you dropped a bowl of sourdough starter you’d been tending to for nearly two months. And now there you were, post-shift, with all the anxiety of a prey animal being hunted for sport.

And the worst part was, you couldn’t tell if you were terrified or exhilarated. Or both.

The heavy metal door beside you squeaked slowly open. A familiar voice broke through the memory. “There you are…” Carmy hummed as he walked out, chef coat hanging open, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal the expanse of his tattooed arms.

His wild curls were still damp from sweat and steam, glowing a more golden shade beneath the amber streetlights. The exhaustion of the shift seemed to carve into all the chiseled edges of his face. But his eyes were heavy with relief at finally being alone with you all the same.

You grew sheepish as he stood before you, struggling to meet his gaze like a scolded child. “I’m sorry, by the way. For… all that.”

Carmy shrugged and cupped his palm around the cigarette he pinched into his mouth. His lighter clicked a few times before it lit, basking his features in a flicker orange hue. “It happens,” he mumbled before inhaling the nicotine into his lungs. The grey smoke left through his nostrils a few seconds later as he flashed you a sterner look. “Just don’t let it happen again, Chef.”

You nodded once. “Heard, Chef…”

Carmy flicked the orange filter with his thumb. His eyes fell to your lap, where you wrung your hands together in a feeble attempt to keep them from trembling. Concern surged through his chest instantly.

“Jeez,” he mumbled.

Your eyes followed his form as he crouched to set the newly-lit cig to the sidewalk, leaving it burning there as he rose to full height again.

“What?”

“Your hands… You’re shaking…” He closed the brief distance between you and took your hands in his warmer, larger ones. The contact stole the breath from your lungs. You’re still getting used to touching him so freely. “God, you’re ice cold.”

You laughed breathlessly. “Because my nervous system is shot.”

Carmy began to rub the warmth back into your fingertips. His palms felt like velvet, calloused from years of burns and knives and hard labor. The gesture was so gentle that it made you feel the crying. Again.

“He liked it, you know,” he told you. “The critic, I mean.”

Your stomach fell as anxiety flooded your veins once more. “I appreciate the sentiment, Carm, but… You can’t know that…”

“No, he said it. Cousin cornered him on the way out— asked him about it,” Carmy confessed. “And after he answered, Richie defended you. Said the guy was an asshole, and that he was a pretty shit critic if he didn’t know what good food tasted like.”

Another startled laugh sputtered from your lips. “That means we’re definitely getting a bad review outta him, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But it’ll be worth it.”

Quiet settled between you. The city grew louder on either side of you in its wake — wind whipping warmly down the alley, cars passing distantly, a train rattling against the tracks somewhere further away. Carmy still hadn’t let go of your hands; he just kept holding you there as his eyes flicked down to your mouth.

He spent a long moment just staring, as if silently trying to will some courage into his body.

Your lips curled slowly into a sheepish smile. “You gonna kiss me, Bear?” you wondered lowly, almost inaudibly.

He nodded for a moment, then pinched his brows to ask. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“I always want you to kiss me,” you laughed.

His mouth twitched shyly. “Then get over here then.”

Your chest swelled when he urged you forward with a gentle tug at your hands. You pressed yourself to his chest as his mouth ducked down to yours, tasting of nicotine and garlic and boy. You moaned at the feeling of him against you, fingers twisting in his silky brown curls. His larger, tattooed hands splayed along your waist, a little less confident in comparison.

The metal door shrieked open once more with little warning. The droning of ten different conversations filled the air as the rest of the kitchen staff spilled out all at once. You and Carmy sprang apart quickly, losing any and all ability to play it off.

The conversation quietened in an instant. You turned away, wiping at your mouth with the back of your hand and refusing to meet their eyes. The three or more seconds of silence that went by felt like a lifetime, until—

“Pay up, assholes!” Richie shouted, fist pumping triumphantly in the air. He continued gloating through the chorus of laughter and groans of failure. “I knew you idiots were dating, and everyone acted like I was losing my mind! But the house always wins, baby!”

—

Carmy sat along the top of the booth with a plate of Canalé de Bordeaux in his lap. Family was your turn tonight, and you’d opted to make the first dish of yours that Carmy had ever tried for the rest of the kitchen. No one knows just how much tenderness is cooked into the caramelized crust and soft custard. No one, perhaps, other than Carmy.

His sneakers dig into the smooth pleather booth below as he props his back against the wall behind him. The rum-vanilla dish melts in his mouth as he surveys the bustling dining area, filled with his family and friends, some of whom were halfway strangers to him a few years ago. His eyes fall to you without trying as you deliver an alcohol-free dessert to a heavily pregnant Sugar. A distant smile tugs at his mouth as he watches your lips move with a conversation he can’t hear from here.

The soul music playing on the radio drowns out your conversation, but not the sound of Richie’s voice as he slides into the booth next to Carmy. His long, graceless limbs bump against the table as he goes, trying to cut a bite of dessert to shovel into his mouth at the same time.

Annoyance twists in the younger boy’s features on instinct. “I’m not cleaning that up if you spill it—”

“I’m not gonna spill it!” Richie argues boyishly, with his mouth full of food, as he settles into the booth a few inches from Carmy’s sneakers. He nudges the boy’s leg with his elbow. “And get your feet off my booth, you fuckin’ animal... Jeez, I don’t know what that girl sees in you…”

“You’re a fuckin’ asshole…”

“No, I’m serious!” the older man laughs with amusement glittering in his dark blue eyes. He shovels another too-big bite into his cheek and talks through the yellow custard clinging to the sides of his mouth. “I don’t know how you managed to pull that off, cousin— There’s no way you even know what to do with all that.”

Richie turns away, still laughing through his nose at his own stupid joke. He cuts himself another bite, already calculating a retort to Carmy’s inevitable argument on the matter — only one never comes.

The younger boy just stabs absentmindedly at his plate, distracting himself from the topic under the guise of forming the perfect bite.

Richie pauses with his own fork to his mouth. He turns slowly over his shoulder, brows raising to his hairline until four wrinkles line his forehead. “Oh, shit,” he scoffs after a few moments. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

“Shut up…” Carmy murmurs under his breath, taking another aggressive bite.

“Oh, c’mon! Don’t tell me you’re not gettin’ your dick wet, Carm—”

“Keep your voice down, fuck-o!” he spits through his mouthful, eyes darting anxiously to make sure no one else had heard him — that you hadn’t somehow heard him, from your spot all the way across the room, laughing with Sugar and Tina. Carmy turns away with a lazy shrug. “We’re just… We’re taking things slow. Not that it concerns you, FYI.”

“Well, FYI, you guys have been dating for months—”

“Oh, thanks for keeping track. I had no idea.”

“—And if she isn’t getting it with you, she’s gotta be getting it from someone else,” Richie rambles absentmindedly as he turns back to his plate. “I mean, I don’t even swing this way, obviously, but if I were a chick, I’d be all over that Luca guy—”

Carmy’s chest stings with a misplaced jealousy. He shouldn’t listen to Richie; he trusts you far too much for any of that. But maybe it’s his own lingering insecurity coming through — the cynicism that always lingers in the back of his head like a shadow, telling him that he’s unworthy of touching you, and then berating him for not being man enough to try.

He huffs. “Well, this is making me feel a whole lot better, cousin. Thank you.”

“I’m just sayin’!” Richie says, muffled through the dessert wadded in his cheek. “She’s obviously crazy about you, man— She looks at you like you hung the fuckin’ moon! I’m just sayin’, you know, trust your instincts. That’s all.”

“…Trust my instincts?” Carmy monotones.

“Yeah,” the older man shrugs. “You’re a chef. Isn’t that supposed to be, like, your whole thing?”

Carmy just blinks at him. “Your point?”

“My point is… She likes you. And you like her— I’m pretty sure half of Chicago knows that by now. So just… Stop getting in your own damn way before you ruin somethin’ good, alright? She picked you, cousin—”

Carmy leans back when Richie gestures too closely with his fork.

“So if you can’t trust your own judgment, at least trust hers.”

Richie’s words pierce him almost physically, giving him that surge of courage he’d been lacking these past few months with you. It makes him want to stop dissecting each of his feelings, for once, until they’re just lying there ahead of him, dead and useless.

Carmy’s light eyes narrow suspiciously. “You know… You’ve gotten, like, really good at giving advice since becoming house manager. You know that?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s freaking me out, too,” Richie deadpans, stabbing at his plate. “Sometimes I hear myself talk and I’m like, who the fuck said that?”

IV. PUFF PASTRY.

The first time you spent the night at his place, Carmy had a panic attack.

It started as a dream, or a nightmare, or maybe a memory. It played through static like an old film — Christmas Eve at the Berzatto house, beneath glowing Christmas lights and smoke from his mother’s cigarettes and something she burnt on the stove. He could smell the nicotine hanging in the hair, and the thick smell of tomato sauce, and Cicero’s expensive nose-stinging cologne.

Carmy was sitting at the head of the table, unable to move from his chair. The rest around him were empty, save for the one at the opposite end. Mikey’s seat. The ghost of his brother was laughing one moment, then screaming at him, then crying the next. Carmy was terrified — the kind of terrified he got as a kid when his mother got in another one of her moods — but he was comforted, at the very least, that his brother was here.

Alive.

Then the lights went out, for only a fraction of a second. And the Christmas lights were glowing again, but his brother’s seat was empty. And the silence was worse than the screaming.

Carmy woke with a sharp breath to a bedroom filled with a navy blue darkness. He rose to his elbows, chest aching as he waited, for a fleeting moment, for the Christmas lights to come back on. Then he realized that he was back in his bedroom, and his brother’s still dead; but you were beside him now, and that was enough.

As his eyes adjusted, he found you lying beside him, bathed in the dim glow of the muted streetlamp outside his window. You’d kicked off the sheets, revealing the expanse of your bare legs and the softness of your stomach from where your shirt had ridden up — one of his, which you wore with a plain pair of cotton underwear. Your mouth was softly parted; your breathing was even and slow.

He tried to match each of your exhales, but the panic dug deeper into his chest. His lungs refused to fill properly. His skin felt too tight. The air was too hot, but his teeth were still chattering. He couldn’t ask you for help if he tried.

The walls spun around him as he rushed immediately to the kitchen. He bent over the sink, gripping the counter hard enough to blanch his knuckles with one hand, while his other scooped handfuls of freezing water into his mouth. He was not sure how much it was helping.

The muscles in his back tensed when a warm hand settled suddenly between his shoulder blades. Carmy didn’t realize you’d followed him out until then; until he heard your voice in his ear, cutting through the wild pounding of his heartbeat.

“It’s okay,” you told him. “Just keep breathing. You’re okay. It’ll pass.”

His breath came easier to him after that. The kitchen soon filled with the sound of his trembling pants and the loud hissing of the kitchen sink. Carmy’s shoulders loosened slowly under your hand.

“Do you need me to do something?” you wondered quietly.

He shook his head, curls hanging over his eyes from where he was still hunched over. “No, I— I got it— I’m… I’m good now.”

He waved you off with a trembling hand. You couldn’t help but notice the way he avoided your gaze; the way he fought every instinct to tense again when you rubbed along his spine. You wondered if you were only making it worse.

“Do you want me to go—?”

“No,” Carmy blurted instantly. His head snapped in your direction. He blinked back at you with wet ocean eyes. “Please. D-Don’t go. I just— I had a bad dream. I’m okay, I swear.”

You didn’t look convinced, and, honestly, neither did he.

“No, you’re not, Bear…” you murmured gently, with a sleepy smile that bordered on sympathetic. But you didn’t ask him to explain the feelings he didn’t have the words for. You just stood beside him and asked if he wanted breakfast.

—

Carmy’s apartment always smelled different when you were in it. Less like an ashtray and more like warm sugar, and your fruit-sweet perfume, and whatever sweet treat you’d spent the service dreaming about. Tonight, it was homemade churros.

Carmy can smell it down the hall when he exits the bathroom. The shower steam mixes with that sweet cinnamon wafting from the kitchen — where he finds you standing at the stove, tapping a socked foot to the synth pop on the radio, and stirring a pot of glossy chocolate syrup with a wooden spoon.

“Only a psychopath spends all night cooking just to come home and cook some more,” he says to announce his presence as he leans against the doorway, replacing his uniform with a sweatshirt and a pair of plaid boxers. “You know that, right?”

“What can I say?” you grin as you glance over your shoulder at him. “You’re rubbing off on me, Bear.”

Carmy exhales a quiet laugh and spends a long moment just watching you, with all the attentiveness of someone who watched sunsets come or go or mapped constellations in the starry sky. You occupied his kitchen as if you’d been there this whole time, in a sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed to your elbows, big enough to hide the less-than-flattering underwear you’re wearing beneath it. You look like home, in every sense of the word.

“You know…” Carmy starts lowly, swiping at the tip of his nose with his thumb. “For a while there… I kinda thought I was done with all this…”

Your spoon slows as it slides along the bottom of the pan. “…What do you mean?”

“Cooking,” he answers. “There was a stretch where I couldn’t even look at a stove without… hoping it would blow up.”

He laughs at himself, though, admittedly, the words sound slightly more concerning leaving his lips than they did in his head. He swallows hard, grateful when you don’t press him on the matter. You just eye him with a carefulness that makes him shift his weight on his bare feet — uncomfortable at being so foreignly vulnerable.

He crosses his arms over his chest in a childlike attempt to hide, scratching along the expanse of his bicep. “Yeah, I, uh… I just— didn’t enjoy it anymore. I didn’t enjoy anything anymore.”

“What changed?” you press gently.

“You came around,” he confesses. “And I watched you learn to love it again— have fun again, and it made… realize why I loved doing what I do.”

Your mouth lifts in a sheepish half-smile. You turn away, grinning wide at the pot of dark chocolate below as it ripples beneath the spoon.

“Well, I probably wouldn’t have learned to have fun again if I didn’t start working at The Bear…” you tell him. “It’s very likely I would’ve stopped baking altogether. I mean, Copenhagen was great and all, but… you, and Syd, and Richie— watching all of you work… I feel like I could do this forever…”

Carmy’s eyes soften as he watches you. A strange emotion surges warmly through his chest and up into his throat. He feels like he could cry.

“Yeah,” he hums, half-strangled. “Me too…”

Your smile turns shy when you look back at him, nodding your head to beckon him over. “C’mere. Come try this.”

Carmy obeys instantly, as if every muscle and bone in his body was made to be under your command. You twist the spoon to gather the liquid chocolate and hold it out toward him, cupping your free hand beneath it to catch any rogue drizzles. Carmy’s pink mouth parts for a taste — the syrup is warm on his tongue, silky and rich as it coats his mouth.

A low sound of approval sounds in the back of his throat. His damp curls sway as he nods.

Your smile widens instantly, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Yeah?”

“Mm,” he hums. “Hell yeah.”

His smile falters slightly when your free hand reaches suddenly towards him. Your thumb brushes the corner of his mouth, gathering the bit of chocolate lingering on the corner there. You press the pad of it to his lips without thinking, and Carmy drags his tongue against it just the same.

The motion was more instinctive than not. He didn’t realize how charged the moment was until your eyes flickered with it — going glassy and heavy in an instant. Even still, you don’t part from his stare as you bring your hand to your mouth, licking the remnants of chocolate on your thumb that was more of Carmy’s spit than anything.

Carmy’s ocean eyes darken in a flash. The cynical, uncertain thing that lingered in him like a shadow seemed to vanish, as his racing heart lurched with an emotion that bordered on primitive. He decides not to think — to follow his instinct, as it were.

He ducks down to kiss you, hard, with the bridge of his nose smushing against the side of yours and his tongue licking into your mouth.The spoon in your hand clatters hopelessly to the tile floor when he urges you back against the counter with a pair of wide hands splayed along your waist.

Behind you, the chocolate continues to simmer.

V. SPICED PEARS.

The first time Carmy had tasted any part of you was at Ever.

It wasn’t long after Mikey died, and he was making his tour around the city to try new food — seeing what changed and what hadn’t — and trying to take his mind off all the rest. He sat alone at a small square table, finishing up his lemon chicken piccata, when another plate was slid suddenly in front of him.

“Oh, I— I didn’t order this,” he stammered.

Then his eyes lifted to find Chef Terry standing before him, with a smile much gentler than he remembered.

“This one’s on the house,” she’d told him. She did not mention the death of his brother, but Carmy knew that was likely why she came over. “Figured you might appreciate something with a wee bit of alcohol in it. I had our pastry chef whip it up for you—” Her eyes flickered with warmth at the mention of you, who Carmy had not yet met. “I’m quite proud of that one.”

She left him with a pat on the back and nothing more. Carmy eyed the dessert before him, studying it.

The burnished bronze pastry sat on the small plate ahead of him like a tiny piece of architecture. The caramel on the ridged exterior gleamed in the candlelight. The shell cracked audibly beneath his fork, a delicate snap that most chefs spend weeks trying to perfect. The inside yielded immediately — golden custard oozing from its center.

Carmy scooped a bite into his mouth, and his world stopped for a fraction of a moment.

The deeply caramelized sugar hit his palate like a memory; a taste of nostalgia accompanied by a satisfying crunch. The silken custard melted on his tongue, rich with vanilla and warm with dark rum. A brittle shell followed by an impossibly soft heart.

Carmy thought, at the time, that it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

But it wasn’t.

—

You were.

His face burns hot between your thighs, which tremble on either side of his flushed cheeks from your previous orgasm (that he gave you with two of his fingers, a lot quicker than you’re willing to admit to.)

“Can you take another?” he’d asked, right after pulling his hand out of your underwear and licking your cum off his fingers, which glistened down the knuckle. You whined at the sight of it, half-scared at the warmth still lingering in the pit of your stomach. “C’mon. Let me taste it, yeah?”

You lift your head from the pillows to watch the boy slink down your body, still wearing all of his clothes despite you lying half-naked in the center of his unmade bed. He slides your panties to the side with a pair of tattooed fingers and licks a fat stripe up your pussy, from your pulsing hole to your already sensitive clit.

Your whine fills the lamplit bedroom as your hips buck to follow him.

Carmy pulls off wearing a barely-there half-smile. “Good?” he asks, for the hundredth time or so since you started.

“Yes…” you moan, head tipped back.

And then he starts eating you. Like eats you, eats you — with his mouth wide and his broad nose smushed into your clit. He’s led by nothing more than primal emotion and pure instinct as he laps all the honey you leak for him. The lewd wet noises of his mouth are only slightly muffled by your contented sighs and his own moans, as he rocks his hips against the mattress in a feeble attempt to relieve the ache in his boxers.

Your fingers tighten in his wild curls, as though you mean to pull him off of you, though your hips chase his tongue all the same. His lips latch on your clit, sucking the delicate button, and you cum with a drawn-out sound you didn’t know you were capable of making. He pushes your knees to your chest with a pair of wide hands to milk the orgasm from your pulsing confines.

“No— No more,” you whine feebly, watching with a pained sort of look as he continues licking at you. “It’s too much, Carm—”

“Just let me taste it, baby,” he says, half-muffled against you.

He’s wearing your glittering cum down to his chin when he crawls back up your body. It’s a mess of awkward, tangled limbs as you drag his sweatshirt up his torso from the hem while he reaches into his nightstand for a condom (a feat made more difficult by the fact that the box is still wrapped in its plastic). He kneels between your thighs, open and wet, and tucks his heavy balls under the hem of his plaid boxers.

You watch him as he rips the foil open with his teeth and rolls the latex on. Your eyes trail down his tattooed torso — over the sparse brown hair along his sternum and down to where it trails along his stomach in a thin line. His cock is heavy in his fist, glowing crimson with desire at the tip and leaking drops of pearly-white.

You should tell him that it’s been a while for you — long enough that you’re not sure if you can take something so thick — but you don’t want to stop the momentum you have going, not even for a second. You just curl your arms down and over his shoulders, palms splayed along his sweat-slick back, and fall back with him when he leans down over you.

His gold chain brushes your chest as he ducks down to open his mouth against yours. He rolls his hips forward and back, gliding his cock through your velvety folds, before piercing you fully.

There’s a fleeting, burning sensation as your cunt stretches around him — which quickly floods into a warmer, fuller feeling when he’s seated fully inside you, with his tuft of coarse hair pressed mercilessly against your throbbing clit.

“Oh, fuck—”

Carmy’s words sound less pleasured and more terrified.

Your eyes snap open. You catch a mere glimpse of his profile as his lips smudge along your burning cheek. “You okay?” you ask through panted breaths.

“Y-Yeah. I just—” The words come out strangled and half-muffled against your neck. “It’s just… been a while for me. I can’t— I can’t move.”

A delirious grin tugs at your mouth. You rake your nails gently along the expanse of his spine, until he shivers on top of you. “You can move, Carm,” you tell him.

He laughs breathlessly, though it comes out more like a punched-out breath. “I can’t, babe. I— I really can’t.”

“It’s okay if you’re close,” you murmur gently, smearing your lips along his flushed cheek. “You already made me cum— twice. This is about you feeling good, too, you know?”

Carmy makes a strangled noise, as if your words had hit him physically somehow. He lets himself go at your permission to feel good and rolls his hips against you. There is little rhythm or precision to his thrusts. They’re shallow and quick and a little sloppy, never pulling all the way out, as he buries his moans into your neck. The bed creaks below you like it might break.

“Fuck,” he groans like it hurts him, like he’s half-scared of his own orgasm.

“That’s it...” you coo in his ear. “I know you’re close, Carm. It’s okay. Just cum for me—”

“Fuck!” It comes out like more of a whimper this time, because he’s trying to calculate how long it’s been — two minutes, if that — but his brain’s too fogged and his stomach is starting to cramp from how hard he’s tensing to keep the feeling going a little longer.

Carmy doesn’t warn you when he cums. Not that you need him to. His heavy body just tenses on top of you, forearms shaking beside your head. You exhale a contented sigh when you feel him pulsing inside of you. “There it is…” you whisper in his ear. “Give me all of it, bear. C’mon. Doing so good for me…”

As your hands rub soothingly along his spine, you feel his bare shoulders shaking a little harder than before. It’s like he’s laughing to himself, or crying maybe. Then you feel something warm and wet drip along your neck.

“Bear?”

“Fuck—” He clears his throat when his voice breaks, lifting one hand to wipe at the tear running down the bridge of his nose. He laughs wetly at himself. “Fuck, I’m so lame. I’m sorry.”

“Are you okay?” you whisper, as if anything too loud might break him.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he assures you, sniffling as he pulls slightly off of you. “It was just— a lot, you know?”

“Yeah,” you nod.

“I wasn’t lying when I said it’s been a while for me.”

“Wow,” you hum sarcastically. “You’re telling me the anxious-avoidant chef who keeps his jeans in his oven isn’t absolutely drowning in ass? In this… very illustrious bachelor pad?”

His laugh is more humorous this time. “Fuck you.”

“You already did,” you remind him with a cheeky grin. “Unless you’re askin’ for round two— which I’m not opposed to.”

His mouth twitches into a more sincere grin. His glassy eyes soften further as they dart across your features, memorizing the wrinkles beside your squinted eyes and how your smile sits a little crooked to the left.

He shakes his head, ocean eyes still a little wet, as he smooths his fingers over your temple to brush away an invisible strand of hair there. “You’re gonna kill me, you know that?”

“Oh, but what a sweet, sweet way to go,” you croon as he ducks down over you again.

But if loving you is a slow death, why does kissing you taste like salvation?

The main bullpen was swarming with external personnel from the Richmond field office, there to coordinate a multi-jurisdictional task force. The atmosphere was loud, territorial, and thick with the aggressive posturing of visiting field agents trying to establish dominance in a new workspace.

Leila was standing by the central copy bay, a heavy box of digital ballistics printouts resting against her hip. She wore a soft cream top under her open field jacket, her reading glasses pushed up into her honey curls. She was systematically scanning sheets of data, completely focused on her job, her movements light and unhurried.

A visiting senior liaison — a large, brash man named Special Agent Vance who clearly enjoyed throwing his title around — walked up to the counter, slamming a heavy folder down right next to her hand.

"Hey, sweetheart," Vance said, his voice a loud, dismissive bark that instantly cut through the immediate radius of desks. "Clear those prints off the glass. I need a high-priority run on these suspect cell logs, and I don't have twenty minutes to wait on lab paperwork."

Leila didn't flinch, but her fingers tightened slightly against the edge of her clipboard. She slowly lowered her glasses, her dark eyes looking at him with a calm, dignified patience. "Agent Vance, this is a sequential ballistics mapping for an active homicide. As soon as this run finishes, the glass is yours."

"I didn't ask for a schedule, Girlie," Vance sneered, stepping directly into her personal space, his shadow completely overlapping her smaller frame as he reached aggressively toward her paper tray. "I said move it."

He didn't get to touch the tray.

The temperature in the bullpen didn't just drop; it plummeted to absolute zero.

Before Vance could even register a footstep, a massive, unyielding wall of solid muscle materialized right at his shoulder. Derek didn't run into the space; he simply occupied it, his long, heavy stride bringing him so close to Vance that the visiting agent was forced to take a clumsy step backward just to keep his balance.

Morgan didn't have his jacket on. His black henley was stretched tight across his broad chest, his sleeves rolled securely up his heavy, tattooed forearms. His hands were tucked casually into his pockets, his posture loose, almost relaxed.

But his eyes were a terrifying, dead expanse of predator calculation.

He didn't look at Leila. He didn't ask her if she was okay. He kept his broad chest positioned precisely three inches in front of her right shoulder, completely cutting off Vance’s physical access to her frame, absorbing her entirely into his protective shadow.

"Is there a problem with the equipment workflow, Agent Vance?" Morgan asked. His voice wasn't a roar; it was a flat, dangerously quiet rumble that vibrated with a terrifying level of quiet, possessive authority.

Vance blinked, his chest puffing out as he tried to match Morgan’s height. "Look, Morgan, I'm just trying to get a priority run done. Your lab tech here is — "

"Special Agent Rossi," Morgan interrupted smoothly, his voice dropping another octave, the delivery slow, measured, and toxic. He didn't move an inch, but his eyes locked onto Vance’s face with a heavy, unblinking glare that made it instantly clear he was tracking the man's pulse. "Her title is Special Agent Rossi. She is the lead forensic ballistics analyst for the Behavioral Analysis Unit. And in this building, her timeline dictates yours. Every. Single. Time."

Vance’s jaw tightened. He looked around the bullpen, clearly expecting another agent to back him up on the standard bureaucratic hierarchy.

Instead, he found total, unyielding isolation.

Across the aisle, Hotch was standing by his office railing, his arms crossed, his dark eyes fixed on Vance with a cold, silent judgment. Emily didn't even stop typing; she just slowly leaned back in her chair, watching the exchange with a look of clinical pity for the visiting agent. Rossi didn't look up from his desk, but he deliberately uncapped his heavy pen with a slow, deliberate click that echoed like a hammer cocking in the quiet room.

The message from the entire BAU was loud, synchronized, and blindingly clear: You just walked into the wrong cage, and nobody is going to pull that dog off you.

Vance looked back at Morgan, finally reading the unwritten, primal law written in the senior profiler's rigid jawline. This wasn't a professional dispute. It was an absolute, undisputed territory line, and to tamper with the sweetheart of the lab was considered a terminal offense.

"My mistake," Vance muttered, his face turning a mottled red as he snatched his folder off the counter and quickly retreated toward the briefing room.

The moment the visiting agent’s footsteps cleared the carpet, Morgan's entire demeanor underwent an instant, silent recalibration. The lethal, terrifying protective wall dissolved into thin air. He slowly turned his head, his dark eyes instantly softening into that rich, private register meant exclusively for her.

He didn't offer a dramatic speech. He didn't ask if she needed comforting. They didn't need words. He just stood there, his massive warmth completely sheltering her from the drafty hallway, his chest rising and falling in a deep, steady rhythm that perfectly matched her own breathing.

Leila looked up at him through her lashes, a deep, beautiful rose blush warming her skin. She didn't say thank you. Instead, she just reached out, her hand moving with a sweet, unhurried ease as she gently, lightly patted the side of his rolled-up sleeve — a tiny, secret acknowledgment of his anchor.

"The run is finished, Derek," she whispered, her melodic voice a soothing balm that instantly settled the last of his protective overdrive.

"Good," Morgan murmured, a slow, completely smitten smirk finally dimpling his cheek as he watched her collect her papers. "Let me carry the box up to the lab for you, Doc."

The BAU bullpen was a study in controlled chaos, but for you, it was a second home. The scent of stale coffee and old case files was as familiar as your father’s aftershave. You were bent over a map, tracing a pattern with your finger, your brow furrowed in the same way your dad’s got when he was piecing together a particularly difficult puzzle.

“Anything?” a smooth, confident voice asked from your left.

You didn’t look up. “If there was, I’d have announced it, Morgan.”

Derek Morgan leaned against your desk, a charming smile playing on his lips that had disarmed countless witnesses and coaxed confessions from the most hardened criminals. It had zero effect on you. You continued to stare at the map, your posture radiating a focused intensity that was a carbon copy of Jason Gideon’s.

That was the crux of the issue. You were Gideon’s daughter. His eldest. And you were the only woman in the vicinity of Derek Morgan who hadn’t so much as stumbled when he turned on the charm.

Your teeth gritted as the man persisted, the heat of his body bleeding into yours from the proximity. It didn't help that the air circulation and heating in the old building didn't perform very well, so it was even easier to identify how truly close Morgan was.

“You know, most people find my presence at least a little distracting,” he teased, trying another angle.

This time, you did look up. Your eyes, the same shade of steady, knowing blue as your father’s, met his. “I’m not most people. And if you don't step away in the next two seconds, I'm--”

Defeated, but not deterred, Morgan held up his hands in surrender and retreated to his own desk, shooting a look of pure frustration towards your father’s office. Through the glass, Gideon was watching the exchange, a faint, almost imperceptible smile on his face. He gave Morgan a slight, knowing shake of his head before turning back to his own work.

It had started as a game for him. A challenge. The new, fiercely intelligent analyst with the legendary profiler’s last name and his piercing, analytical eyes. He’d offered to get you coffee, complimented your profiling notes, and once, after a tough case, he’d placed a comforting hand on your shoulder. You’d merely glanced at the hand, then back at his face, and said, “Your concern is noted, Agent Morgan. The geographical profile, however, is still incomplete.”

You were like a brick wall. Impenetrable, far from transparent, and far too stubborn. It just so happened, though, that Derek Morgan was a very persistent man. And when he saw something he wanted, the instinct doubled.

The first major rejection was in the precinct gym.

You were preparing Spencer for his yearly physical evaluation (he'd asked you to, you weren't just being cruel), which including sparring this year. To bite off more than the poor guy could chew, he chose the most formidable opponent on the team to spar with.

The air in the precinct gym was thick with the smell of sweat and old rubber mats. Reid, looking like a startled fawn in oversized sparring gear, was valiantly trying to remember the combination you’d drilled into him.

“Okay, Spencer, remember,” you said, your voice calm and instructive. “Left jab to distract, right cross with your body weight behind it, then drop and sweep. It’s about using their momentum, not your muscle.”

“Their momentum, not my muscle,” he repeated, a mantra against the impending doom.

The doom, of course, was currently stretching by the heavy bag, his biceps flexing in a way that was frankly obscene. Derek Morgan had sauntered in, drawn by the commotion, and his eyes had lit up with predatory interest.

“Need a real partner, pretty boy?” Morgan called over, a grin spreading across his face. “Can’t have Gideon’s little girl doing all the heavy lifting.”

You didn’t even glance his way, adjusting the strap on Reid’s headgear. “We’re fine, Morgan. But thank you for the unsolicited commentary.”

Morgan, undeterred, moved to the edge of the mat. “C’mon. One round. Let me show you both how it’s done. I’ll go easy.”

You turned, glaring straight into his face with that familiar Gideon stubbornness. Without even glancing at Spencer, you spoke to him crisply.

"Pay close attention, Spence. This is exactly what I wanted to teach you."

Your voice was cool, analytical. You finally turned to Morgan, a glint in your eye that promised nothing good for his ego. "Alright, Morgan. One round. Show us what you've got."

Morgan's grin returned, full of bravado. "Don't say I didn't warn you, sweetheart."

The two of you squared off. Morgan moved with his characteristic panther-like grace, light on his feet. He threw a few testing jabs, which you deflected with ease, your stance solid and unyielding.

"See, Reid?" you said, your eyes never leaving Morgan. "He's leading with his shoulder. Telegraphed from a mile away."

Morgan’s eye twitched. He feinted left and came in with a powerful right hook. You didn't back away. You ducked under it, swept a leg behind his, and used his own forward momentum to send him stumbling past you. He caught himself before he fell, but it was undeniably clumsy.

"Excellent example of over-committing to a strike," you commented to Reid, as if narrating a nature documentary. "All that force, and nothing but air to show for it."

A low growl rumbled in Morgan's chest. This time he came in fast, aiming to grapple. You let him get close, and as his arms wrapped around you, you dropped your weight like a stone, executed a perfect hip throw, and planted him flat on his back on the mat with a resonant THUMP that shook the floor.

You stood over him, not even winded. "And that," you said to a wide-eyed Spencer, "is how you handle an opponent who relies solely on brute force. Any questions?"

From the doorway, a slow, deliberate clapping sound broke the silence.

All three of you turned. Jason Gideon was leaning against the doorframe, a steaming mug of tea in his hand, his expression one of profound amusement.

"Beautifully demonstrated, sweetheart," he said, his voice soft and fatherly. "You used his weight, his pride, and his predictable aggression. Textbook."

Morgan groaned from the floor, covering his face with a glove.

"Reid," Gideon said, nodding towards the door. "I believe Garcia has a new database she wants to show you. Something about geological survey maps."

"Right! Yes! Databases!" Reid stammered, scrambling to his feet and all but fleeing the gym.

Gideon walked over and offered a hand to the prostrate Morgan. With a sigh, Morgan took it and let the older agent haul him to his feet.

"You saw the whole thing, didn't you, sir?" Morgan grumbled, brushing himself off.

"From the moment you sauntered in here, convinced your biceps would do all the talking," Gideon confirmed, taking a sip of his tea. He looked from Morgan's bruised ego to your stoic, victorious face as you walked away to the showers.

He clapped a hand on Morgan's shoulder. "Let me give you some advice, Derek. Free of charge." He leaned in slightly, his tone conspiratorial. "Chasing after my daughter is a lot like profiling a particularly clever unsub. You can't just rush in. You have to be patient. You have to study the patterns. And for God's sake, you have to leave your ego at the door. It makes you sloppy."

He gave Morgan's shoulder a final pat and turned to leave. At the door, he paused and looked back,

"Oh, and Derek?" Gideon added. "If you ever tell her I said this, I'll deny it... but she gets her stubbornness from her mother."

With that, he was gone, leaving Morgan in the silent, humbling aftermath. Morgan thought about you, really thought about you -- the woman who had just systematically dismantled him both physically and psychologically -- and let out a breathless, incredulous laugh.

The second time, it was a bar night with the team.

Derek had never seen you like this. The crisp, professional analyst was gone, replaced by a woman who was all laughter and loose, wild curls. Your dress was a dark, shimmery thing, tight and short, a world away from your usual tactical pants and blazers. You were holding court at the pool table, soundly thrashing Elle with a series of impossibly tricky bank shots, a glass of whiskey dangling from your fingers.

The entire team was in various states of relaxed revelry, but Derek was stuck, his beer forgotten, watching you. This was a new profile, one he was desperately trying to compute.

"Eight ball, corner pocket," you announced, your voice bright with confidence. You leaned over the table, the line of your dress riding up, and executed the shot with a clean clack. The ball sank without a sound.

Elle threw her hands up in defeat, laughing. "She's a shark! A goddamn shark!"

You laughed, a real, unguarded sound that hit Derek right in the chest. This was the crack in the armor. This was his chance.

He made his move as you went to get another drink, sidling up next to you at the bar. "Didn't know you played," he said, leaning against the polished wood, turning the full force of his smile on you.

You took a slow sip of your whiskey, eyeing him over the rim of the glass. The professional wall was down, but a new one, just as formidable, was in its place. Amusement. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Morgan."

"Maybe I'd like to," he said, his voice dropping into that low, intimate register that usually made women melt. "Let me buy you that drink. We can… talk."

You set your glass down with a definitive click. "Talk?" you repeated, a sly grin playing on your lips. "Okay. Let's talk. You see that guy at the end of the bar? The one in the leather jacket trying way too hard?"

Derek glanced over. "Yeah?"

"He's been scoping out the place for the last twenty minutes. His shoes are too nice for this neighborhood, his watch is a fake, and he's checked his phone seventeen times. He's waiting for someone, and it's not a date." You turned back to Derek, your eyes sparkling with mischief. "Now, what did you want to talk about? The geopolitical implications of his choice of counterfeit Rolex?"

Derek stared at you, his charmingly offered drink suddenly feeling very foolish in his hand. He hadn't been trying to profile the room; he'd been trying to get a date. And you, even in your downtime, were still a profiler to your core. You had taken his romantic overture and turned it into a mini-BAU briefing.

He was so thrown he couldn't even form a response.

You patted his cheek, the gesture patronizing and yet, somehow, incredibly endearing.

"Nice try, biceps. But if you want to get a drink with me, you're going to have to be a lot more interesting than that."

You slid off the barstool, leaving him standing there, utterly deflated. In the same moment, Reid slid into the seat you'd left, trailed by your very own father. No doubt to rub it in.

Derek groaned internally, dropping his head into his hands. "Man, don't say it. Just don't."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Gideon said, his voice the picture of innocence. He signaled the bartender for two more drinks -- a beer for Reid, another scotch for himself.

Reid fidgeted, picking at the label on his bottle. "So... that looked... um..." He glanced from Derek's dejected form to your retreating back, searching for the right word. "Uncomfortable."

Derek lifted his head to glare at the younger agent. "You think?"

"Well, yeah," Reid said, his voice earnest. "She patted your cheek. People usually only do that to babies and... well, puppies they find mildly irritating but harmless."

Derek stared at him. "Reid, that is not helping."

"Right. Sorry." Reid took a quick sip of his beer.

Gideon accepted his scotch, a slow smile spreading across his face. "She called you 'biceps'," he stated, the amusement in his voice now a tangible thing.

Derek winced. "Yeah. I heard."

Gideon chuckled, a low, warm sound. "She only gives nicknames to things she finds... noteworthy. Inefficient, perhaps, but noteworthy." He turned his head, his eyes -- the same steady blue as yours --locking onto Derek's. "You're getting through, son. You're just doing it the hard way."

With that, Gideon clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture that was both commiserating and slightly patronizing, then stood and guided a still-fidgeting Reid away from the bar.

Derek was left alone with his foolish-feeling drink and the echoing, patronizing pat on his cheek. Biceps. Not "Morgan." Not "Agent." Biceps. He looked down at his own arms, then back at you, a slow, determined grin finally breaking through his defeat.

Noteworthy. He could work with noteworthy.

Thirdly, there was the incident on the case.

As was so common, the case being dealt with was a man who was preying on young women. Since you were the youngest (and easiest on the eyes), you were the bait to draw the man out.

You walked down the dark, rain-slicked alley, the puddles soaking into your cheap fabric heels. Your service weapon was a cold, reassuring weight against your ribs, secured in a bra holster. The comms unit in your ear hissed with static, then Morgan's voice, tight with a tension that had nothing to do with protocol.

"Okay, I see you. You're doing great. Just keep walking to the end of the block. He should be approaching from your left."

His voice was different. Stripped of its usual smooth confidence, it was raw, almost strained. You could hear the protective urge in every syllable, and it irked you.

"Morgan, my vitals are steady. Stick to the script," you murmured, your lips barely moving.

A beat of silence. Then, "I am. Just... be ready."

You reached the predetermined spot under a flickering streetlamp. Right on profile, a figure detached itself from the deeper shadows to your left. He was bigger than his file photo suggested, his eyes glinting with a predatory hunger.

"Hey there, sweetheart," the unsub slurred, stepping too close. "You look lost."

In your ear, Morgan's breathing hitched. "He's on you. Team, move in. Now."

But the unsub was faster than anticipated. He lunged, not with a weapon, but to grab you, his hands closing like vices around your upper arms.

A spike of adrenaline, sharp and clean, shot through you. But it wasn't fear. It was focus.

Before the tactical team could even breach the alley mouth, you moved. You didn't try to pull away. You dropped your weight, yanking him forward and off-balance. As he stumbled, you brought your knee up hard into his groin. He grunted, his grip loosening, but he was heavier, his momentum too great. He fell forward, his full weight crashing down on you, slamming you both onto the wet pavement.

Your leg, trapped beneath the tangle of bodies, bent unnaturally beneath you, giving way with a sickening, internal crack that was louder than the thunder overhead.

A sharp, involuntary cry was torn from your lips, but your training held. Even through the blinding white-hot pain, your arms locked around the unsub, keeping him pinned against you in a desperate grapple, denying him the chance to regain his bearings or reach for a weapon.

In your ear, the comms erupted. "She's down! She's down! Go, go, go!"

The crushing weight vanished as the unsub was torn from you with a sudden, violent efficiency. The sharp click of handcuffs echoed in the rain-drenched alley, a sound of finality. With the immediate threat gone, the adrenaline that had been holding the pain at bay receded like a tide, and the full, brutal reality of your injury crashed over you. A sharp hiss escaped your clenched teeth as you curled forward, instinctively cradling your leg. The world narrowed to the white-hot fire burning below your knee.

Then he was there.

Derek Morgan didn't run; he appeared, as if the space between you and him had simply ceased to exist. He dropped to his knees in the filthy water, his suit pants be damned. All the bravado, the teasing charm, the frustrated pursuit -- it was all gone, washed away by the rain. His face was pale, his eyes dark with a concern you'd never seen in him before.

"Hey, look at me," he said, his voice low and urgent, his hands hovering over you, to help but terrified of causing more pain. Raw and real. "Where does it hurt? Just your leg? Talk to me, honey."

"Leg," you managed to grit out, your voice tight. "It's... it's broken, I think."

"Okay. Medic is on the way. Just hold on." He shrugged out of his suit jacket, his focus entirely on you. He didn't care about the scene, the team, the secured unsub. Gently, careful not to jostle you, he tucked the jacket around your shoulders, his hand lingering for a moment on your arm, a stark, warm contrast to the cold pavement. His thumb stroked a soothing pattern over your soaked sleeve, a gesture of such innate, unprotected tenderness that it made your breath catch almost as much as the pain did.

The rest of the team formed a perimeter, but they gave you two space. Reid was on the radio demanding an ETA for the ambulance. Hotch had a firm, grim grip on the now-cuffed unsub.

It was your father who finally approached, his stride quick and sure, the professional mask firmly in place, though his eyes betrayed a storm of paternal fear. He knelt on your other side, his presence a familiar, steadying rock.

"Medic is ninety seconds out," Gideon stated, his voice calm and authoritative. He looked at you, his gaze sweeping over your injury before meeting your eyes. The pride was still there, but it was fierce and pained. "'Atta girl. You held him. You did everything right."

Then his gaze shifted to Morgan. Derek didn't even look up, his entire world reduced to the space you occupied. He was murmuring low, reassuring words, his attention absolute. Gideon watched him for a long moment, seeing the shattered composure, the raw vulnerability. He saw the game end, right there in that alley.

Reaching out, Gideon placed a firm, grounding hand on Morgan's shoulder. "Derek," he said, his tone softer now. "The ambulance is here. Let them through."

Morgan flinched as if startled, finally tearing his eyes away from you to look at Gideon. In that look, there was no challenge, no rivalry. There was only a shared, desperate understanding of what truly mattered. The third wall had not just been cracked; it had been utterly demolished, leaving nothing but the truth lying broken between them.

You finally let Derek in on a Thursday morning.

There was no case, no urgent paperwork, but the BAU was never truly free of stress. This particular strain was personal. Derek had been on medical leave for a few days, a fact that chafed at him like a too-tight collar. In the team's last case, a lucky shot from an unsub had caught him in the side, the body armor absorbing the worst but leaving him with a deep, painful bruise and cracked ribs that hindered his job, his usual strength, and his usual saucy personality.

You'd been tasked -- by your father, of course, with a look that was more plea than order -- to make sure he was good. After all, it had only been four days since he was discharged from the hospital.

You knocked on his apartment door softly, crossing your arms and waiting for a response.

The knock on his apartment door was a sound Derek almost didn't hear over the low thrum of his own frustration. He wasn't used to being on this side of the door, the one being checked on. He pulled it open, his movements still careful, guarded.

He expected Garcia, maybe, with a casserole and enough bubbly energy to power Quantico. He did not expect you.

You stood there, arms crossed, not in your usual work attire but in soft-looking jeans and a simple sweater. No files, no professional mask. Just you.

"Gideon," he said, surprise flattening his tone.

"You're supposed to be resting," you stated, your eyes doing a quick, professional sweep of him, taking in the slight pallor of his skin, the way he held his torso stiffly.

"Could say the same to you. It's your day off."

"Dad said you were stubborn. I came to see for myself." You didn't wait for an invitation; you stepped past him into the apartment. It was neat, masculine, but the throw blanket on the couch was rumpled, and a half-empty glass of water sat on the coffee table next to a bottle of painkillers. Evidence of his forced inactivity.

He closed the door and leaned against it, watching you. "And? Living up to the Morgan reputation?"

As he lifted his hand, you spotted his bandage. Slightly tinted pink. Needing a change. Ignoring his question, you raised an eyebrow.

"When's the last time you changed your bandaging?"

The deflection was so perfectly, quintessentially you that Derek almost smiled. The world could be ending, and you'd still be focused on the procedural inaccuracy.

He glanced down at the bandage on his side, the pink tint a clear sign of neglect. "I don't know. Yesterday? This morning?" he admitted, the lie evident in his voice. He'd been trying to ignore it, along with the dull, throbbing pain.

"You must like being on leave. An infection would keep you there," you stated, but there was no bite to it. Instead, you moved past him with a purpose he knew well. "Where do you keep your supplies?"

"In the bathroom. Cabinet under the sink."

You returned moments later with a fresh roll of gauze, medical tape, and antiseptic. You pointed to the couch. "Sit."

For once, Derek Morgan didn't argue. He sat on the edge of the cushions, watching as you knelt in front of him. The air shifted. This wasn't a medic or Garcia playing nurse. This was you, your focus entirely on him, your hands gentle as you peeled back the old bandage.

He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

"Sorry," you murmured, your touch becoming even lighter. Your brow was furrowed in that familiar way, the same intense concentration you gave to a geographical profile. But now it was directed at him, at the ugly, bruised skin and the stitched-up wound.

You worked in silence for a minute, cleaning the area with a careful, clinical efficiency. The only sounds were his slightly ragged breathing and the rustle of medical wrappers.

"You know," he said softly, his voice a low rumble, "for months, I thought you didn't have a single nurturing bone in your body."

You didn't look up, carefully applying the new gauze. "I don't. This is just basic field medicine. Any competent agent would do the same."

He laughed, a short, pained sound. "Sweetheart, there is nothing 'basic' about you." His hand came down, not to stop you, but to cover yours where it rested against his skin. Your movements stilled. "And this doesn't feel very clinical."

You finally looked up, meeting his gaze. The proximity was different now. It wasn't a challenge or an invasion. It was intimate. The mask was gone from both of you. His hand came to your face, stroking your cheek with soft warmth.

"You have to take care of yourself, Morgan. Team needs you back."

His thumb stroked gently along your cheekbone, his expression softening at your words. "The team, huh?" he murmured, his voice low and intimate. "Is that all?"

The air crackled between you. You could feel the warmth of his hand on your face, the steady weight of his gaze. All the banter, the deflections, the walls you'd so carefully built -- they felt flimsy and pointless now.

You let out a soft breath, the last of your resistance leaving you. Your shoulders relaxed as you leaned ever so slightly into his touch.

"No," you admitted, your voice barely a whisper. "That's not all."

A slow, genuine smile spread across his face, one that reached his beautiful brown eyes and made them crinkle at the corners. It was a look of pure, unadulterated triumph, but it was softened by a profound tenderness you'd never seen directed at you before.

"Didn't think so," he said, his thumb still making those soothing circles on your skin.

You rolled your blue eyes, though it held no actual contempt. The lack of bite in you was an admission of defeat, a forfeit. Your hands carefully secured his new bandaging in place before you crawled up beside him, thighs pressed together.

The shift was seismic. One moment you were the stoic medic, the next you were curled into his side, your body a warm, solid line against his. Derek let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, his arm instinctively curling around your shoulders to pull you closer. He was careful of his ribs, but the need to hold you was a physical ache.

"You know," he murmured into your hair, his voice thick with emotion, "maybe I'll have to get shot a lot more often to get this kind of attention."

You shook your head against his shoulder, a soft, genuine laugh escaping you. It was a sound he'd only heard in fragments, never directed fully at him. It was better than he'd imagined. "Don't you dare," you said, your voice muffled by his shirt. "Once was more than enough."

You adjusted your head on his good shoulder, and he rested his cheek against your hair.

"I won," he sighed softly, a smirk coming onto his face. "Knew I'd soften you up. If anyone could. I was starting to doubt myself."

A huff of laughter left your lips.

"Oh, you won, did you?" you asked, one eyebrow arching in that familiar, challenging way, but the effect was ruined by the way you were still curled into his side.

"Damn right, I did," he said, his voice brimming with a smug, victorious warmth. "The great Gideon fortress. Impenetrable. And I, Derek Morgan, found the secret passage."

"You didn't find a secret passage," you corrected, poking him gently in his uninjured side. "You repeatedly threw yourself at the front gate until it got so annoyed it let you in just to make you stop."

His laughter was a rich, full-bodied sound that made you smile in spite of yourself. "Semantics, sweetheart. The result is the same. I'm in." He tightened his arm around you, his expression softening again. "And I'm not going anywhere."

Your eyes met his again, faces inches apart. It was a stilling feeling, finally touching something that you'd wanted so much for months. You could feel his breath on your lips, mint and cinnamon. The silence was pregnant with need, with intention, with something else too.

Before you could stop them, you uttered two words you thought you'd never say to anybody, let alone to Derek Morgan.

"Kiss me."

An exhale left his body.

"Yeah?" The single word was a hushed, reverent thing, laden with a shock so profound it stole the air from his lungs. His brown eyes, usually so full of confident fire, were wide, searching yours as if he needed to be absolutely certain he hadn't hallucinated the two words that had just fallen from your lips.

A slow, devastatingly handsome smile began to curve his mouth, the kind that promised a thousand different futures. "I thought you'd never ask."

He didn't need another invitation. He closed the minuscule distance between you, his hand cradling the back of your head as his lips met yours.

It wasn't a chaste, questioning kiss. This was the culmination of months of frustration, challenge, and buried longing. It was heat and certainty, a claiming and a surrender all at once. His mouth moved over yours with a practiced confidence that should have been arrogant, but felt instead like a perfect, long-awaited answer. You could taste the mint and cinnamon on his tongue, a hint of the coffee he’d been drinking, and something uniquely, essentially Derek.

One of your hands fisted in the soft fabric of his t-shirt, holding on as the world tilted on its axis. The other came up to rest against the stubble of his jaw, feeling the muscle work as he kissed you with a depth that left you breathless.

When you finally broke apart, both of you were breathing heavily, foreheads resting together. His eyes were dark, his pupils blown wide.

After a long moment, you spoke again, your tone laced with wry amusement, but still breathless. "Dad's probably sitting in his car outside, making sure I don't strangle you."

Derek's chest vibrated with a quiet chuckle. "Nah. He saw you come in. He knows." He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of your head, the gesture feeling more natural than breathing. "He knows you're safe with me."

You tilted your head back, your Gideon-blue eyes searching his. All the walls were gone, leaving only a soft, certain warmth. "I know," you whispered.

You smiled to yourself while typing. "Mine's worse now that I'm pregnant. Yesterday he tried to meal prep for me."

"Oh?" Santos asked from the next computer. "How'd that go?"

"He labeled every container by protein count."

"Sounds intense," Santos muttered.

"He is intense," you agreed easily. "But he means well."

Nobody thought much about it then. Because everybody in the ER about your husband.

Well, sort of. They knew he existed. They knew he packed your lunches sometimes. That he texted reminders for vitamins. That he apparently folded laundry with terrifying precision. That he hated when you worked overtime but still stayed awake until you got home anyway.

They knew he rubbed your swollen feet after shifts. They knew he was "ridiculously overprotective." They knew he called you "doctor" sarcastically whenever you forgot to take care of yourself.

They knew you adored him, but they didn't know his name.

And somehow, over months of working together, nobody ever asked. Or maybe they had once and gotten distracted by a trauma alert halfway through.

That was the thing about the ER. Conversations happened infragments.

So your husbands became this faceless mythical man everyone pieced together from tiny details.

And because you were basically sunshine in human form (You were the warmest, most patient, endlessly kind person), everyone imagined your husband accordingly.

Probably some sweet elementary school teacher. Or a soft-spoken accountant. Or maybe a stay-at-home husband who baked sourdough and wore cardigans.

Definitely not Brendon Park. Absolutely not him.

The first time most of the ER really met Brendon was during a motorcycle trauma.

The ortho pager had gone off twenty minutes earlier and everyone was already stressed. The patient had multiple fractures, a discolated shoulder, and enough road rash to make the interns pale.

Then he walked in. Tall, broad-shouldered. No greeting, no wasted movement, just immediate assessment,

"X-rays," his voice cut through the chaos.

Someone handed them over. Brendon studied them for maybe three seconds.

"We'll prep OR two. I want vascular on standby."

Ogilvie beside him started talking. "So we were thinking—"

"No," Brendon interrupted without even looking at him. "You were guessing."

Silence. Ogilvie visibly shrank.

"Comminuted tib-fib fracture with displacement. If you'd waited another hour, he'd lose perfusion."

The room went still. Not because he was wrong, but because he was terrifying.

Then his eyes shifted toward you. And the entire atmosphere changed so subtly that nobody noticed it except maybe Santos.

Your shoulders relaxed just slightly. Brendon's expression remained unreadable, but his gaze lingered on you for half a second too long.

"You've been here since morning," he said flatly.

"Hello to you too."

"Did you eat?"

The room paused.

You looked midly defensive. "Yes."

"You're lying."

"I had crackers."

"That's not food."

Ogilvie who'd just been verbally executed stared between you both in confusion. The Shark did not do conversation, yet here he was arguing with you about crackers.

You rolled your eyes. "I'm busy."

"You're pregnant."

"And?"

"And you require actual nutrition."

Santos coughed to hide a laugh. Brendon ignored everybody. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and placed a protein bar beside your keyboard without saying anything else.

Then he turned and walked away. No goodbye or no explaination. He just left.

The ER collectively stared at the protein bar. Then at you. Then back at the protein bar.

Santos finally broke the silence. "...What the hell was that?"

You unwrapped the bar casually. "He gets grumpy when I forget to eat."

"You know Park the Shark?" Santos asked slowly.

You looked confused. "Brendon?"

The entire station froze at the first-name basis.

"What do you mean, Brendon?" Santos asked.

"That's his name."

"No one calls him Brendon."

"Oh," you took a bite of the protein bar. "I do."

After that, people started noticing things. Little things.

Like how Brendon only ever lingered in the ER when you were there. How he answered everyone else with clipped professionalism but always gave you full sentences.

How you somehow never seemed intimidated by him. Everyone else treated Brendon like a shark circling bloody water, you treated him like an annoyed housecat.

One afternoon, during a particularly miserable shift, you were sitting at the station rubbing your lower back.

"God," you muttered. "My husband bought six different pregnancy pillows."

Dana laughed. "Six?"

"He said the first five didn't have the right feeling."

"What does that even mean?"

"I don't even want to know."

Then Santos frowned. "Wait. Wasn't Park carrying a giant package into the parking lot yesterday?"

You didn't look up from your charting. "Probably."

"And didn't he get irritated at at someone who bumped into him because it caused him to drop it all?"

"Oh, that was ours."

Silence.

You blinked up. "What?"

Santos stared at you carefully. "You and Park live in the same building?"

"Oh." You smiled absentmindedly. "Yeah."

Another silence. Santos looked deeply concerned now.

"You're... close with him?"

You laughed. "I mean, I would hope so."

Nobody knew what to say to that. Because there was no way. No way.

You were married, pregnant even. Completely in love with your husband, whoever he was.

And Brendon Park looked at most human interaction like it personally offended him.

Yet somehow he kept appearing around you like a shadow, like it was gravity.

The rumors exploded after an incident at the cafeteria. You had been off your shift for exactly eleven minutes when Brendon walked into the cafeteria still in his scrubs.

And everyone noticed that. Because Brendon never went to the cafeteria (He barely seemed to consume food). He scanned the room once and found you immediately. THen walked over carrying a tray.

Without asking, he switched your coffee with a different one.

"You can't have that much caffeine."

You looked offended. "It was half-caf."

"It was basically battery acid."

"You tasted it?"

"You left it on the counter this morning."

Brendon sat across from you naturally, like this happened every day.

You pointed at his tray. "You got fries?"

"You wanted fries."

"I mentioned fries once."

"You cried about it."

"I was emotional that time."

"You threatened divorce."

The tables surrounding you stared. The conversation sounded disgustingly domestic.

Brendon pushed the fries toward you first before touching his own food. You stole half of them and he didn't complain.

Actually, he watched you eat with this faintly distracted expression that nobody had ever seen on his face before. Like he was making sure you were really eating.

Then your phone buzzed. You checked it and groaned.

"The husband says I forgot my appointment tomorrow."

Brendon immediately said, "Ten-thirty."

You looked at him. "I know."

"You forgot."

"I remembered eventually."

"You remembered because I reminded you."

The silence at the table became defeaning, like somehow everyone was staring at you. Brendon glanced around once, clearly unimpressed by the collective lack of intelligence.

Then his pager went off. And before leaving, he reached down and adjusted you chair closer to the table because you'd been sitting awkwardly with your belly.

The movement was instinctive, like he'd done this a million times. And it was weirdly intimate.

The second he disappeared, Langdon sat on the seat that Brendon just occupied.

"Oh my God."

You frowned. "What?"

He leaned forward carefully. "Are you having an affair with Brendon Park?"

You nearly choked on a fry. "What?"

"That man practically tucked you in!"

"He's just—"

"You literally just talked about threatening him with divorce!"

"My husband!"

"Exactly!"

You stared at him in disbelief before realization dawned.

"Oh my god."

"So, you are!"

"No I'm not, Frank."

"Then why does The Shark know your OB schedule?"

"Because he made it."

Silence. "...Made it?" Langdon repeated weakly."

"He color-coded the whole calendar."

He didn't speak. Then you laughed, actually laughed. Because suddenly the misunderstanding was hysterical. But before you could explain, a trauma alert blared overhead and the conversation died instantly.

Unfortunately for you, the rumor did not.

Within a week, the entire ER thought you were secretly involved with Brendon.

Not openly. Nobody confronted you directly again because you seemed so genuinely confused by the accusation.

But people whispered. The evidence kept piling up. Brendon carrying your bag without asking, appearing whenever you mentioned cravings, glaring at anyone who stressed you out, standing suspiciously close during procedures if you looked tired.

And worst of all? The way he looked at you when you weren't paying attention.

That's what really convinced people. Because Brendon looked at everyone else like they personally wronged him. He looekd at you like you were something precious.

Then one night, the ER was hell. Every bed was full, three ambulanced inbound, a drunk patient screaming in triage.

You were exhausted, hormonal, and dangerously close to crying. Then one of the newer interns snapped at you.

"Can we get another attending to handle this? Dr. L/N clearly isn't keeping up."

The station went silent. Your exhaustion sharpened into humiliation. And before you could answer, a voice cut through the room.

"No."

Everyone turned. Brendon stood near the doors, having apparently arrived seconds earlier. The intern straighted nervously.

"Repeat what you said."

The poor intern paled. "I didn't mean—"

"You questioned an attending physician with ten years of emergency medicine experience while you can barely place an IV."

The room became deathly still. Brendon's voice never rose which somehow made it scarier.

"You will either assist competently or get out of her department."

Her department. The possessiveness in those words hit everybody like a truck.

The intern muttered an apology. Brendon didn't even look at him again. Instead, he turned to you.

"You're shaking."

"I'm fine."

Brendon's hand briefly touched the underside of your belly as he adjusted your position from the station edge.

It was gentle. So different from the cold surgeon everyone knew.

And suddenly Santos understood. Not the affair, but something else. Something much bigger.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Dennis looked at her. "What?"

But she was staring at Brendon. At the wedding band hidden beneath his gloves as he reached for the chart. At the identical band you wore on a chain around your neck because pregnancy swelling made your fingers ache.

At the way you entire body relaxed when he was near. At the way he knew every tiny thing about you.

Not like a lover, like a husband.

"Oh my god," Santos repeated louder.

You looked up. Brendon looked annoyed already, like he sensed where this was going.

Santos pointed between the two of you. "You're married."

You blinked. "Yeah?"

Brendon closed his eyes briefly like this was exhausting.

You looked genuinely baffled. "Who else would we be married to?"

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

"You let us think she was cheating on her husband?!" Santos yelled at Brendon.

Brendon looked unimpressed. "That sounds like a you problem."

"You never said—"

"Well, nobody asked."

"You literally acted like you hated each other!"

You burst out laughing. "What? No we don't."

Brendon looked down at you. And for the first time ever, in front of the entire ER, his expression softened completely.

Not subtly or barely there, but fully. Warm eyes. Affection. Something that was gentle.

Park the Shark was apparently somebody's husband. Somebody's incredibly devoted husband. And somehow that was more shocking than if he'd announced he killed people.

And somehow, from that day on, things became infinitely worse. Because now everyone noticed everything.

The quiet touches. The instinctive teamwork. The fact that Brendon always knew where you were in the hospital. The way he softened only for you.

The way you could make the scariest surgeon in the building carry your snacks and hold your coffee and rub circles into your back between traumas.

And worst of all?

Now the ER knew that every horrifyingly domestic story you told about your husband had been all about Brendon Park all along.

Which completely destroyed their ability to fear him properly anymore. Especially after they heard him answer your phone one day with:

"Baby, why are you calling me from upstairs?"

In a profession where survival was a currency paid in split-second observations, he made his living on behavioral shifts. He could tell you if a suspect was lying by the micro-flutter of an eyelid, or if a victim’s family was hiding something by the tense set of a shoulder.

So, it was only natural that Derek was conditioned to notice her before he ever actually met her.

It started as spiced vanilla notes lingering in Garcia’’s strictly lavender-saturated tech cave. A sickly sweet hint at something that wasn’t there before.

Then once a week on the faces of Emily and JJ when they would breeze through the bullpen doors a few minutes later than usual. They didn't carry their standard takeout coffee cups, but their expressions held the relaxed, unhurried ease of a morning catch-up, their laughter echoing lightly down the corridor. It was as if some unknown third variable had quietly set their breakfast routines into motion.

Rossi would also no longer exit through the bullpen elevator, instead — even on those excruciatingly long nights — he disappeared down the back hallway for an extra ten minutes, his coat slung over his arm, moving with a strange purpose.

These things were small, separate, minute details he had stored away. He told himself he was paranoid, everyone’s habits change. It was normal. Until it wasn’t.

Because Reid’s — yes, Spencer Reid’s habits had changed.

Normally, the books he read had absolutely no set order or reason, just simply depending on his peaked interests of the day. But lately, there’s been a theme — feminist Italian literature.

Not random at all.

Someone was drawing proverbial hearts in the bylines. Shifts — ever so delicately— were occurring in the most polite ways all throughout the workplace.

Derek felt like a downright cynic.

The sweet mystery finally collided with reality at 6:45 on a rainy Thursday morning.

Morgan was the first of the field team to arrive, his eyes gritty from a restless night and his brain demanding caffeine before the first briefing. The bullpen was mostly dark, cast in the dim, slate-gray shadow of the early morning storm outside. The breakroom coffee bar, usually a hub of fluorescent lights and chaotic energy, was a quiet sanctuary.

Morgan stepped into the breakroom looking for the bitter comfort of FBI-issue roast, but the air was already thick with the grounding aroma of fresh espresso and that faint familiar trace of spiced vanilla.

There was a woman leaning against the counter.

He stopped in the doorway, the breath caught tightly in his throat.

She was, without overstatement, strikingly beautiful — a vision of sharp, cinematic elegance against the drab government linoleum. Her skin was a radiant, golden-brown that seemed to capture whatever faint light the morning storm allowed, and her hair was a breathtakingly heat-styled honey-brown silk that tumbled over her shoulders in soft, perfect waves, framing a jawline that could cut glass. She wore a crisp, tailored button-down shirt, unfastened just enough at the throat to catch the gleam of a delicate gold chain, and dark, high-waisted slacks that elongated her silhouette.

She was humming a low, liquid jazz tune, her hands moving with practiced grace as she cleaned the steam wand of a high-end espresso machine that looked entirely out of reach for bureau's budget committee.

Morgan didn't move ( couldn’t ). He just stood in the doorway, letting his eyes linger, letting himself marinate in her presence. His profiler brain, usually so loud, fell uncharacteristically quiet, replaced by a sudden, intense curiosity. Comfortable posture. No badge prominently displayed, but completely at ease in a secure federal building.

"Morning," Morgan said, his voice a low, deliberate rumble to break the quiet.

She flinched slightly, clearly not expecting company, but recovered with a warm, easy smile that hit Morgan right in the chest. Her eyes, sharp and perceptive, locked onto his.

"Oh! Morning. Sorry, I didn't mean to colonize the breakroom," she said, her voice smooth and melodic. "The cafeteria coffee tastes like battery acid, so I brought in reinforcements." She gestured to the gleaming espresso machine.

"Don't apologize to me, sweetheart," Morgan chuckled, finally stepping closer, his charm slipping on like a well-worn jacket as he leaned against the counter beside her, breathing in the vanilla scent. "You bring an espresso machine into this building, you’re a saint. I’m Derek."

"Leila," she said, offering a hand. Her grip was firm and professional, but her eyes held a playful spark that made him linger, his fingers reluctant to let go.

Before he could ask the burning questions rolling through his mind, the quiet of the morning evaporated.

The heavy glass doors of the bullpen clicked open, and the unmistakable sound of Garcia’s bright, bubbly laughter echoed down the hall. A moment later, Garcia, Emily, and JJ descended upon the breakroom like a colorful whirlwind.

"Tell me the nectar of the gods is flowing, because Hotch sent a stack of files last night that—" Emily cut herself off, blinking in surprise as she saw Morgan standing there. "Oh. Morning, Morgan. You're early."

"Fabulous, gorgeous, miracle worker!" Garcia bypassed Morgan entirely, practically floating over to Leila and pressing a dramatic kiss to her cheek. "Please tell me you made the hazelnut blend. My brain cells are dying by the second."

"Already tamping it, Pen," Leila laughed, entirely unbothered by the tech genius's chaotic energy.

Morgan looked between them, his eyebrows knitting together. He watched as JJ reached past Leila into a cupboard to grab a specific, ceramic mug that clearly didn't belong to the communal office stash. "Hold on. You guys know each other?"

"Of course we do," JJ said, giving Morgan a look of pure amusement. "Leila’s been setting up the new digital forensics and ballistics lab down the hall for weeks, she’s a lifesaver."

"For weeks?" Morgan echoed, the timeline hitting him all at once. The vanilla scent in Garcia's office. The late arrivals. The missing morning coffees. She wasn't a secret, rather an undiscovered trove down the hall, working in the quiet spaces he never had a reason to visit.

"Don't feel bad, hot stuff," Garcia teased, taking a steaming cup from Leila with a grateful sigh. "You boys only notice what’s right in front of your noses. You’ll get to know Her Majesty’s delightfulness sooner or later.” Penelope’s eyes lilted smugly towards Leila.

"I count on it," Leila offered, casting a sleek, sideways glance at Morgan that sent a jolt straight down his spine.

Morgan opened his mouth to reply — ready to dig into how a forensic analyst had somehow managed to get Spencer Reid reading feminist Italian literature — when the heavy, measured footsteps of David Rossi echoed in the doorway.

The veteran profiler walked in, his tailored coat damp from the rain, looking every bit the stern, unshakeable patriarch of the BAU.

"Ah, good, the caffeine brigade is assembled," Rossi grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Morgan watched as Rossi made a direct beeline for Leila. He expected the usual polite, slightly detached greeting Rossi gave the support staff. He expected Leila to introduce herself formally to the legendary profiler.

Instead, Leila didn't even look up from wiping down the counter. She simply reached out, caught Rossi by the lapel of his expensive jacket, and pulled him down just enough to plant a firm, affectionate kiss on his cheek.

"Morning. You look terrible," she said smoothly. "Sit down. I’m making your macchiato."

Morgan’s jaw practically hit the linoleum floor. He whipped his head toward Emily and JJ, but neither woman batted an eye. They were just sipping their drinks, completely unfazed.

Rossi let out a rare, genuine chuckle, his rough exterior completely melting away into something soft and profoundly fond. "The traffic on the I-95 was a nightmare, and your mother called me three times before —"

"Hey, hey, hush," Leila interrupted gently, pressing a warm espresso cup into his hand and giving him a pointed, reprimanding look. "No talking about the ex-wives before 7 AM. Drink your coffee, Dad.”

Dad.

The word hung in the air, completely shattering Morgan’s internal baseline.

He stared at Leila, then at Rossi, the sudden, undeniable resemblance rushing over him — the sharp lines of their jawlines, the intelligent, calculating warmth in their eyes. The missing pieces of the puzzle clicked into place so hard it practically gave him whiplash. The Italian literature. Rossi's ten-minute disappearances down the hall.

Rossi caught Morgan staring and raised an eyebrow, a smug, knowing smirk playing on his lips as he took a slow sip of his perfect macchiato.

"Morgan," Rossi said smoothly, gesturing with his cup toward the striking woman beside him. "I see you've finally met my daughter."

That morning was merely the prologue.

Once the blindfold was pulled back, Morgan realized the entire building was touched by her. Before, she had been a mark in the margins; now, she was the defining feature of his architecture. He saw her everywhere. He saw her in the neat, handwritten annotations on the digital ballistics reports tucked inside Hotch’s briefing folders. He saw her in the way Garcia’s desk suddenly boasted a sleek, polished brass tray for her pens. She was the hidden heartbeat of the BAU, and Morgan was hopelessly off rhythm.

He began arriving at the J. Edgar Hoover building earlier and earlier, his car pulling into the damp parking garage at 6:15 AM, then 6:00 AM sharp. He told himself it was just a newfound dedication to paperwork, but his feet always carried him straight to the breakroom, his chest tightening with the foolish, eager hope of catching her in that element again.

He never did.

Instead, their proximity became a game of near misses, a beautifully orchestrated choreography of happenstance. It was almost rhythmic how their arrivals would occasionally align. They would hit the heavy glass doors of the bullpen at the exact same second, and Morgan, acting on pure, protective instinct, would step forward to brace the door open high with one arm.

Leila would slide past him, the volume of her hair brushing against his chest, leaving a slipstream of spiced vanilla in her wake. She would look up, her golden-brown skin radiant against the bleak morning light, and flash him an appreciated, knowing grin.

"Thanks, Derek," she’d murmur.

"Anytime, sweetheart," he’d reply, his voice dropping an octave, trapped in the orbit of her smile long after she vanished down the hall to her lab.

But the tension finally broke on a Tuesday morning when the rhythmic choreography stuttered.

Morgan had spent the previous night hunched over his laptop at home, desperately Googling tutorials on how to operate a dual-boiler espresso machine. He had watched videos until his eyes blurred, determined to at least look competent. But standing in front of the gleaming silver beast in the breakroom, the theory evaporated. The grind was too coarse, the tamper felt awkward in his large hand, and the steam wand hissed like an angry viper, spraying milk across the stainless steel counter.

"You're suffocating it," a smooth, melodic voice laughed from the doorway.

Morgan froze, looking over his shoulder, a rare flush of heat creeping up his neck. Leila was leaning against the frame, holding a stack of digital forensics drives, her eyes sparkling with pure amusement. She wore an impeccably tailored cream blouse, the top buttons unfastened just enough to look effortless, dainty gold chain refracting off her collarbone.

"I had it under control," Morgan lied smoothly, though he didn't move away from the machine.

"Clearly," she smiled, setting her drives down and stepping into his space. She didn't crowd him, but the sudden proximity — the warmth radiating off her, the soft scent of her perfume — completely stalled his brain. "Here, let me."

She stepped in front of him, her hands gently taking the portafilter from his grip. Her fingers were warm against his, a brief, electric touch that made his pulse jump. With practiced, elegant efficiency, she wiped down the basket, ground a fresh puck of espresso, and guided his hand to show him the correct angling of the tamper.

"Firm pressure, but even," she murmured, looking up at him through her lashes. "Otherwise, it channels and tastes like ink."

Morgan wasn't looking at the espresso. He was looking at the delicate curve of her jaw, the way her lips parted slightly as she focused, the soft, angelic grace that seemed to bleed into the air around her. For a man who built his entire reputation on being a smooth-talking player, a man who always had the perfect line lined up, he was entirely, utterly disarmed. The slick persona didn't fit here. Her sweetness didn't challenge his charm; it overflowed onto it, melting the hard, guarded edges of the federal agent until he was just a man, quietly captivated.

"See?" she said, handing him a perfectly pulled, rich espresso shot with a thick, hazelnut-colored crema. "You just needed a little guidance."

"Yeah," Morgan breathed, his voice unusually soft. "Guidance."

The team wasn't blind. They watched the shift happen in real-time. From the bullpen glass, Emily and JJ would swap knowing, silent glances when they caught Morgan lingering by the back hallway. Garcia would smirk into her headset whenever Morgan asked, just a little too casually, if the forensics lab needed any heavy lifting done.

Yet, for all his longing, their dynamic remained beautifully quiet. It was built in the passing moments, the brief touches of fingers over coffee mugs, the shared glances across the bullpen during briefings when Rossi wasn't looking. It was a dynamic written in the footnotes of a high-intensity workplace, because for the first time in his life, Derek Morgan didn't have the courage to make the first move. She was David Rossi's daughter, yes, but more than that, she was a precious thing he didn't want to rush.

"Not even a hello? Baby I'm heartbroken." You don't laugh or even smile at his quip.

"He got the wind knocked out of him today, but he'll be fine." JJ smirks at the betrayed look on Derek's face as she reveals his secret. Not that he attempted to hide is injury very well at all.

Emily scoffs as she gathers her things from her desk. "Don't act like she wasn't gonna find out big guy."

Your hands come up to his face, holding his jaw you turn his face left to right, checking for bruises.

"Don't worry, they didn't touch the moneymaker." Derek soothes, his hand coming up to rest over yours. "It's just the ribs that are testing me right now."

"Does that mean no hugging?" you ask. Relief is slowly flowing over your features. He's okay for the most part.

"Now I didn't say that." Derek chuckles, reaching out to tug you into his non-injured side. He still winces when you accidently jostle him a little, but he tries to mask it. As much as his abdomen aches, it feels good to have you close.

"Did you miss me?" he mumbles just soft enough for only you to hear.

You mutter back with the same volume, "Always do."

His fingers trace patterns over the sleeves of your shirt before you break away from him, "let me drive you home." you say all of sudden, as if the thought has just landed fresh in your mind.

Derek shakes his head, stepping forward toward his own desk. "I got paperwork to do honey, I can drive myself when I'm done."

Hotch, who has taken his jacket off and draped it over the arm of a chair pipes up, voice monotone as ever. "No you don't. Go home and rest, the paperwork won't go anywhere."

You smile up at Derek, knowing you've won as he sighs and shuffles away from his desk. He's not gonna argue with Hotch, especially when he would much rather go home than stay here for another long night.

"Okay, raincheck on the paperwork, Got it." He glances to you, still smiling triumphantly up at him, and his heartbeat picks up a little.

"Okay pretty lady, lead the way."

You do so, and Derek follows you out to the parking garage.

"Keys, handsome." you extend a hand, and Derek passes you his car keys in defeat.

The drive to his place is quiet for the most part and the dark streets are almost devoid of cars other than the one you drive. The street lights greet you with each mile you go, and when you make it back to Derek's place you rush out of the car so you can open the passenger side door for him.

"Chivalry isn't dead after all." he chuckles, and before he can make a move you grab his go bag from the backseat.

"You don't have to carry my things you know, I got it."

All you do is shush him, taking the steps to his front door two at a time.

"You wanna unlock the front door too? Or can I have that privilege?"

You seem to think it over, before you nod and step out of his way. "Go ahead cowboy, do the honors."

He gives you a nudge with his arm at the teasing before pulling his house keys out of his pocket and putting them in the lock. The door opens with ease, as if welcoming him, and the strange helper at his side, home.

You've been to Derek's house few times, but the both of you are never really free to see each other outside of work. The place looks different than when you were last there, a chair or two gone or somewhere knew, a new picture of his mother and sister on the wall. But it's still so unbelievably 'Derek'.

"I like the rug." you nudge the brown rug next to the couch with your sock covered toe, having taken your shoes off at the door. Derek looks back over his shoulder at you, and it might just have occured to him now that you are in his house.

The relationship you have with Derek is extremely complex and confusing. You are coworkers yes, and you are more than friends too. But to say you are a couple isn't quite right, dating isn't true and situationship feels like it doesn't do you both justice. You are just something to him, something meaningful and good, and he is the same to you.

So why is he suddenly self conscious of the rug on the floor? Of whether you like the place, of whether you might see yourself living here one day?

He doesn't let on though, smiling back at you. "Thanks, she's brand new."

"Your rug is a she?"

"Yeah, you got a problem with another woman at my place, honey?" he raises a brow, before heading over to the couch and sitting down. "What can I say? The ladies love me." he extends his legs out, body finally relaxing a little after the long few days.

"They sure do, it seems." you place his go bag down on the coffee table, eyes scanning the space before you.

"Is there anything I can get for you? Water? An aspirin? Tequila?" the last part is said with a smirk, partly joking.

Derek just moves a pillow off the other end of the couch, groaning very quietly at the pain in his side. "Nothing, just come sit with me a sec."

Your steps are soft against the carpet as you pad over to the couch. You sink down onto it, and for a second there is quiet between you. Derek shuffles slightly, altering his position, before he opens an arm invitingly out to you.

"C'mere," it's spoken gently and with an air of openness. You shuffle closer, his arm coming over your shoulders and pulling you into the uninjured side of his chest. It's warm and comforting to be here with him like this, tucking your legs up beside you as Derek places a kiss to the top of your head.

He mumbles into your hair, "Thank you for driving me home."

You take a deep breath, and allow your head to fall to his shoulder.

"Any time."

-

CRIMINAL MINDS TAGLIST: @reidsbookclub

The bathroom light stung your eyes as you flicked it on, and you blinked against the glare. You pulled out the first aid kit, the one you’d had to restock three times in the past two months. Behind you, you heard the sounds of him undressing.

He knew the rules. You’d made them clear the first time he’d shown up at your window, dripping blood onto your carpet. No blood on your bed and no suit on your sheets.

When you came back out, the first aid kit tucked under your arm, he was sitting on the edge of your bed. He was down to his black boxers, the rest of his suit folded by the window. He was sitting with one hand braced against his waist, leaning back slightly, his head tipped up toward the ceiling.

You rounded the bed, coming to stand beside him. From this angle you could see the damage was worse than you’d thought.

There was blood around his eyebrows, smeared and half dried into the hair above his right eye where something had split the skin. His knuckles were torn raw, but his waist was what drew your eye and your stomach turn.

You almost winced, but you managed to keep your face neutral, the way you’d learned to do over the months. He watched your face like a hawk, Any flicker of fear or disgust, and he’d shut down.

He tilted his head just slightly, hazel eyes finding yours, trying to figure out how much you hated him after this morning.

The argument from this morning hung over both of you. You’d been concerned about his excessive fighting and he hadn’t taken it well obviously. He’d never taken concern well, it always sounded like criticism to him, like proof that he was doing something wrong and that he was wrong.

You weren’t sure if he kept coming back because you were the only one who ever welcomed him back or if it was because he genuinely loved you.

Maybe it was both.

You bent down slightly, knees hovering over the ground next to his thigh as you finally started cleaning and unlike the other times, you didn't warn him about anything. Tonight, you just pressed the cloth directly against the wound.

He grunted, a sound that punched out of his chest before he could stop it. His muscles locked up under your hands and for a split second you felt him fight the instinct to pull away.

His eyes shot down to you, caught off guard by the fact that you'd done that, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew better.

Instead, his hands carefully came up to your hair.

You felt his fingers graze the side of your head. He was about to hold it back for you, like he always did when you cleaned him up. It had become his way of being useful, when you were taking care of him. He'd gather your hair in his big bloody hands and pull it gently away from your face and hold it in a ponytail so it wouldn't fall forward into your work. And usually, you'd smile to yourself at the gesture and he'd feel good about himself for just one second.

"Don't," you muttered.

His hands dropped like they'd been burned. For a moment, he looked almost confused, then his hands went back to your bed instead, gripping the sheets so hard his knuckles went white. The fabric bunched under his fingers as he pressed down.

You glanced at his hands before looking away again. He'd hurt your feelings too much this morning. You hated arguing with him, because arguing with Dex was like arguing with a brick wall. You also hated him not listening to you. You were just trying to keep him alive, and he acted like that was an unreasonable request.

He was now looking away, pissed off as well, because you wouldn't let him touch you. But you could see the hurt taking over his face anyway. You could see the confusion underneath the hurt too, because this wasn't how it usually went. Usually, you were patient and usually, you let him have his small gestures because you knew they were the only way he knew how to say I love you.

You bit your lip and started working again, pushing all of that down where you could deal with it later. You cleaned carefully around the bloody gash. The antiseptic soaked into the gauze, turning pink as you dabbed away the worst of it. You could feel him clenching his abs at some point out of pain, the muscles jumping under your fingers, but he didn't let out a single sound.

Like always, you couldn't resist brushing softly over his abs as you worked. Your fingers traced across the muscle just above the wound, because that was just who you were with Dex. Gentle.

You could feel Dex relax under your oh so familiar touch and when you glanced up, you saw his eyes were closed. You couldn't help the warmth that filled your body at that.

It spread through your chest like honey and completely against your will. You'd been trying so hard to stay cold, but seeing Dex, Dex who was hypervigilant about everything and everyone, close his eyes and give himself fully to you despite the horrible morning you'd both had together it made you feel too many things.

He trusted you. That was the heart of it. He trusted you not to hurt him while he couldn't see and he trusted you to keep being gentle even when you were angry.

"What happened?"

He finally opened his eyes, looking down at you. Those dark hazel eyes found yours, and for a moment, neither of you moved. You could see him considering the question, turning it over in his mind, deciding how much to tell you. The answer, when it came, was exactly what you expected. "Not important," was all he grumbled out.

You stared at him and his dark hazel eyes stared back.

His eyes clearly said drop it without him having to actually say the words, but you'd never been good at dropping things, especially not when his blood was still drying under your fingernails.

So you looked down again, focusing on the white bandage you were smoothing over his waist, but your fingers pushed harder than necessary.

You could hear him almost chuckle at that, but it just made you push harder, pressing your thumb into the muscle just next to the bandage with enough pressure to make a point. He stopped chuckling real fast. His breath hitched once, and then he went quiet again, his jaw tightening. Good. You didn't need his attitude right now.

After a while, you were done with his waist. You smoothed the edges of the bandage one last time, before finally standing up.

Your legs protested. You'd been kneeling longer than you realized, and the stretch sent pins and needles shooting down your calves. You straightened slowly, rolling your shoulders back, feeling the ache in your lower back from leaning over him for so long.

You stepped away from his thigh and stood directly in front of him. Even sitting on your bed, he was almost at eye level with you. You still had the advantage of height, and you used it, looking down at him with an expression you hoped was unreadable.

He looked up at you, and without being asked, he automatically opened his legs for you. You didn't hesitate, stepping in between his legs, close enough that your knees brushed against the inside of his thighs. You reached out and grabbed his chin, lifting his face up to you.

Your thumb and forefinger, pinched gently beneath his jaw, tilting his head back so he had no choice but to look up at you. He could have pulled away, but he didn't.

It was a nasty cut on his cheek. The blood had dried, trailing down his neck. You studied it, calculating the best way to clean it without getting antiseptic in his eye, and that was when you felt his hands wandering up your thighs.

His palms were warm and rough against your bare skin, calloused from years of gripping weapons. He brushed them softly up and down your thighs, a touch that sent goosebumps rising across every inch of skin your shorts didn't cover.

You flinched at his touch. He felt it immediately and his hands gripped tighter in response. His fingers pressed into the flesh of your thighs, holding you in place, afraid you'd step back.

He stared up at you, waiting to see if you'd push him away or not. His eyes were dark, flicking across your face.

You stared down at him for a long moment, wondering what you yourself were going to do. Part of you wanted to push his hands away and part of you wanted to remind him that he didn't get to touch you like this after this morning. But you just let him, because at the end of the day you cared about Dex so much it hurt.

Then and there, he'd grip your thighs harder.

Sometimes you'd press a little too firmly against a tender spot, or the antiseptic would sting more than expected, and his hands would clamp down on your legs, fingers squeezing the soft flesh of your thighs.

But then, immediately after, he'd soften his grip. His thumb would rub softly over the spot he'd just squeezed as if saying sorry.

He stared at you a lot. Had you not been friends (?) with Dex for so long, you would've been concerned. Anyone else, staring at you like that, would have set off alarm bells, but with him, you'd learned that the staring was just something he did.

As you cleaned carefully, wiping the last traces of blood from his cheek, he finally spoke again.

"Did you not want me here?" he asked.

You paused , the gauze still pressed against his cheek, and just looked at him. There was a slight furrow between his brows that meant he was bracing himself for bad news.

"A bit late to ask that question, don't you think?" you asked, eyebrows raised.

"Still wanna know the answer," he said as his hand squeezed your left thigh.

You stared at him, and you thought about lying for a second but then changed your mind.

"No," you replied.

And you knew him so well that you could tell his face fell. To anyone else, his expression probably wouldn't have changed at all, but you knew.

"Good to know. I'll get out of your hair," he mumbled.

He started to move. His hands left your thighs, and you felt the cold absence immediately. He braced his palms against the bed on either side of him, preparing to push himself up to walk out of your room and probably out of your life for good this time.

But your hand just slipped down to his neck. Your fingers found the warm skin just below his jaw, palm curving around the side of his throat. You held him back from trying to stand up. You could feel his rapid pulse beneath your palm. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and your fingers shifted with the movement.

"You're already here. Not worth leaving now."

Dex almost resisted the touch. His body was screaming at him to leave and to get out before you could hurt him worse.

But then he stilled, his head tilting slightly into your palm like a flower turning toward the sun. He couldn't help it. Even hurt and angry and confused, he couldn't resist your touch. It was the only thing that had always been able to reach him.

He stared up at you, those dark hazel eyes searching your face for a sign that you weren't going to change your mind and shove him away.

You didn't give him any of that, but you didn't let go of his neck either.

He stayed silent, so you carefully took care of the cut on his cheek. The anger had drained out of you somewhere in the last few minutes. You didn't feel the urge to hurt him anymore. You just wanted him to stop bleeding. You just wanted, for one moment, to not be fighting.

Your fingers were soft against his skin as you dabbed the last of the blood away. You smoothed a small bandaid over the cut. He let you work without complaint, his eyes never leaving your face.

But as soon as you were done, he stood up. You stumbled back, your hand falling from his neck. He didn't look at you and just walked toward your closet.

You watched, confused, as he reached inside. He knew exactly where to go, the bottom shelf on the left, where you'd folded his things weeks ago and never bothered to move. A few shirts and a pair of sweatpants.

He grabbed his clothes, the ones he usually left here for mornings after, for nights when it was too late or too cold or too dangerous for him to leave.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't worry about it," he mumbled.

He didn't look at you as he said it. He just grabbed a shirt and pulled it over his head. The fabric caught on his shoulders for a moment, and he had to tug it down, the movement making him groan slightly at the pain in his waist. He reached for the sweatpants next.

You stared at him for a long moment, watching the way his hands shook as he grabbed the fabric. Watching the flush creeping up the back of his neck, red and splotchy.

He was upset, having just realized that you didn't want him here. And he'd gone ahead and assumed the worst. That was how his mind worked. One rejection meant all rejections, one closed window meant every door was locked forever. In his head, your no hadn't just meant not tonight. It meant you were done with him, that you'd finally come to your senses, that he'd been right all along to expect this.

You could see the genuine power it was taking him to remain calm.

God knows Dex never stayed calm when he found out people were leaving him.

You finally stepped into his space, blocking his path to the closet, forcing him to either look at you or look away. Your body was close enough that you could feel the heat coming off him.

"You leaving?" you asked, and your hand came up to stop him from taking the sweatpants. Your fingers closed around the fabric, tugging gently, and he let go easier than you expected.

"You care about me leaving now?" he chuckled, but there was no humor in it.

He reached above your head for the rest of his clothes, his arm stretching past your shoulder, his body brushing against yours for just a moment. You could see his hands shaking up close now.

"Dex," you finally said.

He didn't look at you, but he stopped reaching for the closet. You grabbed the sweatpants out of his hand and stuffed them back in the closet, pushing them to the back of the shelf where he couldn't easily reach them.

"All I'm saying is that I—" you started, but the words got stuck in your throat. You didn't know what to say.

How did you explain something you didn't fully understand yourself? How did you tell him that you wanted him gone and wanted him closer at the same time? That his presence hurt and his absence hurt worse? That you were angry and scared and still, somehow, desperately in love with him? His eyes were weirdly red rimmed as he stared at you.

"I'm upset, okay?" you finally said, and the words came out embarrassed. "You hurt me this morning. And I'm just—taking it out on you now, I guess."

Dex's red rimmed eyes searched your face, looking for the lie, because in his experience, there was always a trap. People didn't just say I'm upset and leave it there. There was always something they wanted from him in return.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," was all he said.

"Yeah, well, you did," you chuckled without any real joy. "You accused me of trying to hold you back," you said, hating how your voice broke. "And then you told me you wouldn't want to see me again, if i kept voicing my concern." You grimaced. "You don't think I'd be hurt by that?"

And he really didn't. Dex didn't think that words like that had an effect on anyone, because in his mind, he was basically worth nothing. So why would him telling you that you wouldn't have to put up with him anymore hurt you so much? To him, it wasn't anything bad. It was just true. Of course you didn't tolerate him. Who could? Who would? He was surprised you'd lasted this long, honestly. He'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the first night he climbed through your window.

Dex stared at you, processing your words, and then gave the only answer he knew how to give. "No."

Your shoulders fell a bit, as if you'd expected the answer. "Well, I was," you replied, staring back at his eyes.

He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a single word out, you were already gripping his shirt.

Your fingers curled into the black fabric at his chest, bunching it up. You were close enough that he could see how shiny your eyes were.

"Off," you mumbled. "It's not good for your injury," you tugged at the hem of the shirt again.

He opened his mouth, clearly about to make a joke about you taking his clothes off. You could see it forming in his expression. It was his default defense mechanism. He'd deflect with sarcasm and make you roll your eyes so he didn't have to acknowledge whatever he did to you.

But you shot him a look and he closed his mouth, but that small smug grin stayed on his face.

Obviously he didn't let you take it off. He just reached back to his neck, grabbing the collar of the shirt, and pulled it over his head. He folded the shirt carefully, before turning back to the closet.

He reached past you, his arm brushing your shoulder, and gently placed the folded shirt back alongside the sweatpants you'd stuffed in the back. He took the sweatpants out again, folding them before tucking them back into their spot on the shelf.

Meanwhile, you turned your back to him and finally started tying up the first aid kit. But your mind was still reeling from how you'd admitted what you were feeling to him. You weren't good at that. Neither of you were and you'd just laid yourself bare in front of him.

Behind you, Dex didn't know what to do. He stood there next to the closet, shirtless, his hands hanging awkwardly at his sides.

Should he just go home? He could climb back out the window, disappear into the night, give you the space you clearly needed. It would be the safe thing to do.

But he didn't want to leave. He never wanted to leave. Every time he climbed through your window, some small part of him hoped he wouldn't have to climb back out.

What did you want him to do?

Usually, after you patched him up, he'd stay with you. You'd sit beside him on the bed and you'd talk about nothing and everything and as you talked, you'd brush your hand softly over his chest, your palm resting right over his heart.

He liked that the most. When you had your hand on his heartbeat.

He wasn't sure why. Maybe because his heart was always pounding from all the adrenaline and the pain and anger. But your hand was the only thing that got it to calm down.

But now after the argument were you going to make him sleep on the couch? He wasn't sure his back could handle it. The couch was old and too short for him, and he was already sore from tonight's fight. Sleeping on the couch would mean waking up stiff and angry and probably more than a little pathetic than he felt right now.

His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, a casual pose that cost him more effort than he wanted to admit. His eyes followed you as you moved around the room.

When you returned from putting the first aid kit away, you glanced at him and stopped. Surprise flickered across your face for just a moment, but then realization dawned on you.

So you just walked over to your bed and pushed away the covers. The sheets were still rumpled from where you'd been lying earlier. You sat down on the edge of the mattress and looked up at him.

"You not going to join?" you asked.

Like a puppy, Dex followed. Had he been anywhere else and had anyone else watching, he would have rather shot himself than ever let anyone see how eagerly he just went to bed.

He crossed the room and settled on the other side of your bed, his body sinking into the mattress beside you. He was careful as he moved. His waist injury pulled and he had to adjust his position three times before he found one that didn't send spikes of pain through his side. A small sigh of relief escaped him as he finally laid down. His head found the pillow he always used.

You were still sitting against the headboard, staring down at him, where he stared at the ceiling. You watched him for a long moment, taking him in, but then you finally scooched down, laying down next to him.

The mattress shifted under your weight, and you felt him adjust slightly beside you. Your shoulder brushed against his arm, and neither of you moved away from the contact.

"Want the covers?" you mumbled.

Sometimes he didn't want the covers. He got overwhelmed by them sometimes, especially when it was hot or when he was having nightmares and woke up sweaty and panicked.

He shook his head, his hair rustling against the pillow. So you let the covers stay barely past your knees, the fabric pooling somewhere around your thighs. You could see goosebumps rising on his arms, but he didn't seem to care.

"Thank you," he said after a while.

His voice was rough and quiet. He was still staring at the way the lights from the streets hit your ceiling, probably using them as an excuse not to look at you.

"I'm not trying to hold you back," you whispered after a long silence. "I'm just worried." Your voice cracked slightly on the last word, and you hated it. You hated how much power you were giving him over your emotions. "I don't want to lose you," you said after he stayed quiet.

He turned his head on the bed, glancing at you. His dark hazel eyes found your face in the dim light and you turned your head.

Now you were facing each other on the pillows, inches apart, close enough that you could feel his breath on your lips. His eyes were wide and surprised. You knew him well enough to know how much those words meant to him. You'd shown him in a hundred small ways, but you'd never said it quite like this.

"I don't want to watch the news and have to hear that you died, Dex," you whispered.

Your voice broke on his name, and he could swear he saw tears in your eyes. You blinked hard, trying to push the moisture back. You glanced away again, forcing him to admire your side profile instead.

"Why not?" he whispered.

It was a sick question, he knew that. He knew the answer should be obvious, but he oh so desperately just wanted you to say it out loud.

He needed the words to exist outside of his own head and he needed them to be something he could hold onto when the darkness became too much.

You turned your head and your eyes met his. "Because I love you," you whispered. "And I can't live without you."

You watched his face as the words landed, watched the way his expression shifted through a dozen emotions in the span of a single second.

Dex felt a lot. He just wasn't sure what it was. There was a pressure in his chest, like his heart was trying to expand beyond the confines of his ribs. His throat felt thick, his eyes felt hot and there was a strange ringing in his ears.

Had he been like anyone else, he would have known it was love.

All he knew was that it didn't make him feel bad. So he just stared at you, his dark hazel eyes unreadable, before saying quietly, "My waist doesn't hurt that much."

You let out a wet chuckle. You could feel the tears threatening to spill over again, but you blinked them back, focusing on the absurdity of the moment.

"You suck," you whispered, but you knew this was his way of asking you to come closer.

You slid across the sheets until you were pressed against his side. The mattress shifted under both of you, and you felt his hand come up to rest on your back, fingers splayed wide.

You rested your head on his chest, staring down at his injury. From this angle, you could see the white bandage clearly.

He stared down at your soft hair. Soft, unlike anything else in his life. He'd spent the night being hit by sharp and hard things. He'd been thrown around into god knows what type of buildings, his body slamming against walls and floors and whatever else had gotten in the way. That's what he knew most of the time.

Less of the time, he knew a soft body like yours. Your hair spilled across his chest and he found himself mesmerized by the way it moved when you breathed.

When your fingertips traveled to his injury, he shivered. Your fingers traced the edge of the bandage with no pressure. It didn't hurt, but it made goosebumps rise on his arms, his stomach clenching involuntarily.

You halted for a second, your fingers freezing against his skin, probably worried you'd hurt him. But then you continued, tracing it gently, following the line of the bandage from one end to the other.

"Did a good job," he mumbled, his eyes following your movement. He watched your fingers trace across his skin.

"Hm, thanks," you hummed, your breath warm against his chest. "Have lots of experience."

He chuckled at that and you felt the vibration under your cheek.

You closed your eyes for a second, enjoying the oh so not rare sound, but rarely ever genuine sounding sound. You wanted to capture it in a jar and keep it on your nightstand, something to listen to on the nights when he wasn't there.

His hand found your hair, fingers threading through the strands. He let his palm rest against the back of your head.

You looked up at that, meeting his eyes. Your cheek dragged against his chest as you tilted your head back, chin pressing into his sternum. Your hair splaying across his chest.

"I'm not going to argue again with you, but I think you should know that I'll always worry," you whispered, your eyes searching his face. "And i might say things sometimes."

His thumb paused its circles on your neck, pressing just slightly harder. "I think I can handle that," he mumbled, his hand now wandering down to the back of your waist, his fingers brushing lightly under your shirt.

You shivered. His fingers warm against the bare skin of your lower back, rough calluses dragging gently over the soft curve of your waist.

He noticed and his eyes flickered with something that might have been satisfaction, but he didn't say anything. His other hand remained on the other side of his body until you tilted your head over his body and grabbed it softly. Your fingers found his and you guided his hand downward, pulling it across your hip.

You placed his hand on your thigh, spreading your fingers over the back of his, pressing down slightly so he could feel the softness of your skin through the thin fabric of your shorts.

"Warm," you mumbled.

You didn't like the bed covers either. You'd told him that once, early in the morning, when the sun was just rising and he'd asked why you always kicked the blankets off in your sleep and grabbed his hands instead.

They're too warm, you'd mumbled, half asleep, your cheek pressed against his shoulder. I run hot.

And he'd said, My hands are always warm. and he didn't mean it in a good way. His hands were always warm from gripping knives and guns and from the adrenaline running through his veins. He didn't think you clinging to him was a good idea, if you hated excessive warmth so much.

No, you'd corrected, turning to look at him with sleepy eyes. They're the appropriate type of warmth.

So now his hand rested on your thigh his fingers spread wide to cover as much skin as possible.

He stared down at you, and he wished so badly the words could come out as easily as yours did. They were right there, sitting on the tip of his tongue, pressing against the back of his teeth. Three words. Eight letters.

He'd heard other people say them. Seen them in movies, read them in books, watched strangers on the street murmur them to each other But for him, they felt impossible.

He wasn't good enough to tell you that. That was the thought that stopped him every time, the voice in his head that had been there since childhood, whispering poison into his ears. You're not good enough. You're not worthy. You're not the type of person who gets to say things like that.

He wasn't a good person. He wasn't the type of person to say those things. He didn't think he was allowed to utter such words, especially not to someone as good as you.

But he could show you. He could try, at least. So he just brushed a hand over your thigh, his palm gliding across your skin trying to warm your body as much as he could.

I love you, the strokes seemed to say. I love you. I love you.

You smiled.It was small, a smile that he might have missed if he hadn't been staring at your face.

Maybe one day he'll say it. Maybe one day the words would come. Maybe one night he'd look at you and they'd finally break free. Maybe he'd whisper them against your hair, or murmur them in the dark when he thought you were asleep.

But maybe he won't. Maybe the words would always be too hard. Maybe he'd go his whole life without ever saying I love you.