spare me your judgments

Coming to places like this is always more than a little strange, but there’s a kind of glee in it that she’s always been able to indulge in when she does it with Becker. This is the kind of place her mother would love, where Cassandra might have been taken by any number of men who were vying for her hand in marriage. And it was somewhere she never would have gone on her own, not dressed up in the way she is now, as if that old life is something she takes part in all the time. Sometimes, here with Becker, it feels almost like a game. But it’s more a special treat than anything else, two people with something to celebrate and enough money to do it well. 

It seems like her world is moving and changing so quickly. Several weeks ago, she was a Corporal and everything seemed steady. There was drama, and all the things she was used to, but she could never have foretold the way her world would have been rocked after the incident in Scotland. Now she had Abel, and she was a Sergeant, and there were suspicions about Becker Savage that kept running around in circles in her head. Sometimes she looked up at him, saw him walking across the room at work, and remembered standing next to Abel and gazing down at a tome that made it clear the world was a horrible place. Sometimes she remembered that, and then recalled her brothers strange obsessions with conquering death, achieving longevity, bringing people back from the brink of non-existence. A horcrux wasn’t quite necromancy, but it made her skin itch in exactly the same way. She really didn’t want to believe that Becker could have been capable of something like that. She didn’t want to believe that Abel’s accusations about this man who she loved like a father could be true.

He was like a father to her. He had done more for her, been kinder to her than her own father ever had. He’d believed in her when no one else did, so she saw it as her duty to believe in him in return. Loyalty, it was a concept that had been drilled in to her for a long time. Loyalty to her family, to their ideals. She had thrown those things away, but she’d given all of her loyalty to the new people in her life, the new people that she loved. Given it to Becker, given it to Athena, and given it to Abel. It was a delicate balancing act, but she hoped she didn’t have to let any of them down.

“You’ll at least get more peace and quiet, without all of us bothering you and filling up the room with noise. Things are so much more lively now that Everhart and McMahon have fallen back in to their double act.” She smiles, softly, and lets out a soft hum as she considers it. “I think we’d better. We’re celebrating, after all. What better excuse is there than that? Plus, I’ve been looking forward to this all day. Good food, good company.” A bright smile, she puts her menu down for a moment. So many good options. “I feel like we haven’t seen very much of each other, lately. Like we’re getting pulled in completely different directions by the universe itself.”

.

It’s true, the rest of the office has been particularly lively as of late. It’s part of the reason he doesn’t mind leaving behind his old desk as he once might have: it feels a bit like, with everything so strange, the office is moving on without and around him, half their coworkers not even bothering to be subtle about the way everyone’s little blossoming romances seem to have fallen into place around the drama that was Scotland, and several dangerous cases, and the impeachment trial, in the way so many young aurors he’s worked with in his time seem to take near-death experiences as license to finally hop into bed with whomever they’ve spent the past months or years eyeing up. McMahon and Everhart had each gone through slightly more sobering periods, after their respective wold encounters, but both were back to their ordinary selves again, not to mention Jack Monday, and Hades Falconer-Quinn, and Deliverance stealing every glance he can at the back of Camden’s head, and whatever the new no-maj with the computer was doing leaving love letters on Hadrian Vernier’s desk. It’s exhausting, even just to think about. He’s glad Baron has the decency to at least keep their personal lives private and out of the office. 

But it has rather pulled him and Cassandra apart, just like everything else has since they’d finished up their last case together. It’s harder, to stop by her desk to check in when he’s heading to the break room for more coffee, or to meet her eye across the room to give her a reassuring nod if he notices she looks stressed out about something she’s working through. It feels like there are a million reasons he hasn’t seen her, a dozen dozen excuses, none of them good enough. Not when there’s a part of him that feels like the careful order of his life is slipping away and he wants desperately for this to be one of the pieces of it that he doesn’t let fall out of place.

Because she’s important to him, this bright and brilliant woman he’s known for so many years, who he can’t help but be so proud of. 

     “Champagne it is then,” he agrees with a smile and a nod, and then a look to the waiter, who nods and glides off to get it for them. A foolish indulgence, yes, but one they both deserve tonight. A celebration. Maybe he’ll make a toast and along with it a quiet promise to himself that he’ll do better, in the coming weeks, to make sure of this, to go out of his way to find time for her. 

There’s plenty more on her mind about what she’s found, plenty that she wants to tell him, but oddly enough she actually doesn’t want to focus on all of that tonight. They have time, after all, there’s always later, or tomorrow, or the next day. She doesn’t want to linger on all of that stress and worry, feels lighter already from just telling him that she’s found something, that she’s getting close to what she’s been dying to know for years and years. That fees like enough for tonight, enough to give her mind the space to fully focus on this, on the lovely dinner, and the good wine, on Becker. She’ll tell him all of the details later, because she knows that he’ll probably be able to offer better advice and insight than anyone else could, with all of his experience and expertise, but not tonight.

She just wants to linger in this little bubble they’ve created for now, smile back at him as they keep eating, as he goes on assuring her that it’s just work adjacent. It’s all just so easy, somehow, and she’s not really sure how, but it feels right, and maybe it makes sense, too, knowing how well they work together, that they’d fit together so easily like this, too. But it’s still a little surreal to have this with him, in the best sense. It still sends a wave of warmth through her to hear him say her name, the way it sounds a little fond, a little soft, even with the teasing, in his voice.

“It is what I spend most of my time outside of work hours doing; definitely the closest thing to a hobby I have,” she says, shaking her head with a little laugh. Maybe with anyone else, that would seem like a bad thing, but she’s well aware that a not insignificant part of why this all feels so easy is because he understands, because he’s the same in that. And that’s why it’s all the more meaningful that they can relax like this, let go of all the worries and pressure even just for a few hours, and not have to worry. It’s not something she’s ever really capable of doing, or wants to do, except here, with him.

“I’m sure I would’ve been positively dazzled by your Italian cuisine facts. But honestly, I don’t think I’d be sitting here eating your pasta if you had much more than three minutes of non-work related things to bring up in the first place.”

To say that the last few weeks of her life had been calm or pleasant would be a laughable mistake. It seemed like the world was determined to make things as complicated and overwhelming as possible. From Scotland to Serial Killers, it had been eventful and full of stress even before Abel had clued her in on their theories surrounding Becker Savage. Becker, a bright light in her life, a compass pointing her down the right path at every turn. She’d always been faithful to him, always looked up to him. Over the years, she had grown to think of him as almost a father to her – god knows that he had done more for her, cared more for her, than her own father had. 

They had made these plans before Abel talked to Cassandra. It was a little tradition of theirs, a warm and happy little plan they always fell back on. They’d caught a serial killer together, Cassandra had gained her promotion, the thing she had been working for for what felt like an eternity at that point. Those combined events made this dinner inevitable, meant that they would have ended up here eventually. Becker’s own promotion had made it unavoidable. 

Any other day, she would have felt beaming and proud of the both of them. She still did, in her own way, in the parts of her mind that still refused to believe that anything could be wrong. Cassandra is being rather stubborn about it all, clinging on to the desperate hope that Abel can work with her and eventually, they’ll see that nothing was ever wrong at all, that Becker is nothing but the good man she always knew him to be. Still, a different part of her almost wanted to cancel this dinner. A part of her couldn’t stop thinking about Abel and their theory, and what it would mean if the pieces came together and proved them to be right. 

But she doesn’t cancel, and she tries to lock away those doubts for the time being, because the bigger part of her just wants to enjoy an evening with this man who practically raised her into the woman that she is today. She wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have her new rank, if it wasn’t for him. So she arrives at  Le Plateau D'or only a few minutes later than she planned to, all dressed up as she usually is for evenings like this, and smiles when the waiter leads her over to the table and pulls out her chair for her. “Why, thank you, Becker. You look very dashing yourself.” She says, forcing herself into the teasing tone she would normally adopt at meetings like this. “I hope you haven’t been here long. I would hate to have kept you waiting on such a special occasion.” And it is special, she realizes. This is important, because Becker Savage is someone she loves, and seeing him reminds her of why she trusts him so much. She settles in and grins at him. “It’s better that we got caught up in other things and had to delay. Now we can celebrate you as well,  Lieutenant Savage. Has a nice ring to it, I think.”

.

      “Oh, no, not long at all,” he reassures her, as the waiter hands her a menu of her own and he opens his, glancing at the wine list on the first page. 

It feels like a dozen things have changed, since the last time they did this, a dozen major pieces of his life shifting around, his landscape changing in ways it had gone essentially untouched for forty years, but this, at least, is familiar. Her smile, the fondness in her voice, the way she seems to transform, just a little, given the chance to dress up and indulge in the kind of luxury a restaurant like this affords. Cassandra, bright and bold and daring and determined, this incredible woman he’s watched grow over the years into the remarkable auror she is now. 

Things have changed: everything with Camden, of course. Everything with Baron. Even the tense and silent truce he’d had with Benjamin since they ended up on the same Squad together has been shaken, a little, by their conversation in Scotland, by his own fear when he found out Camden and Benjamin were walking straight into a nest of vampires with one another and there was nothing he could to about it. The world has become an entirely new place, around him—not in a bad way, but just in a way that feels strange for someone whose life has been routine for so many years. 

And the promotion to Lieutenant is a part of that, as well. It isn’t like her promotion, from Office to Corporal, largely a nominal gesture, in which she’ll have more authority and more responsibility but be doing the same kind of work, most of the time, on roughly the same level. There’s something about moving from the desk he’s occupied for so many years into an entirely new office, separate from the rest of the Squad, that makes it feel strange, not to mention it’s a promotion that means he’ll be in the field less, no more small cases that just need a set of hands to check something out or wrap something up. He’d been reluctant to make that move for a long time, but with the way he’s been feeling himself feel older lately, the way he’s felt just a little less sharp, it feels like the right move, to not be taking as many cases, to be doing other sorts of work when it needs to be done instead. 

It’s easy to believe it, when Becker says it, and reaches out, runs his thumb over her cheek. She’s been trying to keep the confidence in this that she’s had for so long, without even a fraction of the information that she has now, but it’s been wavering a little, since the meeting with the person wearing Allen Snow’s face. It all goes so much deeper than she had realized, and the danger feels so real now, especially playing that game, acting as if she wanted to join them for genuine purposes. She wouldn’t have gotten half as far as she has without the ability to remain confident in the face of the unknown, in the face of danger, but this feels different, and it’s been weighing on her, even knowing she has Marleigh in this, too, that she doesn’t have to do it on her own. 

Becker, though, wouldn’t say something he doesn’t believe wholly. And she respects what he thinks more than most people, because he’s always given her just as much respect, too. If he says she’ll get there, then she has no choice but to believe it, too, to prove him right. His confidence in her only bolsters her own in herself.

And knowing he’s willing to help means something, too. The thought of putting someone else on her growing list of people she cares for in danger because of this isn’t one she likes, but knowing that he’s here, no matter what, it’s a nice thing, when she’d been doing this alone for so long. She’s certain that he means more than just that, though, with his words. 

“Thank you, Becker,” she says, hand moving to his wrist for a moment, voice a little soft. Because she meant what she said, too, that it’s new, but feels just as important that she wants to tell him all of this. That she knows he’s not going anywhere, that he feels something here, too. “I’m not going anywhere, either.”

Baron leans over, and brings her lips to his in a soft kiss, that feeling behind it. After a second of indulgence, though, she smiles into the kiss, pulls back just slightly.  “I like this pasta and this house too much to give up my access to either,” she teases, pressing one more kiss to his lips before sitting back, and taking a sip of her wine. “Do you think that counts as work-related, or just work adjacent?”

.

He’s tempted, to ask for more information about what she’s found—what she’s learned about Eames, about Allen Snow’s death, the rest of it. He’s tempted to ask where the breakthrough had come from, how she’d suddenly gotten so deep into answers he knows she’s been looking for for as long as he’s known her, answers he had wished he could have given her years ago and had never actually had. But then she kisses him, smiling, in that way of hers, so certain and sure, so easy, and he thinks maybe it’s a conversation for another time, something to wonder aloud about another day, when there isn’t pasta and wine and the promise of such a nice evening stretched out before the two of them.

     “Oh, adjacent, for sure,” he answers, between bites of pasta. “You haven’t mentioned a single one of our coworkers, and it isn’t technically a case you’re working on, I mean, really, Baron, it’s practically a hobby as far as you and I are concerned, I don’t know that we can do much better than that.” 

It’s so easy, just to talk with her, about work or not work, about anything at all. To joke with her, to let down every last defense he has, every instinct he’s developed over the past forty years to keep himself and Camden safe, to keep anyone from getting close enough to disturb their carefully-kept balance. He doesn’t think Baron will disturb it any more than Liv already has, but he also finds himself thinking that he wouldn’t mind it if she did. Not when her being here makes him feel like he really doesn’t have to be on his own, doesn’t have to be Atlas holding their entire precarious lives on his shoulders alone. 

It has been quite a busy few weeks, to say the least—weeks in which, somehow, everything in his life has changed. The days have gotten away from him, somehow, like time moves faster now that he is splitting so much of it between the office and Baron, like it has picked up a rapid kind of pace he is unused to keeping up with. 

He had meant to take Cassandra out for a congratulatory dinner as soon as they wrapped their case, as soon as the caught the Tarot Card Killer, but they had both been hit with a wall of red tape getting the paperwork for it wrapped up, and it seemed like a week had gone by in the blink of an eye somehow, and so he’d gone ahead and scheduled it for the both of them, fearing that if he didn’t the chance would slip away from him altogether. They had her promotion to celebrate, after all, their chance to do so cut short by everything that had happened with Scotland, and the chaos of the beginning of the impeachment trial. And now, it seemed, they’d have two promotions to celebrate between the two of them. All the more reason for celebration. 

They’ve come here a few times before, to celebrate exceptional cases, to celebrate her promotions. It’s a little tradition, for them, really, when they have cause for celebration. A lovely dinner, a chance to catch up outside the chaos of the office. To hear how she’s really holding up, how she’s doing, without the professional veneer of the office standing between them. And he’s looking forward to it, to have a chance to talk to her without the stress of cases hanging over their heads for an evening. 

Baron can imagine just what Camden’s rooms are probably like, probably a little dark, maybe a little depressing, certainly a little Anne Rice, even if he doesn’t realize it. What she can’t imagine is what it was like, the two of them choosing this house, and then decorating it, splitting up the rooms, decided who could claim what. But she likes thinking about that sort of stuff, knowing how human both of them are, despite what most would think. Knowing she has the privilege of seeing it, because she’s somehow been able to understand Becker than most other people she’s met as her time on the squad. She likes the idea of doing something like that, standing in this beautiful kitchen cooking together, learning how to make something delicate and beautiful, something of their own creation together, kissing him like this, laughing like this. She likes the idea of doing so many other normal things, seeing what all they make a pretty good team on. She’s pretty sure they would make a good team in anything they could try together.

“Then I’ll be sure to find time to squeeze you in, busy schedule lately,” she teases with a little smile, taking a sip of wine. She lets the silence sit for a moment, enjoying the food, the wine, enjoying sitting close with Becker. It all feels so simple, but so very big all at once, because it’s not like anything else she’s ever found before. It’s comfortable, and normal, the sort of thing she’s sure most everyone else has had before, but the sort of thing she’s never really had. And that makes her want to do things she never would have, before. Because it has been busy lately, and she wants him to know why.

With her telekit safely at home, and the wards around the Savages’ home probably a dozen times stronger than hers or Marleigh’s between the two of them, she feels safe bringing it up here. She wants to bring it up here, too, because this is enormous in her life right now, has been since before she even met Becker, she wants him to know what’s happening in her life. And she also wants him to know how new it is for her to have someone she actually wants to tell, and not just because of trust, or benefit, or anything so practical.

“I’m gonna break that maybe, but I’ll make it up to you after dinner, I promise, but… I found the group Allen Snow was in with. The group he died to keep secret. It’s bad, corruption on a national scale bad. Judith Eames most likely sent us to Scotland to die on this group’s orders so she could become president bad. I’ve spent half my life trying to get this close to figuring it out, and if I keep going now, I think I’ll get there,” she tells him. “The funny thing, though, is that this is the first time something else has felt just as important, like my world might not end if even I keep going and don’t find anything else. And that’s pretty big for me. You’re pretty big for me, Becker.”

.

He can see the shift in the expression on her face a moment before she starts to speak, can see her considering it, weighing whether or not she’s going to say what she wants to say. He knows what she’s going to say a moment before she does—at least, the first part, the part about breaking her half-promise not to talk about work, if not the rest of the surprising news that follows it. And he wouldn’t stop her, couldn’t, not when he can tell, from the look on her face, that it’s something she needs to say. He doesn’t care, all that much, about not talking about work—the fact that they’ve both made the effort is enough, feels like the first impossible step towards something. But Rome wasn’t built in a day; no one changes overnight. Hard enough to teach an old dog like him new tricks. 

And what she says... Merlin, it’s no wonder she needs to talk about it, and he’s glad she feels comfortable enough to do it with him. He’d known Allen Snow, yes, had worked with him for many years, had respected him and gotten along with him well enough; he couldn’t have hardly not, given they were on the same Squad, both from Kentucky, had so much to talk about when they did. If Snow’s death had happened any other time, had it not followed quite so closely on the heels of Becker’s entire life being uprooted by a case Snow had sent him and Camden on, he might have been the one in her position, trying to follow up on the mysterious circumstances of the man’s death, trying to put enough pieces that everything that had felt wrong about it clicked into place.

But he hadn’t been. Camden had been in crisis, and so he had been in crisis too, a desperate attempt to put life back together for the two of them. Every time Baron had asked him questions, before, about her grandfather, he had shrugged her off, or told her some meaningless anecdote, because the truth was he didn’t know anything about Snow’s death, or apparently all that much about his life. He’d never dreamed Baron was this close to learning something he’d never bothered to investigate himself. 

It’s... a lot, to take in, all at once, in his dimly lit kitchen, over wine and pasta, but he’s glad she said something, even if he isn’t sure where to start with all of it. Because what she says about Judith Eames is enough to be overwhelming, without even beginning to touch the second part of it, of how Baron apparently feels about him, so in line with how he’s beginning to realize he feels about her. 

Cassandra feels almost breathless, as the moment move onwards. Becker checks the man –– out cold, for the moment, and removes another clip of bullets and the famous tarot cards. They match the ones that they have back in the station, a damning peice of evidence. She scans through them quickly. All the ones that are missing match up to the victims that they’ve already found, and despite knowing that the next victims are definitely safe and alive in their home, Cassandra breathes a sigh of relief when she sees The Lovers card tucked safe among the rest. She puts the objects away safely, tucked away to take to evidence as soon as they get back to headquarters. 

She sighs out a breath, finds her handcuffs and moves to put them around the mans wrists, securing them before he can stand the chance to wake up. “I’m okay.” She says, even though it must be obvious. She knows that just the reassurance of the words is a powerful thing. She glances over at Becker again, and then around the room. “I found rat poison in the kitchen. Pink stuff. No sigh of any potions being brewed, and I think…well thats my theory, as far as the murder weapon goes. I guess we’ll see when we check out the rest of the house.” She nods. And after making sure that the man is secure, with wards up around him so that he can’t slip away if he does wake up, they move to sweep the rest of the house. 

It all looks so ordinary, so completely mundane. It’s clearly a no-maj home, with all the appliances and none of the signs of magic you would expect in a place occupied by wixes. The rest of the bottom floor is empty, so they take the stairs up. There are family pictures on the way, something picture perfect and frozen in time, a family that the man down there clearly doesn’t belong to. Most of the rooms are normal, empty, but the master bedroom looks like something right out of a no-maj horror movie. It’s dark, and it looks like the attatched bathroom has been turned into some kind of dark room. There’s a camera on the night stand, and pictures hung up. Pictures of their last victim, of Cain, clearly taken before he died. Cassandra sucks in a breath, as they look around the room. 

There’s a notebook on the bed, left open, and Cassandra bends to get a look at it, sucks in a breath and lets it out again. Flipping back a few pages, she feels sick. There are sketches of the street outside, the house that they had been protecting and even the people inside. Further back, some of Cain, and writings. She reads some of it aloud to Becker, voice shaking only slightly as she does.“God came to me again last night and showed me the Devil. Just like the other times, my mission is clear. He will taste death by my hand and the world will be purified, made clean of one more monster. I will go to him in the place that was revealed to me, where he practiced his dark arts, and snuff him out. His card will mark him in death and all will know of his wrongdoings.” 

She takes a step back, and shakes her head. “Well, gosh, that’s gonna be real fun to read later.” She says, finally, with a bland sarcasm to her tone. She gets the impression that the ramblings in there are going to keep her up at night. 

He feels better about searching the house, now, with the man cuffed and stunned and with Cassandra within eyesight. Feels more at ease, knowing they’ve got an eye on one another in case anything else unexpected happened. It wouldn’t have been bad, for him, if the man had shot him, not really—even a shot to the heart could only do so much when you couldn’t actually be killed. But he still worries, as to what might have happened if their roles had been reversed. If she had been the one with the gun pointed at her, if he hadn’t quite been fast enough to stop it. 

At the very least, the evidence in the bedroom upstairs is illuminating—and damning. Once they’ve determined the rest of the house is empty, whoever actually lives here clearly out of town and their killer squatting here alone while tracking the couple who would have been his next targets, he feels at ease enough to take his time with it. Collecting the photos, the film, the camera, all for evidence, the sketches. Flipping through a few more pages of the man’s notebook after Cassandra reads one small passage aloud, there’s simply no question about it. 

But there is a chill, in his chest, at the words, the divine fervor behind them. He shuts the book quickly, tucks it away. 

Once he sits down, knees touching just a little, she lets her hand move briefly to his leg, just a light touch, but lingering. She wants to be close to him like this, wants to be touching. The idea of a beautiful, formal dinner with him is appealing, too, but just now this feels pretty perfect to her. Everything has felt so big lately in ways that are wholly out of her hands, and she hates feeling like she doesn’t have control. It’s nice to have something that feels important, but small, comforting, totally in her hands, and in the hands of someone she finds herself trusting rather wholly. This is exactly what she needs tonight, something close and intimate, to be near enough that she can reach out and touch him, when she wants.

And it’s clear that he agrees, that this is the sort of night he needs, too. He’s made her dinner, invited her into his home, but she wants to take care of him, too, in whatever way that might mean tonight, or any other night. 

“We all have regrets,” she laughs softly, at the thought of Camden decorating the dining room. The thought of the two brothers doing something so normal, even, as deciding on decorations for their house. She feels a little smug about getting to see Becker like this, when it seems like such a rare thing, relaxed, so human. “Every room I’ve seen is beautiful, though. The whole house is a dream. My apartment is fine, but being able to spread out is so nice, having space for everything you want.”

It’s been nice in a dozen different ways to be able to spend more and more time here with Becker. It feels like she fits here, and with Becker, nothing about it feeling strange.

“Oh, I will. I don’t make a habit of telling lies,” she says, raising an eyebrow as she takes the silverware, echoing his own words from what feels like a small lifetime back at him, a teasing lilt to her voice. Baron makes a big show of putting the napkin in her lap, and getting the perfect fork full of pasta, before taking a slow bite, closing her eyes as she tastes. And it’s fantastic, no surprise at all, probably one of the best meals she’s had in a long, long time, but she may be biased by the company.

“I think it’ll do,” she shrugs, once she’s swallowed. She pauses, pats her lips with the napkin, and leans over to press a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s delicious. Next time, I want you to teach me. I think we’d make a pretty good chef team.”

     “Well, you’ve seen mostly my rooms; I dread the day you see the other wing and understand what I have to put up with,” he jokes; there’s nothing wrong with Camden’s sense of design, really, except that it’s rather somber, but he can’t imagine her having occasion to see any of the rooms Camden had decorated for himself—he barely goes in them, himself, Camden more likely to haunt his study when he wanted for company than for Becker to cross to his brother’s rooms. Maybe it’s habit, the long years between Becker’s injury and Camden’s transformation where Camden had been living in a home of Becker’s he had no claim to of control over.

So much of their lives feels like habit, in that way; with this many years behind them it seems foolish to fix what isn’t broken—and yet, that’s exactly what they’ve both been doing, lately, realizing that maybe things had been broken where they hadn’t anticipated they were, both of them patching over those cracks with new fixes. Liv, spending far too many nights here for Becker’s liking. And this, of course, Baron, laughing with him and smiling with him in the kitchen over homemade pasta.

He watches her, curiously, as she takes her first bite, appraising it. She makes a little face, as she tastes it, eyes closed, deep in thought, clearly enjoying it, and he likes that look on her, too. She kisses him, and he can’t help but catch her face with one hand, for just a moment, catch her lips in his, quick and easy. 

He’s joking, she knows, which is a pretty brilliant thing in and of itself, but the thing is she could easily imagine all of it being the truth. There’s something that’s always felt larger than life about Becker, in a sophisticated, serious sort of way. She could imagine him knowing half a dozen other languages, being able to pull four different complicated forms of martial arts out of his pocket at a moments’ notice, if needed or desired, and everything else. He’s had time for it, she thinks, except, no, that’s not quite true. Because they’re alike in that. Their life is their work, everything they do as aurors, and not much else. Even her time outside of work is usually spent doing things to either further her at work, or look into the work adjacent issue of Appius.

It’s not necessarily a sad realization, but more of one that’s served its purpose up until now, one that she thinks it might be time to start changing, for both of them. She wants to fill up her free time with other things now, finally has things besides work that feel so important and integral to her life. She wants to fill up Becker’s time with other things, with herself, maybe. There’s no way she’ll ever fully let go of the way she works, the way she can’t just leave it all behind at the end of the day, and she doesn’t think Becker could, either––it’s one of the reasons they mesh so well, they both understand that––but she thinks they could both stand to make some room.

“Maybe you can teach me a thing or two, one day,” she says, teasing lightly, but there’s a seriousness to it, thinking about what they could learn together.

While he’s finishing up the pasta, she sips her wine, watches him, admires. She accepts the beautiful plate of pasta, considers the options laid forth. She had been expecting a formal sort of dinner, it feels very them, but he’s right, she thinks something a little more intimate would be nice. Baron wants to be able to reach over and touch him, wants to sit close. There’s plenty of time for grand, formal dinners together. Tonight she wants to relax with him, have the quiet peace of being in each other’s space.

“I know I’m incredibly formal usually, but you have seen me without heels on, and that’s a big deal. Not to waste your beautiful place settings, but I think eating in here would be nice. And even better if we’re not interrupted, I’d rather not have that conversation with him tonight,” she laughs a little, with a soft smile. She pats the stool next to her. “A slow night together, with delicious pasta and wine. It’s all I need.”

.

He slips easily onto the stool next to her once he fetches silverware from the drawer, the two  stools close enough in their respective positions.at the counter that his knee touches hers just slightly as they sit there. It’s more comfortably than the dining room, in myriad ways; he’s always preferred eating here to the formal table and chairs, mostly because it’s an awfully big table and he’s nearly always eating alone, except for the rare nights where Camden decides to keep him company while he eats dinner. Usually he sits here, a file spread out in front of him, reading or making notes, killing two birds with one stone.

It’s nice, not to multitask. Not to split his attention, except between her gentle, warm presence and the taste of the food and the wine. Other than his study, the kitchen his his favorite room in the house; under utilized for such a beautiful space, the white marble of the countertops, the rich wood of the cabinets. More space than anyone could need, to cook for one night after night, which makes the chance to cook for her all the sweeter. He waves his wand at the lights, and they dim a little, casting a warm glow across the room; he should have set out candles. 

     “You made the right choice,” he says, leaning close for a moment. “The dining room makes me feel like I’m in some horrid vampire novel. Why I let Camden decorate the dining room is beyond me, but I was a younger man then.” Only several years younger, really; they changed houses as often as they changed squads. But they’d all started to blend together, all the same. 

And it’s so nice, to fill up another space in this house, with her, one he frequents, so that maybe when he comes downstairs to make his coffee on mornings she isn’t here he’ll be able to picture her, sat just there, just so, smiling at him, laughing that soft little laugh, looking at him like that. To imagine her not just in his bed, or his study, but here, too, feels like a gift, feels like something that makes the house feel alive in a way it never really has before, so empty and alone. 

Cassandra doesn’t have the best feeling, when she rounds the other side of the house to try and get in. There’s a door there, in a room just off the kitchen, a small little space that she can see into from one of the glass frames in the door. She checks for wards, and they aren’t any. This is clearly a no-maj home, and no one has sured it up with any protective spells or wards. Which is strange, which almost makes her decide to change her mind about her decision. But as bad as things feel, she’s also confident in her choices, and she trusts herself that no matter how strange things seem, she’s on the right track here.

She won’t get anywhere in life, if she doesn’t trust her own instincts. 

She charms the lock on the door open and slips inside, quiet, and then opens the door to the kitchen just a crack. There’s a radio playing, someone is home, but she can’t see anyone around. She checks carefully before she moves on, keeping track of everything in the room. She’s about to keep moving forward when she notices something –– a box of rat poison, on the table. She can see in the top, see the pink contents, and something sparks. The pink film around the mouths of the victims. Could that be what it was? She wasn’t sure. She had imagined it would be some kind of potion. She can’t see why a wix would use something as basic as this to kill their victims. It wasn’t nearly as grand as it had all seemed before. It could have been nothing, but Cassandra made a mental note to bring the poison in for testing. If this was where they found their killer, there was a good chance that was the murder weapon. 

She silently starts to move deeper through the house, and when she peeks into the hallway she can see Becker moving towards her. There are a couple of rooms between them branching off, and he hasn’t seen her yet. But he hasn’t seen something else, either. A man creeping out from a corner that neither of them would have noticed before, hidden because he clearly knew they were coming, just as Eden implied he might. Even scarier still, it isn’t a wand he raises at Becker. It’s a gun. A no-maj weapon that makes Cassandra almost wants to freeze in fear. She moves quickly, while she can, and fires off a stunning spell. It whips right over Becker’s shoulder and hits the man square in the chest, sending both him and the gun falling to the floor. The gun goes off when it falls, but lucklily the bullet seems to go in a different direction than toward them.

Cassandra rushes forward, then, to get to Becker. “Are you okay, Becker?” She asks, a little frantic, though she can see with a look that nothing bad has happened to him. The last thing she wants is for him to have gotten hurt. When she’s assured herself that he’s okay, she looks over toward the man, who for now seems to be down. “I think this is our guy.” 

He makes eye contact the moment before Cassandra fires a spell in his direction, and for just a breath he thinks she’s firing a stunning spell at him, and he isn’t quite quick enough to put together some semblance of a reason for that, just a momentary flash of panic. The only thing stopping him from throwing up a shield to block her spell is the fact that it’s Cassandra, and that he trusts her, and that he knows if she’s doing something she has a good reason to be doing it—and she does, he realizes, as he hears the man he didn’t realize was just behind him hit the ground, hears the gun go off firing into the wall a few feet behind either of them, towards the front of the house.

He whirls around, trying to make quick sense of it, and does: one of the rooms off this hall was deeper than it appeared, a strange corner by the doorway making the shape of it deceptive where it wrapped around what must have been stairs to a basement, and he hadn’t seen the man there as he passed, as he checked each room. The man had stepped out behind him, with a gun, and Cassandra had seen him just in time. 

Oh, and what a marvelous witch she is. 

He takes just a moment to catch his breath, then crouches down beside the man, checks to make sure he’s adequately stunned, though he’s sure he will be thanks to Cassandra’s handiwork, and then pats him down, looking for a wand. He finds a second clip for the gun, in one pocket, a half-complete deck of tarot cards in the other, but no wand, so he takes the two and passes them to Cassandra.

     “I think it must be. We should sweep the rest of the house, just in case. Make sure he’s alone. Try to find his wand and whatever he used to kill them.” 

He pushes himself up off the ground, then, one hand braced on the wall to help himself up. His leg has been worse, the past few days. Since Scotland. Since he’d given Camden the ring back—or, no, maybe since he’d taken it off at all, like maybe Hadrian giving it back to him was the only thing that had carried him home without it aching, like maybe Baron’s distraction after he left in in the drawer in his study was the only thing that meant he failed to notice it until later. But Camden had taken it back, put it somewhere else, though Becker wasn’t sure where, as he hadn’t been wearing it. It takes him a second longer than he’d like to get back to his feet, an unfortunate sign of his age.

She can’t help a small smile at that thought, that he wants her to get used to this sort of thing, that he’d be interested in letting that happen, letting her get comfortable here with him, relaxing, indulging a little. It’s something she wants, too. It’s not really something she had ever considered for herself before, in all honesty, the thought of finding something so comfortable with someone else, wanting to get used to the feeling. But she thinks she’d like it, to get used to this even in some small way. It’s all still new, but it doesn’t feel like something to be nervous about, or to worry over. It feels easy, and familiar. Part of it is probably because she’s always felt something different with Becker, strangely enough felt like she has more in common with him than anyone else on the squad, despite everything. She’s always felt like his equal.

And, god, it’s pretty damn attractive watching him roll out the pasta, watching him fold it into little nests, delicate and beautiful. It makes her wonder what other things Becker has up his sleeve, all of the hidden things that he’s good at, besides all she gets to see on the job, the things that fill up his free time when he has it. She wants to know, wants to find out every little thing she can about what makes up Becker Savage. 

This isn’t the sort of thing someone else has done for her before, something a little special, done with a little extra care. She hasn’t really let anyone get this far. She’s glad it’s Becker who’s managed it, glad that she can give him something in return. He puts the pasta in the water, and then leans against the counter, looking at her, and she doesn’t know how he does it, makes her feel so seen so easily.

“I don’t know, Becker, that’s a lot to ask,” she hums, tilting her head a little, smiling back at him.  Baron takes a sip of her wine, looks back at him, thoughtful. There are work adjacent things she wants to tell him, but it can wait, she’d rather keep seeing that smile on his face, see how long they can go without worrying about work.

“Maybe we can at least make it through dinner. Maybe. You can start by telling me what other hidden talents you have up your sleeve, besides chef. I’m going to have to test them all out.”

.

Maybe. It’s more than he expects from either of them, neither the type to keep work and home separate. Half of their colleagues an’t seen to keep their home lives and romantic trysts and personal drama out of the workplace, Camden included these days, but while he and Baron have no trouble doing that, they seem to have the opposite affliction: a complete inability not to bring work home with them. Still, it’s a nice fantasy, to talk about anything and everything except the work they did, to sit here in the quiet, comfortable house and discover what else might interest them. 

     “Well, that’s an awfully long list,” he jokes lightly, as he stands back up and sets his glass down so he can take the pasta from the pot and move it into the sauce, combining the two, letting the sauce come to cover the pasta before dishing some of it out into two beautifully painted pasta bowls. “After all, I know at least four martial arts, can speak seven languages, and took up no-maj stage magic and juggling for several years somewhere in between all of that.”

None of that is true: he can speak two languages, English and some passable Italian he’s rather out of practice with, and martial arts would have been a no go with how much his leg still troubled him after all this time. He exercised enough to keep in good shape, used the training facilities several times a week so make sure he wouldn’t slow himself down in the field, but he took little pleasure in it. In all honesty, it feels like the years have rather slipped him by, when he wasn’t paying attention. He’d spent much of it reading, had probably a thousand books in his study at this point and had read just about every page. But he’d spent more of it working. 

For here, everything has always been about what’s happened in the past, or what’s going to happen in the future, rarely about the present moment. She’s spent so many years simultaneously stuck everywhere but the present, that she’s only realized in the past few weeks just how much she’s missed, just how empty every other part of her life is when you take away work, or the grand quest to figure out what happened decades ago. And the thing is, she hasn’t really had a reason to realize, until now. Until suddenly she has several people she finds herself caring about deeply enough that she wants to take things for the now. And what she wants to hold onto in the present, first and foremost, is this nice thing that she’s found with Becker.

The feeling of his hands on her waist is grounding. Becker feels like something so solid in her life when everything else threatens to shake apart, and it’s a nice surprise to have him now. It’s unexpected in a good way. It makes her want to be in the moment, but she also has a vague thought in the back of her mind that she wouldn’t mind looking towards a future like this, either. She doesn’t let herself consider it too greatly, but it’s there, the seed of something else she could want, if she allows herself, and Becker allows himself, too.

The smile on her lips is easy, as he leads her into the kitchen. She loves the whole house, really, all that she’s seen of it, and she loves even more how easy it feels to relax here, but she’s fairly certain it’s because it’s Becker’s house, although it doesn’t hurt just how beautiful and big it is. Even better, when they make it to the kitchen, nose filling with delicious smells, and an even better sight on the counter, fresh pasta, next to a bottle of wine.

“A break is definitely needed, even better like this,” she hums, pressing a small kiss to his temple before perching on the stool, already looking forward to the show that he’s going to put on for her. 

Becker looks good here, relaxed like he seems to be every time she’s come over, in a way he usually doesn’t look in the office, but more than that it’s just supremely attractive, all of it. The pasta, the wine, the way he says he wanted to see her, the way he teases, jokes in that dry way, smiles so easily. He looks good like this, she’d like to keep seeing it.

“Lucky for you and all of your hard work, pasta is perfect to me. Especially fresh pasta. You’re pampering me. Be careful, I might get used to it,” Baron says with a little laugh, accepting the glass of wine. 

.

One she sits, he makes his way around to the other side of the island so he can get to work, getting the pasta ready, rolling it out; it isn’t a long process, nor is it a one that requires much of his focus, and so he can keep his attention on her as he does it, rolling it into long, thin sheets, cutting it into even ribbons. He’s always preferred cooking by hand to letting magic do it for him, curling each handful of pasta into small nests and setting them to the side as he goes, though he’s got some control over the flames on the stove, keeping the sauce at just the right temperature, keeping the water boiling and ready. 

     “I hope you do get used to it,” he replies, and as he says it there’s a part of him that wishes this was the kind of thing he could do every night, the kind of thing he thinks he could get used to. He used to cook, more, when he was younger, early in his career, before he got married and shortly after. Youth had made things like this easy, in the same way that immortality had: both had given him time in a way he didn’t have it, when Benjamin was young, when he’d been working so hard, so ambitious himself to rise higher and higher in the squad, to do as much good as he could in the short time he had left. Nearly dying had pushed him into a kind of relentless overdrive, had made him work harder, to the exclusion of so many things, and that kind of work had remained a habit long after the thread of an early death had passed him by. 

He thinks Baron understands that, the way everything else fall away in the face of a job like theirs, taken as seriously as they do. He’d like to see her not waste her best years so caught up, so relentless. He’d like her to have nights like this, to take her time with things, to relax like this. 

He puts the pasta into the water, to let it cook, finally takes a sip of is own wine, leaning on his elbows on the island as he waits for the pasta to rise to the top of the pot, to signal its fully cooked, only a few short minutes. He takes the first few seconds of those minutes to look at her, to really take her in, the soft look to her features, the fondness he always seems to find there. 

Being able to have this while everything else had started to change around her, is more welcomed than she could have thought, even once she had realized part of what she wanted with Becker. It’s not a distraction, no, but a reminder in a way of way she wants to keep fighting. She hadn’t necessarily expected for this to keep happening; unlike just about everyone else in the office, they knew better. But he kept asking her over, and she wanted to keep this, maybe see what else could come from it too. All she knows is that she likes it, likes having someone she feels equal to in all things to be with, talk to, kiss. 

And it’s almost like she can see the tension in his shoulders relaxing when he looks at her, and that’s got to count for something, too, because she feels a lot like that when she looks at him.

“I’m actually a little bit caught up in things with him, flatterer. Do you think I should be worried? He seems like he can hold his own,” she hums, teasing.

She reaches up, lets her fingers move around the base of his neck, pulling him down into a kiss. It’s a little indulgent, but she does’t feel any sort of self consciousness about it. She just wants this, wants to kiss him, to make herself a regular fixture in his home, have nice dinners together, have even nicer things after. It should probably feel stranger, they way they’ve fallen into this, without even really having to discuss it. But it feels right, easy in a way that barely anything has been lately, the world seemingly speeding up around her in ways she never could’ve anticipated. It’s nice to have something that feels oddly normal. That’s half the reason she wants to keep this all, she thinks, something so normal to anyone else, but no part of it feels plain, average.

And she gets the distinct feeling that it’s something Becker could use right now, too, something normal, and his. Because it’s the truth. It’s not the sort of thing she thinks she needs to say out loud, not yet, but her mind’s already made up. When she wants something, she wants something. And she can see herself wanting to keep this, fighting for it, if she has to.

When she pulls back, she smiles at him, letting her hand fall from his neck, to curl around his waist to head inside. “Thanks for having me over, Becker. It’s been a long few days, I need this tonight. It’ll be nice to relax.”

He lets everything else fall away, as she kisses him, shedding the final scraps of worry and distraction still left in his mind that hadn’t already been banished by the sight of her, any lingering thoughts of the past few weeks, of the Impeachment Trial, of Camden, of Benjamin, of anything else. He’s never been one to leave work at work, always brought some of it home with him, at least in his head, and he knows Baron has likely always been the same. But something about her presence, here, chases all of that away, making him want to be here, and thinking about this, in a way that is surprising and new. Something he feels like he could get used to, if he wasn’t careful. Something that might not be all that bad. 

He rests his hands at the curve of her waist and sinks into it, for a moment, until she pulls back to look at him, until he can smile back at her, can lead her inside and close the door behind them, can guide her towards the kitchen, where dinner is nearly ready.

     “Of course,” he says; it might have been a whim, to invite her, to decide to cook, but he’d done it because he’d needed to relax, and a part of him knew that she did, as well. It had been a long few days for all of them, for so many reasons, their interviews about the Scotland mission, cases piling back up, something else that kept pulling her out of the office before the end of the day—more than once, he’d thought to ask her for dinner and found she’d left early, for one reason or another. “I thought we could both use a break. And I wanted to see you.”

Ordinarily, he would have been sure to have finished cooking before inviting someone in; she’d been exactly on time, after all. But tonight, he’d held off on the final few steps, feeling a bit like the cooking was a part of then show. Forty years of relative immortality had given him plenty of time to pick up any number of useless skills just to pass the time, and this was one he rarely got to use, as it was too much trouble when cooking just for himself, and Camden wouldn’t have been one for garlic even if he had been able to eat ordinary food, which meant Becker usually stayed away from Italian cuisine. 

But there’s a pasta roller, set out on the kitchen island, and a ball of dough covered by a tea towel. Boiling water and freshly made sauce simmering gently on the stove. A bottle of pinot noir and two glasses set out near a stool where Baron could sit while he finished up the meal.