Author's Note: Originally written for the Live Journal Theme To Theme Challenge long ago. The challenge has closed now, but this piece stuck with me, so I dusted it off and rewrote it a bit. I may post more of my old Theme To Theme stuff here, as I rewrite and redo it, but since there's not a lot of West/Lee in this fandom I thought it might be nice to post it. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome. This is the first thing I've ever posted online/written as fanfic in well over three years, so I know it will be flawed and there's a lot of room to improve here. I'm out of practice, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
She smells of coffee and warmth, and no, things can't smell of warmth.
He knows things can't smell like a temperature, but he's exhausted and his mind isn't quite working right. It is midnight, the hour where everything makes more sense than it should and makes no sense at all. It's that time of night late where half the city is asleep but people are still awake, still walking streets, cars still passing them by. It is midnight, when he should be asleep since he has a meeting to be at promptly at six, a meeting where Bennett will look at him like he is a child who never should have been allowed to leave the house let alone hold a gun. He will mask any offense he feels with a smile and jokes until he almost convinces even himself that being the team clown doesn't hurt, doesn't carry waves of humiliation with it. West really ought to go to sleep and pretend this isn't his life. His thoughts get too dark at night, like they aren't even his. How can he have these depressing thoughts when he's always the one with a quip, always the one making people chuckle?
But sleep is something he is a stranger to. He fears it, almost, dreads it, the enveloping darkness, the way he knows he's not getting anything done when he sleeps. When he sleeps he is useless, he is nothing, and he wants to be something. He wants to be a hero, to help people, to save lives and prevent tragedies and make the world a better place. This dystopia they live in has good things in it too, and he wants to protect it. West wants to be something the way fish want water. He wants it with every fiber of his being. He wants it for secret reasons, for a childhood spent feeling useless, for a lifetime of not being good enough. Not a failure, just not enough, never enough, and there is an unspoken understanding in Lee's eyes whenever he casually ducks out of calling his family.
She doesn't ask. She never has. She never will; she holds out the cup of espresso to him and after he automatically takes it she sits down beside him. They have information feeds to review, a neverending stream of data and reading that will last them through the night. She doesn't have to be here. He's supposed to be doing this solo as punishment for his latest screw up. He always messes up, and every time he does he doesn't look at Bennett, he looks at Lee, and he braces himself. For the day she tells him she's had enough of him, the day she says she's tired of his crap, the day she asks for another partner, a better partner. He expects it. He feels it coming. Nothing he has ever lasts. One day she'll drop him like deadweight. Like all the other people he's been partnered with. He's not bad enugh to be booted out, but he's not good enough to be admired, and being average is worse than being nothing at all to him.
At some point she learned exactly how to make his coffee just how he likes it. Her angular face is bathed in the artificial light of the screens, a blue glow that sharpens her features, makes her real. She is warm and secure and soft and beautiful. And he has no idea how he knows that, why he would even think that. He has yanked her out of the way of danger or touched her shoulder, but he has no basis for thinking of her as soft or secure. Their relationship is strictly professional. Well, not strictly, he knows that when he looks at the coffee mug, they're not just people who work together. He just doesn't know why he has these recurring thoughts about a friend who's probably only his friend because he sucks at his job.
If he dug deeper he might know. He might be able to look through the mess of his feelings and the lengthy record of their past and he might be able to see he's in love with her. He might be able to see that those times in the field she's covered for him or gone in first are her ways of keeping him safe, of cherishing him. And some part of him knows that, so he doesn't dig deeper. If he admits it, even in a thought, even in a second, then it will undo him. It will be with him forever, the fact that he cares, undeniable, corrosive, haunting, taunting him because no one he cares about has ever remained. People he cares about are passing things, not to him, but to his life. He remembers them, he thinks of them, and yet he can't hold onto them. He's the class clown. People like the class clown. They never love the clown. Some part of him knows this, that same part that conjures dreams or makes a man see a shape in a cloud. That subconscious part of him raises a wall to protect him.
He could reach over when she reaches for data readouts and let his hand brush hers. He could tell her thank you for not only the coffee but for being his partner and not switching out. He could ask her why she was up at midnight helping him on a solo assignment. He could, could, could, but won't, won't, won't. She is a foot away and yet she could be back in her hometown of Santa Clarita for all he's able to reach her. He's the goofball Agent West, the clown, the funny man, the failure, the deadweight, the burden. He has an image to maintain and an image to fight at the same time. Admitting that there might be something there between them wouldn't be playing into either image. It would be honest.
So when he remembers this night she won't be warm and he'll delete the gentle squeeze she gives his shoulder when they're done. He'll edit out of his mind the moments he spent huddled over a screen watching the light play across her face. He will try, when he does manage to lay down inbetween work, not to hear her humming some Alan Li Fei song she liked as a kid, her earbuds just barely loud enough he can hear the strains of Love Can See over the brush of her fingers on the keyboard. He'll try not to picture her computer background full of black velvet style artwork or smell the lingering traces of her citrus fruit perfume.
When he looks back at this, this will be nothing more than espresso at midnight.